So You Think Herrmann Is Shallow, Do You?

All through college, I have worked as a salesperson on the floor of a Long Island record store. The room I work in is the classical room, which also contains new age, vocals, e/z listening, comedy, gospel and, of course, films and shows. I was hired originally because of my comprehensive knowledge of film scores and above-average knowledge of classical, (modest, ain't I?) which gave me an advantage in that room. However, the job also made me very much aware of the relationship between film scores and other forms of music, as far as public perception is concerned.

It has been a rather enjoyable musical education. As with any job, there are pitfalls, and watching how customers react to film music has truly been instructional.

The most obvious thing for me to point out is how film scores relate to classical music and its patrons. Film music is seen as something of a "bastard son" of classical music, capable of a few brief and fleeting achievements. That is how some classical listeners are able to justify the recent upsurge in popularity of Bernard Herrmann.

Many classical customers, however, have an automatic turn-off as far as the music is concerned. If I am playing a score in the room that has mickey-mousing in it, or some other aspect that makes it obvious that it is a film score, the listeners will ignore it. One Saturday, I was playing Silence of the Lambs and Looking for Richard (Howard Shore is a personal favorite), and no less than three people came up to me over the course of these discs to ask me what was playing. As soon as they learned that it was a film score, they lost interest. Childhood trauma may very well cause this sort of denial, and it seems odd to deprive oneself of music that you like simply because of the fact that it was written for a specific purpose. Agnostics still enjoy J.S. Bach, and he wrote the bulk of his work for the church... isn't it really the same thing? I would suggest psychotherapy to these people.

I had one customer that spent hours over the course of several weeks trying to explain why film scores are not music. He made the mistake of adding that he felt that everything outside the classical room wasn't music either, including Rock, Blues, Jazz, Reggae and a lot of other genres, offending me in the process. This display of a closed mind was surprising to me (being as young and idealistic as i was) in someone that articulate.

His initial arguments were easily deflected by commenting that while orchestral film music (he didn't care about any other kind) bears a superficial resemblance to concert music, the aesthetic is different. Film music is less concerned with structure because that structure is externally imposed. Comparisons to a Wagner opera are like apples and oranges; because of the fact that the cinema is a technological medium, time and space must be fixed. These elements change with every performance of Parsifal, because they are subject only to the procession of the work itself. The film score is fixed by other elements (such as the length of each shot, what thematic material is most appropriate here, making the musical statement quickly enough to be effective in context of the scene but still be consistent within the greater whole of the score) while the opera takes as long as it needs to make its point.

This customer then revealed how he was surfing in Nebraska by remarking that film music is written to be shallow, that there is "nothing else going on." Well, now. These are strong charges indeed, and yes, perhaps compared to Wagner, film music, and as a matter of fact, most music, might pale in comparison. However, well written film music (such as the previously mentioned Shore scores, Herrmann's Vertigo, Prokofiev's music for the Eisenstein films and so on), could invite such comparisons. However, it is just as difficult to compare Bob "War" Marley to Ralph "A Lark Ascending" Vaughan Williams. If you are going to do this, make sure you have a padded room available. It can be done, but it'll drive you, and the people around you, nuts.

Unless I'm playing one of the Elmer Bernstein beer commercial favorites, such as The Great Escape, the average customer more than likely will not recognize the film score being played, but they may respond to it. Action scores get the most attention. Once while Poledouris's Conan the Barbarian was playing, a fight broke out among three customers over the one copy that was in stock. This was barely sufficient to convince my bosses that there may be some lucrative film score albums other than the James Horner efforts that are for movies that young women swoon over because Brad Pitt or Mel Gibson are in them.

Just as a friend and I were finishing our discussion on how horrible we found James Horner's music for Braveheart (especially considering how brilliant we found Alex North's approach to Spartacus, which was essentially the same movie with a bigger cast), a young woman came to the counter and proceeded to ask whether and where we had Braveheart in stock. Sometimes its better not to have an opinion...

(Attention Hornerites: The above paragraph contains an opinion of mine. I know there are many of you out there that feel James Horner is the second coming of Miklos Rosza. I don't agree, and no one is going to change my mind about it. Do not write letters to try to prove your point. You'll only be wasting your time and annoying me—you know, like teaching a pig to sing?)

One of the problems of playing film scores in the store is one of dynamics; with the exception of something like Mozart's Toy Symphony, rarely do other forms of music have the kind of sound level variatons that film scores do. You turn them up a bit so you can catch the beautiful boy soprano, just when the orchestra goes bananas because the alien showed up. Whoops.

The public consciousness is a bizarre thing. When someone asks for the "theme from Excalibur," they are invariably referring to "O Fortuna" from Orff's Carmina Burana. But in actuality the "theme from Excalibur" is "Siegfried's Death and Funeral March" from Gotterdamerung, the last opera in his ring cycle. The Orff track is only played thrice in the film, as opposed to the nine or ten times Wagner's piece does. One short piece that is heard a couple of times in the picture gets noticed, while the one that all but dominates the film, oddly enough, is forgotten.

And, lastly, the song albums. That they get made is one thing. How they are sold is another. In my store, I have made separate leader cards (those white divider things) for the song albums and the score albums. It still doesn't help. It seems that when most people think of a "soundtrack," they think of the songs they heard in the film. As a result, when an album comes out that only has score on it, it is often times bought without checking to see whether that song is or is not on the album. This happens fairly often with such albums as Cliff Eidelman's Untamed Heart and Thomas Newman's Up Close and Personal and Welcome Home Roxy Carmichael.

It should also be remembered by us film-score fans that not all song albums are evil.

There are plenty of anecdotes that come with this type of job. Most of them are variations on events that unfold in Clerks (yes, its all true), some are a bit more embarrassing (and you do remember the embarrassing ones, trust me). However, for those customers that offer a breath of fresh air, (this means you, Joel, Patrick and all the rest) I thank you very much and wish there were more of you.

Special thanks to my co-workers, who often find the not-all-that-pleasurable task of maintaining my sanity falling to them.