I'm reading The Joy of Music by Leonard Bernstein, and he discusses his experience with On the Waterfront in the chapter "Interlude: Upper Dubbing, CA." ("Upper Dubbing" refers to the building where they put the sound effects and soundtrack into the movie, or "dub in" the sounds.) Bernstein describes the sound editors as geniuses who can listen to many different, seemingly contradictory, commands and somehow create an appropriate mix for the movie.
Bernstein was allowed to attend the editing sessions (a rare privilege for a composer), and added another element to the gathering: the advocate for keeping all of the music in tact. HIS music, in fact; he studied the film to write scene-appropriate music, and wrote complete pieces. Bernstein still included a logical beginning, middle, and end when he composed for the film, and his work is somewhat incomplete if any part, even a single bar, is removed.
Unfortunately for Bernstein, the music is often the first to go. He admits that the best film scores are those that the viewer never really notices. If you notice the music, it has covered up the most important element: the movie. So, when the technician removes the climax of a powerful crescendo to allow Marlon Brando's grunted line to come through, Bernstein can do little more than pout about it.
I found it interesting, though not surprising, that composers will fight for every bar to keep it in the film. I am not a composer, and I don't have the experience of agonizing over every note of a score. Of course Bernstein would want to save every last bar if he could; he labored over that music and put his heart and soul into it. And yes, it would be incomplete if any part were removed. If you removed any part of the exposition of a sonata, wouldn't that be incomplete as well? This all makes sense, but I had never thought about it before. I wonder if that is the case with all film scores; is there more to the soundtrack that we're not hearing, and is the composer devastated to find those parts missing when he watches the film?
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Hi Kate,
first - thanks for your music recommendations. I appreciate the list, and I will definitely look into them all, some of them I already know.
also with regards to cubase vs. audacity, its one of those 'get what you pay for' scenarios. cubase is pretty powerful, but its not free. This relates to your most recent blog, scoring. The reason I bought cubase was to do scoring for commercials. I used to do music for a clothing company in Canada and I needed a program where I could watch the video and play/record at the same time. Even on a trivial commercial that no one really cares about, what you say is true, there's a battle between the director and music director. Sometimes it comes down to a discussion about one note. This was the case in my small business experience. I can only imagine what its like on the Hollywood scale.
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