Film Music and the “Classical Canon”

“Classical music” is a tricky term. Nearly every academic has his or her own criteria for what makes a piece of music “classical,” and you can find legendary debates about it on all corners of the Web, from YouTube comments to message boards such as Talk Classical to Amazon customer reviews of classical albums. One particular facet of this debate that comes up from time to time is whether film music can also be classical music, or if there are film scores which deserve to be “canonized” alongside the great operas and symphonies.

It seems that some have certainly tried. In 1978, the year after Star Wars first electrified audiences, Zubin Mehta and his Los Angeles Philharmonic recorded a suite of selections from the film’s soundtrack for London/Decca. It was perhaps the first time that John Williams’s rousing score received attention from a high-profile orchestra and conductor outside of its original recording with the London Symphony Orchestra. The story behind this particular recording seems not to have been written down at all; in my research, at least, I have found nothing detailing why Mehta chose to record this work, whether he did so out of his own admiration for it or because the record label was looking for a popular hit. Either way, it remains a spectacular performance.

Mehta’s recording of Star Wars has since been included on albums on which it is paired with music from the established classical “canon.” One of these albums was one of the first CDs of symphonic music I ever owned, having been gifted to me by my parents at a young age. In addition to the Star Wars suite (and Close Encounters of the Third Kind), it includes Gustav Holst’s The Planets and Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, all of these performed by Mehta and the LA Phil. Another album pairs it with just the Planets suite. I personally find this fascinating- does music from film really deserve to be held up alongside great, established classical repertoire?

The question is quite a contentious one, and there are plenty of folks on the Internet who don’t think so. On the Talk Classical web forum, that august collection of austere musical brain power, a debate broke out in February 2019 as to whether John Williams is a great composer worthy of canonizing, or merely a plagiarist. The debate raged on until at least January 2021. On the second album I linked in the previous paragraph, there is a rather pretentious review of the album criticizing the pairing of Star Wars with an established work like The Planets. The review is headlined, “A disservice to Holst’s The Planets,” and reads as follows:

I have noticed that, of late, many cd's and music events have cropped up, which juxtapose Gustav Holst's "The Planets" and John Williams' "Star Wars". This is strange, seen that any similarity between these two compositions is vanishingly superficial.They both employ the orchestral language of early 20th century impressionism, and that's it.
The conspiracy theorist in me suspects, that the powers that be of music industry, are trying to make some of Holst's The Planets' respectability rub off onto Williams' Star Wars suíte.
Holst's Planets is a well established composition with a solid place in the classical impressionistic repertoire. It is a series of short, well composed, well developed and well rounded concerti that, bundled together, form a cohesive suíte. On the other hand Williams' Star Wars is a wildly popular quasi operatic piece that shuffles through and overlaps a series of leit motifs in a hectic and disjointed way. Everything is loosely bound together by a overloaded orchestration which, at its worst, is downright garbled. It's pace is dictated, not by the composer's better judgement, but by the whim of the film editors. I think its popularity revolves around its being a cog in the Star Wars franchise. However I don't see how Star Wars can survive as a stand alone musical piece.

On the face of it, this review mostly seems to be a rather snobby listener harping on about his subjective dislike of the music from Star Wars. But he also clearly has problems with the notion of Star Wars becoming part the classical pantheon, being as it is a “hectic and disjointed” hodgepodge of leitmotif and bad orchestration, not to mention a product of the producers’ and editors’ wishes rather than the composer’s.

That leaves us with two questions. Is Star Wars a classical opus? Can film music even be classical music in the first place?

I will answer the second question first. Yes, film music can be classical music, and indeed, there already is music originally written for film that is regularly performed in concert halls. The Lieutenant Kije and Alexander Nevsky suites, composed by Sergei Prokofiev, immediately come to mind. Both of these suites (the latter was actually formed into a cantata) are derived from the soundtracks to Russian films of the same name. Aaron Copland and Dmitri Shostakovich also composed film music which frequently gets concert hall attention, too.

The first question, whether a film score like Star Wars counts as a classical opus, is trickier, and more controversial. There are a good number of traditionalists, classical purists, and stuffy academics who, upon hearing that question, will immediately bang their wizard staffs into the ground like Gandalf and loudly proclaim that Star Wars SHALL NOT PASS. It may seem unfair- after all, if we have no problem accepting the film scores of big names like Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Copland into the standard repertoire, why is John Williams, whose day job is literally film music, suddenly not allowed in our club? Do you have to be a “regular” classical composer first and then write film music for it to count?

There are a number of ways that this apparent elitism against film music and composers is explained and justified. Here is a list of the most common.

• Classical music, or at least the works of the great composers, were specifically written to be performed, listened to, and contemplated entirely on their own. Film music, on the other hand, is commercialized music tailor-made to accompany on-screen action, and is not intended to be listened to on its own.

• Classical music, by nature, innovates and pushes the envelope with each successive generation of composers. Film music, especially the popular scores from guys like John Williams, is rooted almost completely in the musical traditions of bygone eras such as Romanticism and Impressionism. Therefore, it is too conservative, derivative, and unoriginal to be worthy of being called classical music.

• Related to the first point, the vast majority of any given film score does not make sense when separated from the film it it supposed to accompany. For a work to be considered classical music, it must be able to stand on its own two feet even when taken out of context, and since film music mostly fails this test, it is not classical music.

• Related to the second point, classical music is undeniably highly complex and of the finest craftsmanship. Film music tends to be much more elementary- easy-to-digest melodies, simple harmony, only basic forms- and its craftsmanship does not begin to rival the works of the great composers.

There are legitimate points in this list. But upon thinking about it all more deeply, I must say that I am not entirely convinced that in the final equation, popular film music and classical music do not mix. Let me go point by point and explain why.

First, it is true that the intention of a classical opus is, among other things, to be performed for the sake of its own performance- that is, it is not meant to accompany anything. In other words, the piece itself is the main attraction, not some other spectacle like a film or a play. By this standard, a film’s soundtrack album is not classical music, and this is a point I can agree with (more on this later). But suppose a film composer (like John Williams) takes a score from one of his films (like Star Wars), extracts material from it, and creates a suite that the composer does intend to be performed on its own. Is that a classical work? If you think about it, there is music regularly performed in concert halls that has effectively gone through the exact same process, and is not film music. How about Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring? Both pieces originally come from ballets- in other words, a visual spectacle to which the music is secondary, or in support of. In The Nutcracker’s case especially, the composer compiled the best material from the ballet into a concert performance suite.

Sound familiar? I thought it did. This is essentially what happens when film music is performed in the concert hall, and is what ostensibly disqualifies it from the classical club. Yet, I struggle to find the difference. Why should the music that accompanies dancing sugarplums or pagan suicide rituals be considered classical music, while the music that accompanies light saber duels is disregarded? Indeed, the only real difference is the medium- stage vs. screen. Is one art form simply more worthy than the other? Does The Firebird intrinsically have more artistic merit than The Godfather? I don’t know about you, but that is not a conversation I want to have.

Second, it is also true that film music is not always on the cutting edge of musical development. Not that it never is- there are plenty of examples of film scores which are composed using modern compositional techniques. Examples which come to mind are Louis and Bebe Barron’s completely electronic score to Forbidden Planet (1956), the first such score in film history, Jerry Goldsmith’s twelve-tone scores to Freud (1962) and Planet of the Apes (1968), and John Williams’s experimental Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). But admittedly, by and large, film music (at least, the film music most often performed in the concert hall) indeed has one foot firmly planted in the past. There may be examples of avant-garde film scores, but few if any examples of film scores actually breaking new musical ground. In fact, they usually hearken back to long-gone musical eras. The Star Wars soundtrack, in all its Wagnerian grandiosity, was composed in a decade during which composers were developing minimalism and playing with newfangled gadgets called synthesizers. Even the lush, melodramatic scores accompanying old black-and-white films from the golden age of Hollywood would have been considered outdated by any musicologist of the time, with the serialism and atonality of the Second Viennese School having long since taken hold.

But here is why I cannot accept this as a valid mark against film music. It boils down to a simple question: what’s the big deal? If film music as a genre is stereotypically more conservative and anachronistic, then that is….just fine and dandy. I am not aware of any rule in classical music, spoken or implied, that says “canonized” music must always be cutting-edge, or must have been innovative or part of a forward-thinking movement at the time it was composed. Indeed, if this was a rule, I can think of large swaths of the classical canon which we would have to expel from the club. I remind you that the Classical era (that is, the era of Mozart, Haydn, Boccherini, etc.) was a reaction to the ornate complexity of the Baroque era, and composers specifically tried to write simpler, less complex music than did folks like Bach and Handel. This isn’t to say that the era was devoid of innovation or did nothing to advance music, but innovation was decidedly not a goal of the Classicists. I would wager almost anything that the Esterhazy family would have taken a hard pass had Haydn described himself as “innovative and revolutionary” on his LinkedIn profile.

Third, when you listen to film soundtracks, you can usually tell that what you’re listening to is intended to accompany a film. A tense chord held for an unusually long time, for example, might indicate that this moment in the film is building suspense. It might work great when watching the film, but listening to it on its own, it feels…empty, meaningless, without direction. If you didn’t know that what you are listening to comes from a film soundtrack, that would especially be a head-scratcher. On nearly any given film soundtrack, then, there is a considerable amount of “music” that is really just there for ambience or filler.
This is a point that I largely agree with the purists on- this kind of material is indeed not all that fulfilling on its own. But where I diverge from them is on how this relates to the question of film music vs. classical. They usually contend that since film soundtracks contain so much “filler” and so little useable standalone material, film music cannot be classical music. This might be true if you were looking strictly at a film’s soundtrack album, for example. As I mentioned earlier, I do not consider those to be classical music, being as they are a collection of cues intended to accompany another context instead of to be presented as concert music.

Again, however, if we hold strictly to the belief that film music and classical music can never mix, we face a dilemma when a composer extracts the music that does work on its own and arranges it into something that is intended to be performed on its own. If this can be accomplished- and it certainly has- then the end result must be classical music if we are being honest with ourselves, since classical music derived from other mediums such as ballet go through the same process.

It could be argued that this is a bad comparison, since ballet music at least has to undergo very little if any change from its original form to be converted to concert music, while film music usually takes a lot of rearranging and editing to become truly listenable concert music. I am not convinced of this. Case in point, the symphonic suites from Carmen- which certainly exclude a lot of material, yet remain a staple of the symphonic repertoire. Those suites, quite simply, are extractions of highlights from Bizet’s opera. In the same way that film score suites exclude filler and ambient music from the soundtrack, so do these opera suites exclude recitatives and other minor material. Is there any real difference here? Most listeners may disregard film soundtrack cues which are merely ambient, but I also do not see many people listening to operas just for the recitatives.

Finally, we come to the question of the musical quality of film scores. In the past, I have written on this very blog about “perfect” music, including music composed with faultless or near-faultless craftsmanship. Would I put Star Wars on such a list? Absolutely not. It is a spectacular score, but in terms of craftsmanship, alongside anything by Ravel or even Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich, it doesn’t even compare. I am no theory or composition whiz, but even I can tell that the orchestration and structure are not on par with that of any canonized classical composer. So, in at least one respect, our snobby Amazon reviewer from earlier is correct. To be sure, folks like John Williams, Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, and Danny Elfman are great in their own way, but they are not Ravels, Beethovens, or Brahmses. So we’ve established that these guys are not the equal of canonized classical composers. This is the end of it, right?

I believe there is a major flaw in this line of thought. As the fake Einstein quote goes, we do not judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. We do not think any less of NFL quarterback Tom Brady because he can’t outswim Michael Phelps, nor do we think less of Michael Phelps because he can’t outrun Usain Bolt. These athletes are great because they are at the very top of their respective sports, and have accomplished things no one else can or has, even other great athletes.

I strongly believe that the same thing goes for composers. Brahms wrote four timeless symphonies, but he never wrote an opera. Verdi wrote many epic operas, but never wrote a symphony. Chopin wrote a huge chunk of the regular piano repertoire, but never wrote a symphony or an opera. Yet, I do not see anyone evaluating Brahms on his ability to write operas, Verdi on his ability to write symphonies, or Chopin on his ability to do either.

“Regular” composers and film composers are no different. Film music is an art unto itself, and I do not believe it is fair to measure the worth of John Williams by comparing his film work to great classical works. It is not apples to apples; it is really apples to oranges. In composing Star Wars, Williams was tasked with creating a rousing, ear-catching score that served the film well, and that is precisely what he did. He did it so well, in fact, that Star Wars is widely regarded as the greatest film score of all time. What more can you ask?

Now, you might counter this by pointing out that Williams, along with many other film composers, has in fact written concert music, and that it’s not nearly as good as that of “regular” composers (depending on who you ask). Perhaps that’s true. But we can look at this whole thing from the other direction. As I mentioned, there are “regular” composers who have written film music, among them Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Copland, John Corigliano, and Philip Glass. And guess what? None of them have produced anything as sensational as Williams has. Sure, you can argue that their scores are more substantial in an academic sense. But in terms of serving the film, drawing the audience in, everything that counts in a great film score, none of them have done it like the great film composers. Simply put, Williams might not be able to match the “regulars” in concert music, but they also ain’t beating Williams on his own turf. Could Shostakovich have written Star Wars? Could Ravel have, or even Brahms? They all no doubt had the skill to compose a film score, but would the result have been as successful, as compelling? Perhaps sacrilegiously, I think not. They would compose great classical music, but not great film music.

What does all of this leave us with? Can our question from above finally be answered- is Star Wars, or any great film score, a classical opus or not? I think the answer is a resounding yes- as long as a few criteria are met, of course. It is basically a summary of what I argued above. The intention of the composer is extremely important- if the music in question is intended to be secondary to another context, it obviously is not classical music. This means that Star Wars Episode IV: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is not an album of classical music. If, however, the music in question is recompiled into something that is intended to be performed on its own merits, then it certainly qualifies as classical music. John Williams’s Star Wars: Suite for Orchestra is, in my judgment, a piece of classical music. And those Amazon albums I linked above, where Star Wars is paired with Holst and Strauss? Those are classical albums, one hundred percent. The Star Wars selections on them are every bit as “classical” as The Planets and Also Sprach Zarathustra.

This is all well and good…but who cares anyway? Why should I make such a big deal out of it all?

For starters, I truly believe that the persistent elitism against film music is actively hurting classical music. Over the course of many decades, new classical music has become increasingly complex and academic in nature. So much so, in fact, that somewhere in the 20th century, a seismic shift in attitude took place among listeners and concertgoers that changed the face of the genre, and would have left any 19th-century concertgoer very confused. In the olden days, concertgoers were excited to hear the newest symphonies, see the newest operas, marvel at the newest piano works. What acrobatics has that dazzling Liszt fellow cooked up this time? What epic story will Puccini show us tonight? In the last century, though, this all came to an end. Quite simply, the vast majority of concert hall patrons stopped becoming excited about new music, and began to strongly prefer constant “reruns” of the same music from decades and even centuries past.

How did this happen? As new music became more and more radical, it simultaneously began to elude the comprehension of the average concertgoer. Schoenberg’s ingenious 12-tone system made for some interesting sounds, but to the untrained listener, the music it produced made little sense. By the time we got to Stockhausen and Ligeti, almost nothing made sense anymore. Unless, of course, you were an academic with years of musical study under your belt, or else had taken the time to really dig deeper and make an effort to understand this new music.

And therein lies the big problem.

Let me clarify- I am no opponent of new music. It is often complex, cerebral, and can take a while to understand and appreciate, but this is not a bad thing, and is not the gripe that I have with it. It is not even with the music itself, which I often enjoy immensely, and I love the challenge of figuring out a new piece. Rather, the issue is that so much work is expected on the audience’s part to come to terms with it in the first place. The classical intelligentsia cannot seem to understand why so many concertgoers reject modern music, snorting at their philistinism and lack of willingness to try and understand it.

The result is what you see in every concert hall today. Orchestras program new works, the audiences suffer through them, and then the evening closes out with a nice big sugary dollop of Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, to help the medicine go down. Composers who have been dead for centuries are now the main attraction. I know of no other art form in which there is a similar phenomenon- movies, musical theatre, even novels thrive on being new- consumers actively look forward to the next big blockbuster or best-seller. Heck, other musical genres even thrive on new material. But I have never seen any measurable excitement over a new piece of classical music in my lifetime.

Meanwhile, while Ligeti, Babbitt, Stockhausen, and Cage were doing their thing, Williams, Herrmann, Goldsmith, and Morricone were doing their thing. They were composing compelling, worthy music in plain view of the classical elite. It wasn’t groundbreaking or highly advanced music, but it was fresh, and it was digestible to any concertgoer without needing a sheaf of program notes or years of academic study to explain its intent. But the intelligentsia had long since decided that film music is not worth its time in the concert hall. By rejecting film music in this way, I believe that the classical world has done itself a major disservice, and has lost a potentially valuable tool for getting people into concert halls, and into the classical genre as a whole. When it is performed in concert halls, it is usually relegated to “pops” programs- which consistently outsell regular classical programs handily. John Williams regularly sells out concert halls, and there are concerts entirely devoted to his music all around the world every year. How many living composers can claim to have done that even once?

So, in the unlikely event someone from the New York Philharmonic is reading this, I urge you to try something crazy. The next classical concert season you plan, program Bernard Herrmann’s Citizen Kane suite alongside Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony. Or Psycho alongside Symphonie Fantastique. How about the Star Wars suite with The Planets, like in the LA Phil/Mehta album? Or Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien with Ligeti’s Atmosphères?

In the final analysis, I strongly contend that there is a place in the classical canon for popular film music. Compared to most modern classical music, it may be simpler, more easily digestible, even anachronistic. But it is still new. Maybe it is too fun for the concert hall. Star Wars is certainly a blast to listen to and perform. But why is there no place for that in the concert hall? There are so many works in the classical pantheon that are deep, introspective, profound, reflective- and we need those works, especially in times like these. But we also need fun- diversion, amusement, a chance to enjoy ourselves. Can a classical work be fun, with no strings attached? I certainly think so. Indeed, I believe we classical musicians ignore fun at our peril.

thumbnail: 8mm film reel and canister. From Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons 4.0. Original author Sammlung der Medien und Wissenschaft