Do you love John Williams's film music?
The Star Wars main there? The stirring Superman theme?
Wanna know why great film music is not considered classical music?
Because a lot of it is borrowed, slightly modified, from classical music.
You see, a film composer's job is to write the best music for the movie.
And often that music has already been written- by Wagner, by Debussy, by Stravinsky, by Richard Strauss, by Berlioz.
So, you see, it is considered classical music- only often it is slightly modified from something written by Wagner or Stravinsky or Richard Strauss!
This film music is still great art- because it is not there to be the best original music, but to be the best music for the movie. And so it is an important part of the great art that is a great movie like E.T.
For example, what if the best thing for a movie about, say, the Apollo 13 space flight was a slightly modified version of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man?
The film composer, in this case the great James Horner, will rewrite the 3-minute Fanfare for the Common Man, by Aaron Copland, to fit the 11 minute scene and climax at the right moment.
Nothing else will make that movie as great as a slightly modified version of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man.
And both composer James Horner and filmmaker Ron Howard know it.
That's what film composers do, and why it is still great art. Because it is part of what makes the movie great art.
A great film composer can take all the different pieces they draw from, say, in the case of something like Star Wars, Wagner and Stravinsky, among others, and make it into a coherent whole, craft each and every modified piece based on Wagner or Copland or Stravinsky to build in just the right way for a scene, to climax at just the right moment, and put into the score one or more running themes to represent characters or ideas in the movie, all part of the greater whole of the wider movie. A composer who can do that on the level of a James Horner, a John Williams, a Jerry Goldsmith or a Howard Shore is a massive talent and deserves all the honors that someone like John Williams gets from their fans.
Wanna hear where John Williams gets the inspiration for his stirring themes?
A John Williams theme is more original, is not just copying a preexisting piece.
But John Williams gets the soaring, powerful emotional tone, the incredible sounds, the catchy melodies that are still sophistocated but are catchy and grab you in the heart and every fiber in your being, John Williams gets all that from other pieces of classical music.
Two in particular that I would recommend to anyone who loves John Williams themes are the Siegfried funeral march from Wagner's Ring Cycle and the powerful, stirring 4th and final movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony.
Especially the Dvorak movement.
If you want more, listen to the entire New World symphony by Dvorak. But if you love John Williams movie themes, start with that epic 4th movement.
Powerful, stirring, melodic music just like a great John Williams movie theme!
And if anything by John Williams and other film composers will be considered real classical music someday, it is those signature John Williams themes, because they are not just copying a preexisting piece and modifying it to fit the scene in the movie, they are different enough to be original, and they have their own character similar to the Dvorak movement and the Siegfried funeral march but bringing up the specific emotional tone of that specific movie.
But if you want more like that, it's out there, by composers like Wagner and Dvorak and Richard Strauss!
Starting with that Siegfried funeral march and that Dvorak 4th movement, and including the epic opening of Richard Strauss's Also Spoke Zarathustra!
And if you want more that is like other great moments of great film music, like love themes and action themes, listen to Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture!
And for spooky stories right out of Hollywood at its best, with a love theme thrown in, and the source of a lot of the finest film music, try Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique!
There is also lots of Debussy and Stravinsky in the best film music- Stravinsky's three famous early ballets and virtually anything by Debussy are incredible, and are sure to please film lovers! (In the case of Debussy, lovers of quiet films- but the great early Stravinsky ballets are big and bold, adventure and stirring cinematic fireworks!)
There is a whole world out there!
And don't hesitate to listen to those great John Williams and Howard Shore themes as well!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson
P.S. If you want to go into Wagner (or opera in general) beyond the Siegfried funeral march, I recommend James Levine's classic productions from the Met on video. These are essentially movies, like Star Wars (in the case of the Ring cycle a Lot like Star Wars!), and Levine's are among the few filmed productions that keep the locations of Wagner's original. You want to see the entire movie, including the dialogue in subtitles, so you can follow Wagner's work like you would a Steven Spielberg movie. That's far better than listening to it on CD or vinyl! I also highly recommend video for ballets as well, the ballets of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky are incredible movies and deserve to be seen!
The ones that are like Star Wars and classic Steven Spielberg (like E.T.) are the German Romantic operas- Wagner, Weber's Der Freishutz, and Richard Strauss (the more famous Strauss operas through the 1920's, aside from Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, which is a romantic comedy). These operas, especially Wagner's Ring Cycle, were a fundamental influence upon and part of the foundation of the great era of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg movies, the age of E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the great early Star Trek movies, Indiana Jones and the original Star Wars trilogy. That age in movies was built on Wagner's Ring Cycle and its genre of Romantic German opera! Which was itself created by the great Carl Maria von Weber with his Der Freishutz, which the teenaged Wagner loved! (And most of Europe as well!)
(Most stage productions of opera or Shakespeare these days replace the original locations with something completely different, and do awful things like make Princess Leia a prostitute (Only Wagner's princesses, not George Lucas's). Like remaking Star Wars to look like CSI. You want a traditional staging, especially (in Wagner) if you are a Star Wars and old-school (think E.T.) Steven Spielberg fan, and I don't know of any out there on DVD other than Levine's. They don't do traditional stagings anymore. The Met doesn't do traditional stagings anymore, it was Levine that did them.) (You definitely want to go with Levine, especially since his have the best singers of his era and are among the very best performances from the decades covered on DVD! (ignoring the problems with staging in other productions even!) You won't find casts of singers on DVD better than his (and probably few as good!) unless you find a rare video from before the mid-1970's!)