Film Music

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 479, 27 August 1948, Page 13

Film Music

\V HEN I listened to "Music in ‘British Films" from 4YA, the programme happened to deal with the 1939-41 period, and inevitably the main feature of the session was the Warsaw Concerto. Even the brilliant playing of Louis Kentner couldn’t disguise the fact that this is mere background music, of greater appeal to those who have seen Dangerous Moonlight than to those, like myself, who haven't. But this programme, and similar ones which I have heard over the air, continue to prove the fact of the vast and rapid expan-' sion of the field of film music. Remem-

ber the old deys when the long-suffer-ing pianist, coldly stationed in a dark corner down by the front stalls, was

obliged to manufacture entire scores for the silent films week after week? * And the days of theatre orchestras, when most feature films were ushered in with "Light Cavalry" or "Morning, Noon and Night?" Nowadays music is tailored to

fit the film, and put together by experts. When composers like Ireland and Vaughan Williams are pleased to write for the films, the result bears little resemblance to the patchwork cutting and hacking of existing scores which previously did duty for all manner of silent and early talking films. But a doubt créeps in when music by not-so-expert composers is played too often on the radio. The listener sometimes feels that certain works would have been better left on the sound-track for which they were originally intended. It is only a composer of first rank who can write a work to order, to illustrate a particular film, and yet ensure that the same work will be able to hold its own without benefit of visible illustration in the concert-hall or on the radio,