In praise of film scores (NYT)

Lights! Action! Music! - TV - Review - New York Times: "Classical music for people who are afraid of classical music: that’s one way of looking at traditional film scores, which bring symphonically orchestrated music to more people than most serious composers are ever likely to attract to concert halls. As movie audiences are emotionally swept up in the synergy of photography, acting, settings and costumes, it is music more than any other element that effects what the director Francis Ford Coppola calls the “fusion” of these ingredients into “a critical mass.” It usually works best if it is only half-heard.

Those are among Mr. Coppola’s insights in “Lights! Action! Music!,” a fluffy, disorganized, woefully incomplete compendium of interviews and film clips about movie music that begins this month on public television stations. (It is shown tonight on WLIW in New York.)

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