Functions of Music

Musical scores made for the movies can be as simple or as complex as the composer chooses, but as an overall goal of this music, its job is to add value to the film itself and the audience’s experience.

An easy job? Probably not!!
For most people, I guess the music is ‘just there’ and pops up when the time is right. It may be quiet, loud, intrusive, or added as background music to a particular scene, and then it disappears as quickly as it had appeared.

                   Is there a formula to how this music should be written?

The people who write this music come from a variety of musical disciplines so maybe each one of them has a method of coming up with a score for a film.

                   It would surely matter if they had in fact had the film in front of them or does it?

Making music specifically for a film scene would require this visual knowledge but for composing music that could be added as a atmospheric track, it may not matter.

Overall though, film music does have a function, in fact a variety of functions and these would in fact be dictated by the director of a film who I guess would pass his thoughts onto the composer and /or musicians working on the score.
The way that people work together in this audio-visual marriage, of course would depend on the people themselves and the film being made. 

Late American composer Aaron Copland wrote that film music had to achieve a balance, and that it should be “secondary in importance to the story being told on screen” while notably adding to the dramatic and emotional content of the film – but without diverting the viewer’s attention from the action.

A comment he made about the effectiveness of film scores, Copland said, “I’d love to be able to have audiences see a film with the music, then see it a second time with the music turned off, and then see it a third time with the music turned on. Then, I think they’d get a much more specific idea of what music does for a film.”

This I think is a really good idea, but I think it would be difficult to actually do this. To sit through a film lasting an hour and a half with no music could be a strange experience. Perhaps with shorter clips, the same result could be achieved.

In 1949, Copland outlined five categories of film music function:

• Creating atmosphere.
• Highlighting the psychological states of the characters.
• Providing a neutral background filler.
• Building a sense of continuity.
• Sustaining tension and then rounding it off with a sense of closure.

In his book, An Analysis of Film Technique, Raymond Spottiswoode described the functions of film music, by it’s usage in the early Thirties. He saw music performing the following roles, independently or in combination:

• Imitation – where the score imitates natural sounds or the tonal use of speech.
• Commentary – The score takes the part of a spectator commenting on the visual film, usually ironically.
• Evocation – Where the synchronised score is given its fullest positive value. Silence as well as sound is deliberate. Leitmotifs act as emotives and assist the visual film towards insight into the characters they are attached to.
• Contrast – Where the score contrasts with, and so may heighten the effect of the visual film.
• Dynamic use – Where the correspondence of sight and sound brings out the rhythm of cutting rates.

More recently, in the book Music for New Media - Composing for Video Games, Paul Hoffert writes about how music and it's functions help tell a story when they are coupled with images.

He states, 'A good media composer can manipulate the user's experience by using specific musical functions that include :

Drama, Action, Humour, Characterisation, Narrative, Setting and Ambience.'

If there is good relationship between the director and composer (doesn’t HAVE to be) and that they have an awareness of the ‘reason’ why they are choosing a style of music, or using the music in a certain way, then there is every chance that it will work and that the audience will enjoy what they are watching.