ABSTRACT

Composers of film music have sometimes been persons of genius, yet typically they worked at the behest of directors or producers whose sensitivity to music may or may not have been fine-tuned. Typically, too, film composers functioned in environments where economic or technological conditions placed limitations not so much on the composers’ imaginations but on the extent to which the fruits of their imaginations could be realized. And typically the music of film composers, in the multi-media hierarchy, has played a secondary role; in most cases it was created as a response to a filmic “product” that in essence was completed well before the composer was invited to participate.