Film music
Music composed for or used in a film.
What it means
Film music is music composed for or used in a film. It supports mood and action, links scenes, interprets characters and feelings, and can steer the pace of the images. One distinguishes music heard within the film itself, for instance from a radio or a band on screen, from music that only the audience hears.
Musical use
Even the silent film was accompanied live, usually by piano, organ, or small orchestras. With the arrival of sound film in the late 1920s came the specially composed film score. Many composers took over the leitmotif from Romantic opera to mark characters and ideas musically. Well-known names in film music include Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, and John Williams.
Film music should be distinguished from incidental music, which is written for a play and performed live, and from program music, which manages without images and depicts its program itself. The soundtrack, too, usually means the collection of songs and pieces of a film, not the actual score.
Performance practice
Listen to film music once without the picture and note what effect the music carries alone, and then with the picture to recognise the interplay of sound and action. If you compose to pictures yourself, keep the music restrained enough that dialogue and action stay understandable.