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What is film music?

For those of our visitors who haven't found their way to the beautiful world of film music, yet, Movies in Concert would like to provide a bit of information about it and get you aquainted with the music that, while having been composed for movies, makes for a magnificent listening-experience - especially when being played live.

Almost everyone likes to watch movies. But although music is one of the most important and effective elements in a movie, the world of film music is unknown to most people - even though everyone has come out of a cinema at least once, humming the music of the movie they just watched. Furthermore, the composer of that music remains unknown to most of the audience.

Film music often stands on its own and is great to listen to even without the movie it was composed for. Most composers of film music from the past and present studied classical music and/or have extensive experience in this field, enabling them to create music, which matches the quality of classical works and shows the high level of their musical talent and craftmanship. High-profile orchestras like the London Symphony Orchestra are often called upon to record their works, because the compositions at times call for very demanding performances. In quite a few cases people also do not realise that music which is commonly considered to be classical was originally composed for a movie. In addition to that, a lot of music which was composed for films has been recast into concert works. For your convenience we have compiled a list with these works.

Film music can be epic, quiet, heroic, tragic, funny, exciting... but whatever it is... it's a great listening experience! And since words can hardly describe a listener's joy when reliving a movie in their mind by listing to its soundtrack or by simply laying back and enjoying the music for what it is, Movies in Concert invites you to give it a listen and take a first glimpse at what film music is all about.

A good start is to take a look at our Soundtrack Radio page and check out some of the radio-stations we've listed.

If you'd like to get film music on CD, you might want to start with a compilation which contains music from different movies and composers. Here are a few suggestions. You will find theses CDs easily in CD shops on the internet and in the real world :)

  • Best Of Adventure (Cinerama/Edel CIN 2216-2) (1994)
  • Screen Themes (Varese Sarabande VS-5208) (1988)
  • Out Of This World (Philips 411 185-2) (1983/2002)
  • The Spielberg/Williams Collaboration (Sony Classical SK 45997) (1991)
  • Alien Invasion: Space And Beyond 2 (Silva Screen FilmXCD 190) (1998)
Maybe you'd also like to test your knowledge of film music... you'll be surprised how much film music you have already heard and how many themes you will recognize: Take a quiz! Just for the fun of it! :)

You might also want to take a look at the Soundtrack Treasury. It's a GeoCache which was created by one of MiC's producers and requires you to identify a couple of movie themes to locate the treasure.

In any case, we wish you lots of fun and joyful moments with film music.







Maintained and produced by Flip Jansen & Ingmar Kohl. Copyright 2010-2024.
Editors: Anton Smit, Keld Jörgensen, Stefan Bosman



Kindly supported by the European FilmPhilharmonic Institute

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