NYT article: When ‘Star Wars’ Replaces Mozart

ShiroKuro · 2026-06-09T12:20:06+00:00

Following up on our discussion of terminology for post-classical, film music etc., this article in the NYT caught my eye. What Happens When ‘Star Wars’ Replaces Mozart? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/arts/music/movie-soundtracks-symphony-orchestra.html Some interesting quotes from the article: “Despite how lovely film music can be, it’s not classical music,” he added. “It just happens to be playable by the orchestra. What you do when you do present film music in an orchestra is, you reinforce people’s love for films. You don’t cause them to come back to want hear Beethoven.” “The bottom line is that it’s an income generator, and it also brings in new audiences into the concert hall, which orchestras are always trying to accomplish,” During performances, orchestra musicians often wear ear pieces to monitor a click track, since the score needs to match the film exactly. (For older movies, there was an analog clock to synchronize the music.) There is “no margin for error,” said Bill Buchman, a bassoonist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra “ film scoring is like 95 percent boredom and 5 percent terror,” Nova said. “You’ll be plugging along playing something, and it’s not really that hard, and then you turn the page and there’s something that’s basically almost unplayable.” 😁

TC3

iternabe Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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