A Filmharmonic Manifesto
(inspired by Lars von Trier's “Dogma 95”)

1. The music to a film may only be written by one single person in order to achieve a unity both in musical content and form. Particularly orchestrating work has to be done completely by the composer himself because orchestrating is definitely not a “factory job” like copying notes, but a deeply personal task which cannot be separated from the composition process (cf. the originality of instrumentation among the great classical composers or in the film scores of Delerue, Morricone etc.). Composing teams therefore are strictly prohibited.

2. Exclusively recordings of live playing musicians have to be employed. Mockups and sampler recordings are only communication tools and may in no case be used as film music. 

3. Film music always has to be based on a certain musical structure and musical development. These aspects, which played an important role in Rota’s works for example, have been neglected too much in the last decades, so that many new film scores cannot fulfil the standard requirements of “absolute music” any more and therefore do not work without the movie, e.g. in a concert hall.

4. All music included in the film has to be original. Temp tracks may only be used as a communication tool and very economically.

5. Music has to be employed sparingly within the movie (quality instead of quantity; exclusion of any background or elevator music).

6. Literal repetitions have to be avoided whereas repetitions in the form of free variations, altered themes or similar, motivated by the film plot, are highly recommended, if not necessary.

7. Not only the detail itself, i.e. a particular moment of the film, has to be kept in mind while composing, but also its correlation both to other details and to the whole. If there are for example certain correlations between the first and the third scene as well as between the first scene and the quintessence of the movie, all these correlations have to be reflected (more or less) in the actual music, too (e.g. by similar orchestration, use of certain themes, polyphonic devices etc.).

8. The employment of a symphony orchestra is only justified if the musical content calls for it: “Language is not a substitute for the lack of ideas.” (Celibidache)

9. The musical content of film music has to be as film-specific as possible. Many scores nowadays could be employed in any film because their musical content is too undifferentiated and covers only a small emotional spectrum such as sad/happy, lyric/tragic etc.

10. Not only the musical content has to be film-specific, but also the form of film music. In the best case the form of film music illustrates the form of the movie (which first has to be fixed by the director) accurately.

© 2007 Frank Fojtik