One of the things I will miss most in Florida is the shared film music listening I did with a good friend and fellow film score nerd. I owe Nathan a wealth of gratitude for introducing me to Film Score Monthly and to many, many great scores.

Our “roundtables,” as they were nerdily christened, were informal, somewhat spontaneous events. I would visit him at his apartment (and, more recently, his newlywed town home), where we would rant and rave about recent film music news or discoveries, intermingled with several hours of listening on his splendid surround sound. These events were typically prompted by one or both of us obtaining new music we wanted to share, but the excuses to get together were usually pretty thin and effortless to conjure.

What developed out of these times, aside from an increased bond of friendship, was the unique joy of shared listening.

Nathan and I met in college seven years ago, and it wasn’t long before we learned of our mutual obsession with film music. When you find a comrade in one of your driving passions, the natural inclination is to share—opinions, news, and in our case, the music itself. My frequent loans from Nathan’s ridiculously massive library awakened my senses to the incredible oeuvre of Goldsmith, and slowly softened my heart to the beauty of Horner’s music.

These are common experiences for people with shared interests who congregate on message boards and in chat rooms. The great distinction, though, was our ability to sit in the same room and actually listen to the music.

In reading a biography on Bernard Herrmann (Steven C. Smith’s A Heart at Fire’s Center), I’ve discovered that Herrmann did the very same thing with his friends and dinner guests. For Herrmann it was typically symphonies by Mahler and Ralph Vaughan Williams rather than film music, but he too found deep pleasure in sharing music he loved with his friends. Those friends commented later that these evenings of shared listening, abetted by Herrmann’s boyish enthusiasm, planted the seeds of their own appreciation for the composers and works shared.

In my essay on tastes, I suggested that we often learn to love something by observing someone else love it. This is one of the many rewards of shared listening. Nathan and I often shared music we guessed the other person would love ahead of time (even if we weren’t always right), but we also shared music with the intention of changing each other’s mind about a composer or opening their eyes to something new or different (even if we weren’t always successful). It proved impossible for me to remain hardhearted towards Horner when Nathan lit up with such fervor every time he exposed me to a new (or old) Horner score.

Nathan likes plenty of scores and composers that (as of today) simply fail to resonate with my sensibilities, and vice versa. But the manifold joys and education of our shared listening roundtables have broadened my horizons and augmented my ever growing enthusiasm for this singular cut of music, the film score. On top of all that, there’s simply an extra level of enjoyment had when you share something you love with a true comrade.

It would thrill me to pop in at Nathan’s right now and listen, one more time, to the track from Poledouris’ Quigley Down Under, on the system where I was first introduced to it; blazing guitar pouring out of one speaker, rapid-fire banjo from another. Not least because I still don’t own the score myself, but even if  I did, listening to it alone just wouldn’t be the same.

I don’t recall the first mystery that hooked me. I didn’t grow up reading Agatha Christie—or even the Hardy Boys for that matter.

I do know for certain that my wife has played an instrumental role in my recent cultivation of a deep love for mystery books, films, and television series. Unlike me, she was raised on a steady diet of Miss Marple, Columbo, Perry Mason, and their murder-chasing ilk. When we began dating several years ago, she slowly began introducing me to these blood-soaked and heavily plotted worlds.

As my affinity grew, we were tipped off by a woman at church about a relatively new British series called Foyle’s War. The show (each episode running the length of a feature film) is about a British inspector investigating war-related murders on the home-front during World War II. Sharp writing, gorgeous thematic music, and a superb cast led by the intoxicatingly watchable Michael Kitchen made Foyle a spectacular entry into a long line of great mysteries produced across the pond. Gobbling up all five “series” of the show on DVD, my endearment to the genre was further ensured.

No doubt my longstanding anglophilia produced good soil for the mystery to fall onto; the cream of the crop has either come from or been set in the good old UK. From Sherlock Holmes to Father Brown, Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot, and more recently Inspectors Foyle, Morse, and Lewis—there’s something inherently British about the class prejudices and love affairs that yield a jolly good murder, and the wisecracking, lovable detective whose passion for justice always leads to a solution.

Great Britain seems to have an unwavering obsession with murder mysteries, and it’s no real mystery why. The basic formula of the genre—characters and situations are incrementally introduced, major plot points are veiled, red herrings distract, and the audience must put the puzzle pieces together along with the detective—is one necessarily full of tension and release, conflict and resolution, romance and violence…all the things that make for compelling entertainment. Add in a likable main character and witty writing (plus great music for the real trifecta), and you’ve got a readymade prescription for a bona fide celluloid intoxicant.

I’m not one of those people who tries to guess ahead when watching a mystery. I don’t deliberately hold back from such guesswork, I just tend to follow the natural pacing of a good plot. This inclination promises a delightful mental (and sometimes emotional) exercise for me when watching a good mystery. When I can engage in such rich intellectual puzzling within the context of rainy London neighborhoods and pub-dwelling Britons, I’m in a jolly good place.

Music written for “the screen” is difficult to discuss because of its dualistic nature. It exists as two entities: as one layer within a multilayered artistic creation, and as an independent composition of proper music. Some feel it a sin to rip out the layer of music from a film and explore it on its own—some because they believe its essential function is its ability to underscore and elevate a film, others because they don’t deem it worthy of the kind of treatment proper music receives.

Composers differ, too, on the matter. Some (like the great Bernard Herrmann and, more recently, Howard Shore) defend the art of their craft. Theirs are not mere hands on a cinematic assembly line, but the studied and thoughtful hands of an artist. Other composers, laboring side-by-side in massive teams, equate their “product” with the other items—costumers, props, and the like—manufactured for a film.

To say that all film music is this or that is inaccurate, because of the enormous variety of quality and intention among composers and their music. But, in my occasionally humble opinion, the choicest representatives among music written for the screen share a handful of critical traits—the most important, for music lovers, being that it transcends its immediate function of serving its film, and functions as a work of art in its own right.

Alexandre Desplat, my personal choice for the best thing happening in the music world today, recently commented on his fellow Frenchman, the legendary Georges Delerue.

“The greatest strength in Delerue’s music,” says Desplat, “is that outside of the movies it became pure. It’s the kind of music I listen to. I can listen to Debussy, or Ravel, or Herrmann, or Rota, or Delerue without asking myself the question, ‘Is it film music or just music?’ No, it’s music. I’ve always dreamed about following in those footsteps. I’m obsessed by it. I try to give myself the hardest time possible so that when the music is heard without the movie, it remains just that: music.”

Again, there are many who cry “Heretic!” at such a statement. But if we can discuss Prokofiev’s wonderfully Russian, motif-laden music separate from its balletic context, then why not film music? If we can discuss Wagner’s epic tapestries outside the confines of the opera hall, why not film music? The reason a work is commissioned, the drama that it represents or underscores, the way the music interacts with the performances and staging—these are all interesting conversations, and add value to a thorough analysis of the music. But ultimately, good music is powerful enough to stand on its own two feet, and this is true of film music as much as it true of music written under any other circumstances.

There is still much more to say on this subject. (You can read the prelude to this discussion here.)

I have to admit, I’m often thinking about film music versus concert music. As an aspiring film music journalist, of sorts, I think about it from a number of angles: the concert/classical influence on film music; the seeming snobbery from the high-browed classical orchestrati towards film music; why I prefer film scores to concert works; and, of course, the issue of good old plagiarism.

As a writer, I am trying to reach out to people beyond the film score bubble and preach the gospel of film music. But I constantly feel the need to defend it as a legitimate art form; I am always conscious of the demons (real or imagined) who claim that film music is nothing but a cheap, commercial, knock off of “real” orchestral music.

The fact is, I love good concert music. I adore the music of Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Rimsky-Korsakov (notice a pattern?). Wagner, Brahms, Vaughan Williams, Debussy…all geniuses in my book. I tend to stay away from the earlier classical and baroque composers; too much stuffy form or mathematical precision. I also abhor just about anything considered “modern”—serialism, atonality, and all that cerebral nonsense. Give me the romantics, with their respectful look back at the vocabulary of classicalism, but infused with a wild passion and the emotional might of a full symphonic orchestra.

Here’s the thing, though. For me, the best of the concert world generally has one thing in common: it reminds me of film music. A memorable theme, slowly and ingeniously developed. A gentle, lilting passage that communicates love (or home, or pain) more effectively than any word. Something exotic from another land (like the brilliant Scheherazade) that transports and immerses. But always, some kind of coherent narrative told through the deliberate use of instruments and themes or motifs.

I realize that, technically, it ought to be the other way around. Great film music is reminiscent of great concert works, since in nearly every case the latter preceded the composition of the former. (The crankiest of cynics would simply say that good film music is wholesale pillaging of great concert music; I’m saving my thoughts on that matter for another essay.)

What I’m driving at is, my favorite kind of concert music has a quality that good film music has inherently: it tells a story. So many symphonies (and concert works in general) seem to wander, spastically coughing up a melody line here or an instrumental interplay there. I know that in the works of great classical composers, there are almost always highlights and interesting moments sprinkled throughout. But so often the whole feels disjointed and haphazard. Concert music speaks to me only when it tells some kind of story.

I will address this great showdown again—in more detail and from different angles—but for now I’d love any astute observations or comments from the gallery.

On Saturday night my wife and I drove to Squirrel Hill, a predominantly Jewish district just outside Pittsburgh. It was a coincidental pleasure to see groups and families of orthodox Jews making their way by foot to what we assumed were various Rosh Hashanah festivities. Our purpose for the outing was to see the 2009 film, Mao’s Last Dancer, which was playing in an historic little four-screen theater there.

I remember reading salivary reviews of Christopher Gordon’s score for the film last year, and I knew Alison’s interest would be piqued by the ballet elements of the story. I was all the more intrigued when I discovered it was directed by Bruce Beresford, director of Driving Miss Daisy and a man I am currently trying to track down for an interview due to his multi-film collaboration with Georges Delerue.

Knowing only that it somehow involved China, ballet, and Houston—I like going into movies with a tabula rosa when I can—I approached the film with vague expectations.

Mao’s Last Dancer told the story of a boy, Li Cunxin, growing up in communist China during the 1970s. He is selected by Chinese officials to learn ballet with several other children in Beijing, necessarily moving him away from his poor, many-membered family. Though lonely, and indoctrinated with communism around the clock, he eventually develops into an incredible, airborne dancer.

When an ambassadorial group from the Houston Ballet visits his school in Beijing, Li is chosen to attend school in Houston for the summer as a kind of exchange student. Told through an effective back-and-forth of flashbacks and “present day” narrative, the film deals with the tension of Li’s American success as a dancer and the relentless grip held on him by China and communism (with the welfare of his peasant family in the balance).

The film was based on the true memoirs of Li Cunxin, and the historicity of the story lent the film an extra spark of life.

Simply stated, it was a beautiful film. And I do mean beautiful. The cinematography was exquisite, immersing me in the bleak peasant huts and cold institutional school buildings of communist China, as well as the streets of Reagan-era Houston. For someone who has no real interest in dance or ballet (my stack of Michael Jackson DVDs being the major exception), I was captivated by the grace and athleticism of the main character’s movements. (Chi Cao, who played Li, deftly pulled off the near impossible double task of expert ballet and natural, emotive acting.)

Gordon’s score was, indeed, lovely. It wasn’t compelling enough for me to hunt down on Amazon when I got home, but I thought the Chinese instrumental writing was wonderfully transporting, and the recurring emotional piano theme was charming. It was good, effective “movie music”—and that always feels like a treat to me anymore.

The film was emotionally tense; it was deceptive in how, though no real violence or cruelty was ever enacted, it kept me in constant anticipation of something terrible about to happen. The payoff at the end was worth the tears shed, and I felt rewarded for investing in the story of this endearing young man who fouettéd his way to freedom out of the suffocating confines of communism.