Just a quickie response to my own post. I wrote it about a week ago and by
my own fault had trouble conforming it to listserv protocol (thanks to
Dave Lampson for his time to tell me what to correct in terms of tabs,
spaces, etc. and thanks to him in general).

I want to retract the jab about soundtracks.  At the time, I was trying
to defend myself from appearing to embrace soundtracks or other such mass
market items as "great music," so I chose soundtracks as a sacrifice to
greatness.  Now that the discussion has come out on them, let me now get
even more populist for a second and congratulate the soundtracks on their
(mixed) success at promoting artistic music.  Not that they aren't
artistic, either.  I think that some of the really great scores have a
whole lot of really interesting musical material, and stuff that is very
innovative.  (Yest, I do think that one can be aesthetically innovative
without crass harmonies.  This stuff is AMERICAN!) I don't think it's great
art.  It does have some lovely value, and let's not forget it.  If it
inspires someone without taking them into the realm of classical music,
that's still inspiration in some form.  But, yes, my greatest hope for
soundtracks is not their intrinsic value but their value in encouraging
people to "think symphonically." (Also, perhaps it provides useful fodder
for great composers; all the great ones used musical material from the
volk, and let's not forget it!  Again, I refer to the Joy of Music chapter
on musicals.)

As one other aside, even as I defend the free market in some qualified
sense, I do think that culture critics have something going when they
criticize the very paradigm of free market thinking in art.  I spend so
little time in the real world (I go to a liberal arts college and immerse
myself in music, art, theater, etc., to the disdain of my econ advisers!)
that when I even go to K-Mart I find myself thinking that all this commerce
is a very weird, alien, and somewhat base form of life.  Sometimes, I am
tempted to cast film scores in that whole lump, and disdain it not for
any musical reasons but the fact that it exudes "conformity" and "crass
commercialism" and "mindless consumerism." (The Greeks, I romantically
think, would never have tolerated this!) But then I check myself.  Lucky
me to be living like I am.  Looking outside like that, while not entirely
without a point, is terribly reductive thinking.  Why draw such lines in
the sand?

Robert Shaw
Wake Forest University