Janos Gereben wrote:

>Don't miss David Schiff's article in the April 22 NYTimes -

...about music scores for Hollywood movies, at:

>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/22/arts/22SCHI.html?ex=989966751

I've recently been reading a couple of books on this subject, retrospectively
more than anything else: film scores mostly from the 1930s to the 60s.  Not my
first look at the subject, but certainly both proved to be eye-openers:

Christopher Palmer, The Composer in Hollywood.  London, New York: Marion
Boyars, 1990
ISBN 0-7145-2885-4 hardcover; 0-7145-2950-8, paperback.

Tony Thomas, Music for the Movies.  New Jersey: AS Barnes & Co., 1973
ISBN 0-498-01071-6 Hardcover.

My guess is that film-score students would regard both books as essential to
their subject.  They offer insights about the trade and detailed accounts about
key players and their work, covering the area more or less chronologically.
Both are recommendable for readers, like myself, with no technical training.

Thomas's 'Music for the Movies' is more historical in its approach, beginning
with the enormous music industry that fed the silents, and its overall demise
as well as the adaptation to 'talkies.'  Thomas was a Hollywood reporter for
the CBC, and authored filmographical books in 'The Films of...' series -- about
Olivia de Havilland, the 'forties, etc. -- which every library ought to hold.
There are more photographs in this book, as well as plenty of insights about
the music and its effects on movie-viewing.  Thomas's approach is rich with
anecdotes, covering the composers and their music for some films, and the music
as an industry within the movie industry: how music directors assigned tasks,
how they were undertaken, composers' relations with one another, their autonomy
regarding the producers, etc.

All told, Thomas provides a better overview of the people and the trade,
afaic.  Many know Palmer as one of the great arrangers and orchestrators (works
by Walton, Prokofiev, Rozsa, etc.).  His 'The Composer in Hollywood' is not the
detailed overview that Thomas's book is; rather, it is a slightly smaller,
somewhat less pictorial book, and his approach is more analytical about the
music: going theme by theme in a film, and sometimes covering films episode by
episode; it is also more critical.  Palmer's book is the one I'd want as a
reference, if and when I have the leisure to peruse it prior to screening these
movie classics ...this time listening a little more carefully.

Bert Bailey, in Ottawa