Ray Bayles wrote:

>I think most movie scores and sound tracks are forgettable, John Williams,
>Rozsa, and others included.  Good scores suit the movie quite well as
>background that an immeasurable enhance what you see on the screen.  But
>very few stand up on their own, and almost none of them reach to my notion
>of classical music.  Movie scores and musical sound tracks are forms of pop
>music.  They have their place and I have a large number of such recordings
>in my collection.  But I don't see how they deserve discussion on this
>list.

Everything you've said could be applied equally to bel canto opera.
Of course, we don't discuss that here, either.  Perhaps it's not Really
Classical Music after all.  The "standing up on its own" criterion is
a red herring.  They're not meant to stand up on their own, any more
than Mendelssohn's complete Midsummer Night's Dream incidental music is.
Mendelssohn made a suite, just as Herrmann, Rozsa, Honegger, Milhaud,
Shostakovich, Walton, Thomson, Copland, and Prokofiev did.  Now tell me
why these guys didn't write classical music.

Steve Schwartz