Edgar Beach wrote: >Because of this, film music can best be appreciated while viewing and >listening to the actual film, IMO. For most stuff yes. It is a means of augmenting the cinema experience. If you have a decent composer doing it though, you would probably benefit by listening to it with no distractions. >I am wondering, have the composers and/or arrangers ever taken a film >score and retructured it in symphonic or sonata form, thereby allowing it >to stand on its own. If so, do you agree with such restructuring and are >there any recordings of such music you can recommend? Yes, many times. It will usually be called 'Suite from XYZ'. I believe there is a Suite from Starwars. It does have a structure unto itself but its not a very successful one as far as I am concerned. Very repetitive and quotes between movements are entirely unsubtle. But that's what you get if you try to copy Elgar when you haven't the capacity. Walton's Suite from Henry V is nice. Stands very well on its own too. I think Sibelius wrote a Tempest Suite which for a film of the Tempest unsurprisingly. Vaughan Williams 7 'Symphonia Antarctia' is the classic example. It started out as a score for a film about Captain Scott in the Antarctic. He very successfully converted it into a symphony. I don't know if it is a symphony you want to revisit many times. It is very, very, bleak. He Also turned an incomplete opera into his Symphony No. 5. Bernstein made a Symphonic Suite from 'On the Waterfront' which was a film, I believe. Elgar wrote incidental music to a play about King Arthur. I don't know how successful you would be at trying to make a Suite from Speed 2 Cruise Control though. David Stewart [log in to unmask]