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| Packing a Punch - It may be small but Sound Sense is proving an increasingly powerful voice for community music and musicians.  |
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'Breve Encounters'continued.. This kind of film offers excellent starting points for student work. It provides glimpses of a world in which music making has practical and lucrative results. It also provides an answer to that perennial question: ‘But why is music useful?' |
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Robert Legg is head of music at a large comprehensive school in Oxfordshire
What was your experience of music at school like?
At primary school I had an enthusiastic, vivacious West Indian music teacher who inspired me. For her, music was alive: a free-running animal one could befriend and run with, not some beast that had to be tamed. At secondary school the music lessons were next to useless. In fact, there was little to do: one music teacher felt it more useful to recount ghost stories than to run the gauntlet of teaching figured bass and four-part harmony to the uninterested pupils who attended class.
How did you get your first ‘break'?
I took a degree in music and fine arts at Bretton Hall and then topped it up with a postgraduate course in film and TV at Bristol . My first break came through working as assistant to film composer Edward Williams whose work I greatly admired. I worked alongside him both in the electronic music studio set-up, which in the early 80s was like running a Space Shuttle single-handed, and in the orchestral realm. It was there I learnt the nuts and bolts of film music scoring and the orchestral session.
For you, what are the fundamental characteristics of good film music?
First, a film composer must understand the language of film, its vocabulary and its structural components. Without these you can't hope to understand the architecture of a whole film. Second, a film score is successful when it underpins a character's motivation, psyche or emotional status. Good composers who understand the art of screenwriting can use their score to describe musically what a character intends, even when it is not expressed visually or verbally on screen. What we prefer not to hear is music that communicates exactly an aural image of what is happening in picture. Third, the music must be structurally, harmonically and melodically virile: strong enough to stand without the images.
How much is education a part of your work these days?
For the last 10 years I've taught young film composers the art and craft of the film score on the Composition of Music for Film and Television MA at the University of Bristol . My work in schools has also been rewarding. I've worked with groups of 11-year-olds on composing music to picture and even with six-year-olds. I would get the younger children to draw 10 pictures that tell a story, give each picture a five-second time slot and then get them to improvise music to each picture within the given time. Once they get the hang of this we move on to moving pictures.
What piece of your work are you most proud of?
It's difficult to choose from the 200-plus film and TV scores I've composed. From my orchestral work I'd probably choose the suites from the BBC series Alien Empire and Battle of the Sexes. I am also proud of releasing the first UK video on teaching the art of film music, The Art of the Film Score.
Whom do you most admire in the filmmusic industry?
I greatly admire my friend and mentor Edward Williams. In terms of the well-known Hollywood greats, and others, I enjoy the work of Aaron Copland, Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Danny Elfman, Leonard Rosenman and Alex North.
Do you have any words of advice for would-be film composers?
It's a jungle out there. Don't wear the same stripes as all the other animals. You need to be able to pastiche well but you need an original voice too. Don't forget to strap on that very hard shell every morning: you'll need it to bounce off all those rejections!