I saw a clip from a recent interview with Steven Spielberg and John Williams, talking about Jaws. Spielberg noted that, with all of the technical issues they had with the mechanical shark, they weren’t able to use it nearly as much as they had originally planned, and that, due to those issues, he felt that Williams’ score, in the shark scenes, became the strongest expression of the shark character, and the menace that it represented.
Did you watch and enjoy Moonrise Kingdom? Desplat’s score was deliberately done as a homage to Benjamin Britt (also used extensively in the film).
Found it - it was an interview on Late Night. Here’s a link, cued up to the particular section.
Bah, the link doesn’t go to the right part – skip ahead to 5:24 to see that section.
Quite often I do. Music can be used to establish a time/place/mood pretty well. But too often music is used as a crutch to make an audience feel a particular way. “Wow, ‘Bad to the Bone’ is playing so I guess this person is being a badass.” I prefer when the characters/dialogue/setting/plot convey a feeling instead of music.
Movies like No Country for Old Men have some really great scenes with no music and I think it really highlights how good the movie is that it doesn’t need to rely on music to convey feelings.
Not to mention the current classical pieces. The Requiem by Ligeti was perfect for the Monolith scenes, and Atmospheres was far better than some trippy music for the stargate scene.
I’ve only seen The Exorcist once, but Fredkin in his autobiographt mentions picking Tubular Bells from a stack of records and deciding to use it, to great effect. It was already the #1 album in England at the time, and it was not written as a soundtrack.
Mike Oldfield only saw the movie years afterwards, and reportedly laughed his head off. I do have a track of him on a radio or TV program bemoaning the fact that kids were scared of him thanks to the movie.
The dundun music was only used in the presence of the shark. If you listen during the false alarms when Brody is on the beach, or when Hooper finds the tooth (and is startled by the head), or when the boys dress up with the wooden fin, there is no dundun.
Thanks for digging that up.
Spielberg said the shark couldn’t make its call time, as it was getting worked on in the shark shed. 
All he had was the music to convey the presence of the shark.
I’ve got to find and download it that theme music.
Without the dundundun, the opening of Airplane! would’t be funny at all!
Or, “1941.”
And to further that, a clip of the scene were they are tagging barrels to the shark, first time through without music, then with.
I can’t say that I did.
I had a roommate when I was an undergrad in the mid-70s who played records loudly on his stereo in our bedroom every night, all night long. He couldn’t sleep without music. I didn’t mind. We were usually high. Oldfield’s Tubular Bells was on his short playlist (along with The Alan Parsons Project albums, and couple other progressive bands). Tubular Bells is indelibly burned into my memory.