Okay, my last attempt at discussing incidental music was a major flop, but a recent reference to this old thread has inspired me to ask a more general question.
What are those pieces of music we hear all the time in movies? The referenced thread refers to the swell of the strings in the Love Theme from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, which always indicates the onset of love.
How about the chanting in O Fortuna from Orff’s Carmina Burana that always builds up to a titanic clash between good and evil (or, apparently, a splash of Old Spice).
I assume you’re sticking to classical music, and not to music specifically written for a film that gets re-used. (A lot of Max Steiner’s score for King Kong got recycled over the years. And Disney used Horner’s opening score for The Rocketeer in a lot of movie trailers.)
Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor ended up in a lot of “evil” or “brooding” organ playing by mad geniuses over the years. Gaudeamus Igitur is the standard “Look, we’re at a college” music. More rarely, they use Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance for this.
The Wedding March from Lohegrin , of course
Happy Birthday to You, until they started cracking down on the music rights
The Sabre Dance by Khachaturian was always played during people performing the spinning plates-on-top-of-sticks thing, and a lot of other “busy” taloent competition.
Symphony for Strings got played a lot on TV in the 1960s. I think it was thought to be a brightm, cheery, inoffensive background.
Warner Brothers’ musician for their cartoons, Carl stalling, used to re-use classical and popular motifs a lot. William Tell Overture, Lady in Red, A cup of Coffee, a Sandwich, and You, and that piece of industrial music that someone named here ion the Board some time ago that always shows up when the cartoon shows a factory or mechanization.
Also, there’s this particular Boccherini minuet that always seems to be playing in the background at the fancy French restaurant when a blue-collar character takes his wife out for their anniversary, and hilarity ensues.
Either that, or Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmuzik”.
“Charging Fort Wagner” from Glory is used in countless trailers.
Lately it seems I’ve been hearing the “Requiem Remix” from Requiem For A Dream a lot, too. It was used in the trailers for The Two Towers and Return of the King.
And of course the Aliens score has been recycled quite a few times.
I also think of “establishing shot music,” such as the song that’s played to establish “we’re in England” or the other one for “we’re in France.” I’m not certain what they’re called, but I know exactly what they sound like.
Movies set in France always have “La Vie en Rose,” “La Mer” (“Beyond the Sea”), and “Les Yeux Ouverts” (“Dream a Little Dream of Me”) in the soundtrack somewhere. and there’s that outdoor bistro song that Cal mentioned. I can’t work it out at the moment.
