Ivan Hewett, classical music critic

Look out, the boys (and girls) of film music are coming to a concert venue near you.

Next spring the very first Soundtrack Festival dedicated to television and game music will take place in London. Meanwhile, Emmy-winning composer Jeff Beal and his wife Joan donated $2 million to the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra to fund new works for the film composers’ concert hall , television and games. And the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has named Joe Hisaishi, a famous Japanese composer of film and video scores, as composer-in-residence, a distinction formerly reserved for truly classical composers. Everywhere you look in orchestra halls, film music concerts are multiplying in scale and number.

To evoke the scale of the conquest, one must imagine a Cecil B DeMille-style parade of film composers in golden floats, accompanied by a grandiose score with impatient drum rolls and soaring strings. But look a little closer and you’ll spot small ant-like figures struggling to escape before being crushed under the chariot’s wheels.

They are old-fashioned classical composers. Their day is over. Their musical language is old-fashioned, their concert halls are half empty, their ideas about “autonomous musical values” simply seem outdated. The worst part is that they don’t make any money, and in a world where “classic” increasingly means “movie”, that’s the only sin. Make no mistake: the crowding out of true classical music by the brilliant simulacra offered by film composers has nothing to do with aesthetic values, and everything to do with money.

Don’t get me wrong. Film music has its place, and that place is – in cinema. I’m as big a fan of a lush Erich Korngold melody, like his music for The Sea Hawk, as the next man. And I love Bernard Herrmann’s fascinating, overheated score for Vertigo – when I’m sitting in front of it on the big screen. I was also chilled and intrigued by the music of Hildur Guðnadóttir – but again, only by watching The Joker.