A subscriber suggests discussion around film scoring. This is one of my areas, as it appears to be with David Roth (the author of the forwarded letter, which I got some time ago, and have since communicated with him). My main area is Music; but as I teenager I was split between musical and cinematic studies (obbviously choosing the former). As I get older and deeper into music, I can't help making comparisons between the two disciplines. Music scholarship is literally an ancient discipline -- stretching back well before the Greeks. Because of that solid foundation, I think the field is less susceptible to current trends. It often seems to me that film studies almost "depend" on current trends of literary criticism. (Not to say such trends don't effect music -- but they don't have the same impact as they do in a field that is less than a century old, and has yet to establish a firm, solid scholarly base.) I invite refutations to that observation. It often puzzles me that certain established fields of music study do not seem to be applied to film studies. Example: sketch studies. For a little over 100 years, a growing branch of musicology has been the study of composers' sketches. Is there something like this in film? Sure, an earlier version of a script gets published, or a reconstruction based on stills, or deleted footage -- but what about the scholarly literature (if any) generated by such events? I was once discussing Bernard Herrmann's score to NORTH BY NORTHWEST with a person involved in film studies. I told him that based on the score, the final scene (Thornhill pulls up Even and final shot) there must have been something cut out. But this person told me that such questions usually are not of much interest to film scholars. Too bad -- there's much to be learned! Responses, anyone? Bob Kosovsky New York Public Library--Music Division bitnet: [log in to unmask] internet: [log in to unmask]