I'm no film student or anything, but I *always* prefer it when a soundtrack has lots of quiet bits. In fact, I think the more important to the story a scene is, the *less* music it should have. That way we can concentrate on the characters and what they're doing. (And there's nothing worse than some Dun-dun-DUN!!! music sting to tell you Something Important Just Happened).

Example: I really, really liked the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo looks into Galadriel's mirror. It is so quiet, so eerie, and even the Royal Lothlorien Choir that sang the mournful song for Gandalf (which, BTW, I also really, really liked, but in a different way) have shushed up. When Frodo sees the eye of Sauron and the ring seems to reach out for the mirror, it's a lot scarier than it would've been if the soundtrack went into its "BUM BUM BUM CHANT CHANT CHANT BIG SCARY THING" theme (at least I don't *think* it did, I have the memory abilities of a fruit fly). I do like the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack, and I own the CD, but it seems to me that occasionally it suffered from This-is-an-EPIC-MOVIE-idis. And I think epics *especially* should have underplayed music. It's more modest.

Qua "Another great soundtrack-less scene in FOTR is Boromir's Death. *Sob*" rtz