I think one should also take Alcove's statement in a broader sense. Although this thread pertains to film music, Alcove's statement applies to virtually every film craft. One obviously wants the audience to be aware of the acting but one doesn't want them to be consciously thinking about the fact that the actors are acting. One obviously wants the audience to be consciously aware of the dialogue but not aware of the fact that it contains ADR and is actually stitched together from various takes. Lighting, make-up, cinematography, set design, costumes, editing, VFX, grading, Alcove's statement applies to them all. Ideally, when the film is finished, the audience will reflect and conclude the music and other crafts were well executed but we don't want them thinking about this while they're actually watching it.
This brings up an interesting filmmaking point; the dichotomy of filmmaking. On the one hand we could make a film specifically aimed at festival audiences, namely other filmmakers but the more specifically we target our film to other filmmakers the less likely it is to appeal to general public audiences and therefore the less commercial value it has. A similar dichotomy exists in commercial filmmaking, please the critics or please the public. There are of course various solutions, completely ignore the critics and only target the public (Michael Bay is a good example), please the critics and ignore the public or potentially the most difficult and dangerous option, try to please both simultaneously.
I find that the truly great films are actually quite difficult to analyse. I sit down to analyse a film or a scene from a great film and 20 mins later I suddenly realise that I've let it run and am just watching it rather than analysing it. Even though I'm trying to concentrate on the filmmaking itself, the skill of the filmmakers is so great that I'm sucked back into the film as an audience rather than viewing it as a dispassionate analyst, even though I know what's going to happen because I've seen it before. In fact, this is one of the criteria I use for deciding if a film is truly great or not, how easy is it to analyse dispassionately without getting sucked into the storytelling. Unfortunately, the vast majority of indie films are the exact opposite, I find myself analysing them during the first viewing because I'm being actively sucked out of the film. In other words, I'm inadvertently analysing the filmmaking because I'm bored by the film itself.
G