Whilst I'm all burned out on LotR and its score's power has diminished somewhat for me, I still appreciate its greatness, it's herculean achievement within the medium. It has every right to the top spot as much as a number of other scores in the list.
Agree with your disagreement. Copeland betrays here a sentiment that is common among classical musicians - that music is in its "highest" form when it is the central focus of a performance of any kind. The idea that music can participate in a multimedia experience, and therefore be subordinated to other elements, is one that people like Copeland find extremely unpalatable, that it somehow "cheapens" the music. I would counter that the fusion of music with film actually enhances the impact of the music precisely because there are other elements that add, not detract, from its meaning. And I say this as a classical composer of opera myself, like Copeland. Much of the brilliance of Williams, for example, lies in his ability to key into those other elements of the film and translate them into musical terms, which makes the music feel like a natural, often inevitable, fit with the film, even if one is not consciously aware of its presence. I think it's fair to say that this is what the best film music does, and so it succeeds in its purpose. An opera is more about the music than is a film. They're different media. Copeland makes the mistake of evaluating one kind of music by the standards of another. Not art? Please. Some would say that about many modern operas.
Dixon Hill reacted to Sharkissimo in Instruments that didn't quite make it, instruments that may not make it