Jerry Goldsmith, that is.
Nearly 5 years after his death it's still sometimes difficult to accept that there won't ever be another new Jerry Goldsmith score. I used to get so excited at the prospect of a new score by him. The day he died I got a call from the Pikey. I hadn't turned on the news yet and I had no idea. I kind of went around in a stupor for the rest of the day.
In the last ten years of his life (1994-2004) his music became increasingly focused, pared down, linear and, in many cases, more muscular (I often wonder if Goldsmith was an admirer of Miles Davis because of these aspects). The last ten years gave us notable scores (if not films) as The Shadow, Rudy, First Knight (a favorite of Goldsmith's, as I understand it), The Ghost and the Darkness, Air Force One (like most of W.P.'s films it's trash, but it's fun), L.A. Confidential, The Edge, Mulan, The Mummy (supposedly Jerry hated this movie, which doesn't explain why the score rocks so hard other than the fact that he was a consummate professional), The 13th Warrior, Hollow Man, The Sum of all Fears and Star Trek: First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis. And that's leaving out at least a dozen films not worth mentioning.
I've been thinking a lot about his music for a long time now. In my opinion he was the innovator at the leading edge of film music for 30 or so years. He was the first to use electronics extensively as more than a novelty or "weird" sound. They were a part of his orchestra if the film required it. He was also one of the first in film to use the studio as a musical instrument.
More than anything there are two things I miss. The first is a sense of musical "space" that Jerry had. He could create more music out of fewer materials than pretty much any other composer. And unlike many other composers, he knew the value of silence. He didn't just spray music on a sequence like fire retardant foam. Some of my favorite suspense sequences are those where, for example, you get a dense string chord (or short series of chords) followed by a silence. To me this has a much eerier effect than pouring on some sort of run-of-the-mill electronic effect.
The second is his sense of rhythm. Nobody else could build entire cues out of mixed/asymmetric meters the way he did and keep it fresh and interesting. And he did it in such a way where he didn't necessarily feel the need to hit every single agogic accent within the rhythmic cell (ex: 7/8 bar wherein the composer strikes every instrument in the orchestra at the same time with a hammer on eighths 1, 3, 5 and 7).
Since I've spent all of my life as a composer straddling the twin worlds of film and concert music I've had to contend with those who patently dismiss film music as "derivative dreck" (unless, of course, it was composed by a composer who writes the majority of their music for the concert hall. Somehow, then, their music is "better"). Increasingly this view is dying but only because those who hold it are, too. (I enjoy pointing out to those folks that the vast majority of contemporary concert music could also be classified as "derivative dreck").
I learned a lot about composing from listening to his music. Probably more, in fact, than listening to just about any other composer save a handful.
I guess what has surprised me in the time since his passing is that no one has stepped forward to fill the void left behind. Maybe there is no void. Maybe Jerry Goldsmith was a singular entity.
4 comments:
I'm also surprised that no one has really stepped up to take the mantle. I thought a few people would have done so by now. Maybe his shoes are too big to fill.
Or it could be that there is an aesthetic paradigm shift in the works, much in the same way that Beethoven's death came to signify the end of a Period. I wonder.
I guess we'll know for sure in another thirty years or so.
Brian Tyler showed some promise for about a minute-and-a-half. Then I realised that he writes too damned many notes just like everyone else.
I guess everyone is too busy trying to be like Hans Zimmer. That's not really fair, of course, because it's not necessarily the composers trying to be like Hans but the filmmakers forcing them to be that way.
I'm no expert, but Jerry Goldsmith is, in my estimation, the finest film composer since the 1950s. And one of a kind in his stylistic range and color palette. Play the scores to (say) 'Chinatown,' 'Patton,' 'Alien,' and 'Planet of the Apes' back to back for a demonstrations of that fact. Then try to think of another current film composer who would be able to do the same thing. Maybe you can, but I can't.
In fact, I cannot name anyone else.
Jerry Goldsmith's stylistic approach is so subtle that some claimed he had no style at all. This, of course, is silly. He had style to spare. If one knew what to listen for, one could always tell a Jerry Goldsmith score. He just happened to be conversant with so many different genres/styles/techniques that he was able to integrate them into his music and yet transcend them entirely so that the whole became greater than the sum of its parts. I mean, who would've thought to use pre-disco dance rhythms for the aerial sequences in a film like The Blue Max?
One of the interesting things, particularly about the scores you mentioned, is their economy (with Alien maybe being the exception). Patton is a three-hour film. Goldsmith composed 30 minutes of music and only about 22 minutes wound up in the finished film. Chinatown also has only about 30 minutes of music for a two-hour film. Obviously the nature of the way music was used in film changed after Star Wars with more and more being asked for by filmmakers. But to me it speaks volumes that, through the 60s and 70s anyway, he was extraordinarily judicious about where he chose to play.
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