When you compose 4-6 scores a year, you're bound to run up against a few films that test the limits of your inspiration. Jerry Goldsmith was known for being prolific and speedy. I once read the phrase "Mozartean swiftness" in relation to how quickly he could write. During the sixties he averaged four films a year (bearing in mind that from 1960-1962 he only wrote five scores but he also wrote a pile of television music).
In the 1990s he composed - among others - Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Rudy, The Shadow, The River Wild, First Knight, Star Trek: First Contact, The Ghost and the Darkness, Air Force One, The Edge, L.A. Confidential, Mulan, Star Trek: Insurrection, The Mummy and The 13th Warrior.
1997 saw only three scores (only!), but all of them quality and what I see as the coalescence of what one might call Goldsmith's "late" period. (I have no empirical evidence for this, just my ears.) Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, and The Edge were all released in the same summer (AFO released first but scored last owing to Goldsmith replacing Randy Newman's score at the last minute). All three are diverse and top-notch scores. Air Force One is Goldsmith's first full-throated action outing since Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990). Apparently Wolfgang Petersen wanted a full-blooded action score with a hyperpatriotic sound. Goldsmith delivered in spades. L.A. Confidential is a rich fusion of modern orchestral techniques and jazz-inflected trumpet solos (performed expertly by longtime session player Malcolm McNab) evoking a 1950s "cool jazz" ethos. I'm also firmly convinced that in any other year Jerry would've finally won another much-deserved Oscar for L.A. Confidential had it not been for That One Movie1.
The Edge, though...
The Edge is an interesting outdoor adventure yarn written by David Mamet and superbly acted by Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin2. Any movie where Anthony Hopkins gets to utter the line (regarding the bear who tracks the pair), "Today...I'm gonna kill the motherfucker!" automatically gets my vote for awesome. I bought the score based on the recommendation of a filmmaking friend who actually wasn't big into the music of Jerry Goldsmith. At the time I also hadn't realized that Jerry Goldsmith was my composer of choice. So I bought the score and was instantly in love with it. It's a long-line, broad and expressive melody that is surprisingly malleable in how it's able to be used in the film. The entire score is an exercise in the clarity and restraint that are hallmarks of Goldsmith's style (I know it's difficult to think of a score like Air Force One or Total Recall as restrained but they're really very "spacious" scores). The score is rich and varied and utilizes several themes but "The Edge" theme is dominant throughout.
Interestingly, The Edge is the only score that I know of from the last twenty years of Goldsmith's career - that's orchestral - where he actually took an orchestration credit (alongside longtime collaborator Alexander Courage). It's been oft remarked that being an orchestrator for Jerry Goldsmith was like being a glorified copyist. I seem to remember reading that either Arthur Morton or Alexander Courage said something about "taking the music on the green paper and putting it on the blue paper" (or vice versa). Basically you're a glorifed copyist. One might be tempted to think that they're massively understating their importance; until you listen. I can't tell you who did what. Seriously. I can't. I have over a hundred Goldsmith scores and have listened to this one regularly since I bought it all those years ago. When the orchestration is that seamless, you know the orchestrator is practically invisible.
Anyway, it's a terrific score.
More to follow. Maybe.
1. Seriously. How did it happen that he only ever won ONE Oscar? Oh, right. The Academy doesn't know shit about what it does.
2. Arrec Barrwin!!!
