I came across this yesterday and thought it was pretty interesting. The scoring session is from The River Wild and two things are readily apparent: 1. studio musicians do make mistakes (though not often) and 2. just because Jerry's music is simple doesn't mean it's easy to play. I think for a lot of his music it's because there's so much space in it that requires that you actually, I don't know, count. Anyway. It's a rare and interesting look into the process even though that process has evolved somewhat since.
Also, check out the look that Goldsmith gives the orchestra at 2:36. Priceless.
Showing posts with label Jerry Goldsmith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jerry Goldsmith. Show all posts
Friday, September 17, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The Best of the Best of the Best...SIR! The Jerry Goldsmith Edition
So our own Reed posed the following question on my Facebook page and I thought this would be a good forum to elaborate.
Today I'm just going to focus on the Jerry Goldsmith question. I figure that's enough to get us started.
By my count, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 scores that one could classify as "science fiction". Among these are: Alien, Chain Reaction, Coma, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Explorers, The Illustrated Man, Hollow Man, Logan's Run, Outland, Planet of the Apes, Runaway, The Satan Bug, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: Nemesis, Total Recall. The fantasy genre, as we all know, is more difficult to pin down because of the various blendings that can happen with so many other genres. Among others, I have: Baby: Secret of the Lost, Legend, Gremlins, The Haunting, Legend, The Omen Trilogy, Poltergeist, Poltergeist II, The Mummy, Powder, The Secret of NIMH, Small Soldiers, The Star Trek films (they fit both genres) Supergirl.
Before getting started though we have to address some problems that are central to trying to pick a series of "best of" scores by someone like Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith wrote music for film and television for nearly fifty(!) years beginning in the early days of television at CBS in the 1950s and scoring his first feature film in 1957. One of the main problems is that as the technique of film scoring changed over time, so did certain aspects of Goldsmith's scoring technique (pre- and post-Star Wars). In my view Goldsmith had essentially 3 compositional periods (with some line-blurring between periods). The 1960s and '70s more-or-less fall into a period of their own (I am, however, going to divide them by decade into two subcategories, because it's my blog.). The 1980s (what one might term Goldsmith's musical Wanderjahre because of the way film music was starting to change/be invaded by rock and pop musicians). Finally there was basically 1990-2004, during which he spent a few more years whittling his sound down to the essentials. Couple these with the fact that Goldsmith wrote great scores in literally every genre of film. Westerns? Check. Horror? Sports films? Check. Sci-Fi, fantasy, period film and drama? Check, check, check, check. Porn? How about Basic Instinct?
So by dividing his career into these discreet periods, I submit for your approval the following:
The 1960s:
Best science fiction score: Planet of the Apes. Yeah. You should've seen this one coming. Goldsmith wrote a lot of scores utilizing twelve-tone technique throughout the '60s and '70s including The Illustrated Man and The Satan Bug. This is his best sci-fi score of the '60s. Hands down, bar none. There are a lot of other good scores, but this is the pinnacle of his sci-fi work for the 1960s. In fact, Planet of the Apes may arguably be (one of) the finest example(s) of what concert composers of the time had been wrestling with for almost twenty years. Someone managed to combine Schoenberg's technique (freely adapted, like so many others) with Stravinskyian and Bartókian rhythmic inflections. It's possible that until John Corigliano scored Altered States that Planet of the Apes was the wildest orchestral film score ever written. The only use of electronics is the echoplex on the strings1.
At this point, though, I don't really have a fantasy score to pick because it hadn't become institutionalized in Hollywood the way it seems to be now. I could be wrong - my knowledge of the genre is pretty limited, actually - but it seems that at this point in time, "fantasy" meant Anything Ray Harryhausen Is Attached To such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, The Mysterious Island, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Okay, so that's a bit of an exaggeration. A bit.
The 1970s saw an influx of science fiction-oriented films and certainly an increase in the fantasy element (though, to be fair, isn't all science fiction fantasy to some extent?).
The 1970s:
My pick for Goldsmith's best sci-fi score of the 1970s is actually a draw. I couldn't choose between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Alien. I realize this may be cheating the rules a bit but, again, my blog. It also just happens that they were both made in the same year. If you really forced to pick, I'd have to go with Alien. Blasphemy, I know. But it's the more compositionally interesting of the two; and for me, compositionally interesting trumps more often than not. My runner up is Logan's Run, with its deft use of much of the same sort of elements that made Planet of the Apes so interesting plus heavy doses of electronic mayhem of the time.
As far as fantasy is concerned, I think I have to pick The Omen. But, Herr, it's a horror film. Okay, well it's not so horrifying anymore but I've heard it got the blood pumping back in the day. It's what would now be called a supernatural thriller more than an out-and-out horror film but it's about the Antichrist for cryin' out loud. It doesn't get much more fantastical than that! Besides, Jerry's score basically updated Bernard Herrmann's take on the horror film, adding - again - Bartókian and Stravinskyian rhythmic devices.
The 1980s:
The 1980s saw both the sci-fi and fantasy genres take off like a rocket as we became a post-Star Wars world. I think Goldsmith's best sci-fi score of the 1980s actually came in 1980 with Peter Hyams's Outland. It's a testament to the composer when three such distinct takes on the sci-fi genre can be rattled off in relatively quick succession when you put Outland together with Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It helps to reinforce what Goldsmith always said about trying to find the humanity in the film rather than rely on any gimmickery. Explorers is a really wonderful score, full of a youthful buoyancy.
In the 1980s the fantasy genre seemed to inspire some of Goldsmith's richest and most imaginative writing. The Final Conflict (the final installment of The Omen Trilogy) is rich with both music of light and darkness. The Secret of N.I.M.H. contains some of his most hauntingly lyrical writing. Both Poltergeist films let Goldsmith both reach back to his days in television (scoring several fantastic episodes of The Twilight Zone) and stretch his orchestral chops, creating music that is dense and terrifying yet never loses sight of the humanity of the story, embodied in the theme for the little girl, Carol Anne, and her mother who tries to retrieve her2. So what's my favorite? Legend. It was a toss-up between that and Poltergeist but there's something so...magical about this score. It simply shimmers and to my ear is probably Goldsmith's first truly successful blending of orchestra and electronics where you don't really "hear the seams" as it were. It also lays bare the fact that Bartók and Stravinsky weren't the only composers important to Goldsmith. If Legend - and Poltergeist for that matter - has a concert hall cousin, I would hazard a guess that it would be Ravel's Daphnis Et Chloé (not the suites, but the whole damned thing3.
The 1990s:
From 1990 to his death in 2004 my favorite sci-fi score of the period is a no-brainer. Total Recall. Is it completely over the top? Yes. Is it a great film? Maybe. Maybe not. Does it take a lot of liberties with Philip K. Dick's original story, rendering it nearly unrecognizeable? Pretty much. It also happens to be one of the most solidly developed scores in Goldsmith's entire career with nearly every cue developed from a single, audaciously simple musical idea and functions on multiple levels within the film4. My other favorite sci-fi score for this final period is Hollow Man (also directed by Paul Verhoeven). Compositionally, though, Hollow Man doesn't really sustain its musical interest beyond the first hour or so. Once everything goes to hell Goldsmith basically turns on the blood and guts scoring and goes straight for the musical throat of the film (It's still a wonderfully constructed score).
At first I was tempted to choose The Mummy as my favorite fantasy score of Goldsmith's final period. And I do love. How I love it so. I bought this score album the same day as Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Guess which one got more play time in my CD player that summer? As I've mentioned before, it was reported that Goldsmith hated this score and the fact that director Stephen Sommers wanted him to keep going over the top musically and basically wanted Jerry to abandon all subtlety. Which he did. So I'm going to change midstream. The Mummy is my favorite over-the-top fantasy score of the period. My favorite subtle fantasy score? Powder. Nobody saw the film, and I'm not going to comment here about the "extracurricular activities" of the film's director, but it has a beautiful and tender score that just warmly draws you into the story of a boy who is an outcast because he looks different and has a unique gift.
So there you have it, dear reader(s). Feel free to weigh in as you see fit.
1. Even then, Goldsmith's score is far more listenable and - I think - more involved with the film's diegesis on a subtextual level).
2. Astute observers will note the similarities between Poltergeist and an episode of the original Twilight Zone series entitled "Little Girl Lost", in which a girl falls through her bedroom wall into another dimension - scored by Bernard Herrmann.
3. You don't know it? Go check it out. Right now.
4. One day I hope to get to that blog post.
"A question for those concerned: what, in your opinion, is Goldsmith's best Fantasy score? What is his best sci-fi score? What is his best score not in those two genres? Same question for James Horner? Same question for one film composer of your choosing."First of all, Reed, you're a dirty bastard. Second of all, a great set of questions that may actually (*gasp!*) generate some honest-to-goodness discussion (though I won't be holding my breath).
Today I'm just going to focus on the Jerry Goldsmith question. I figure that's enough to get us started.
By my count, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 scores that one could classify as "science fiction". Among these are: Alien, Chain Reaction, Coma, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Explorers, The Illustrated Man, Hollow Man, Logan's Run, Outland, Planet of the Apes, Runaway, The Satan Bug, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: Nemesis, Total Recall. The fantasy genre, as we all know, is more difficult to pin down because of the various blendings that can happen with so many other genres. Among others, I have: Baby: Secret of the Lost, Legend, Gremlins, The Haunting, Legend, The Omen Trilogy, Poltergeist, Poltergeist II, The Mummy, Powder, The Secret of NIMH, Small Soldiers, The Star Trek films (they fit both genres) Supergirl.
Before getting started though we have to address some problems that are central to trying to pick a series of "best of" scores by someone like Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith wrote music for film and television for nearly fifty(!) years beginning in the early days of television at CBS in the 1950s and scoring his first feature film in 1957. One of the main problems is that as the technique of film scoring changed over time, so did certain aspects of Goldsmith's scoring technique (pre- and post-Star Wars). In my view Goldsmith had essentially 3 compositional periods (with some line-blurring between periods). The 1960s and '70s more-or-less fall into a period of their own (I am, however, going to divide them by decade into two subcategories, because it's my blog.). The 1980s (what one might term Goldsmith's musical Wanderjahre because of the way film music was starting to change/be invaded by rock and pop musicians). Finally there was basically 1990-2004, during which he spent a few more years whittling his sound down to the essentials. Couple these with the fact that Goldsmith wrote great scores in literally every genre of film. Westerns? Check. Horror? Sports films? Check. Sci-Fi, fantasy, period film and drama? Check, check, check, check. Porn? How about Basic Instinct?
So by dividing his career into these discreet periods, I submit for your approval the following:
The 1960s:
Best science fiction score: Planet of the Apes. Yeah. You should've seen this one coming. Goldsmith wrote a lot of scores utilizing twelve-tone technique throughout the '60s and '70s including The Illustrated Man and The Satan Bug. This is his best sci-fi score of the '60s. Hands down, bar none. There are a lot of other good scores, but this is the pinnacle of his sci-fi work for the 1960s. In fact, Planet of the Apes may arguably be (one of) the finest example(s) of what concert composers of the time had been wrestling with for almost twenty years. Someone managed to combine Schoenberg's technique (freely adapted, like so many others) with Stravinskyian and Bartókian rhythmic inflections. It's possible that until John Corigliano scored Altered States that Planet of the Apes was the wildest orchestral film score ever written. The only use of electronics is the echoplex on the strings1.
At this point, though, I don't really have a fantasy score to pick because it hadn't become institutionalized in Hollywood the way it seems to be now. I could be wrong - my knowledge of the genre is pretty limited, actually - but it seems that at this point in time, "fantasy" meant Anything Ray Harryhausen Is Attached To such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, The Mysterious Island, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Okay, so that's a bit of an exaggeration. A bit.
The 1970s saw an influx of science fiction-oriented films and certainly an increase in the fantasy element (though, to be fair, isn't all science fiction fantasy to some extent?).
The 1970s:
My pick for Goldsmith's best sci-fi score of the 1970s is actually a draw. I couldn't choose between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Alien. I realize this may be cheating the rules a bit but, again, my blog. It also just happens that they were both made in the same year. If you really forced to pick, I'd have to go with Alien. Blasphemy, I know. But it's the more compositionally interesting of the two; and for me, compositionally interesting trumps more often than not. My runner up is Logan's Run, with its deft use of much of the same sort of elements that made Planet of the Apes so interesting plus heavy doses of electronic mayhem of the time.
As far as fantasy is concerned, I think I have to pick The Omen. But, Herr, it's a horror film. Okay, well it's not so horrifying anymore but I've heard it got the blood pumping back in the day. It's what would now be called a supernatural thriller more than an out-and-out horror film but it's about the Antichrist for cryin' out loud. It doesn't get much more fantastical than that! Besides, Jerry's score basically updated Bernard Herrmann's take on the horror film, adding - again - Bartókian and Stravinskyian rhythmic devices.
The 1980s:
The 1980s saw both the sci-fi and fantasy genres take off like a rocket as we became a post-Star Wars world. I think Goldsmith's best sci-fi score of the 1980s actually came in 1980 with Peter Hyams's Outland. It's a testament to the composer when three such distinct takes on the sci-fi genre can be rattled off in relatively quick succession when you put Outland together with Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It helps to reinforce what Goldsmith always said about trying to find the humanity in the film rather than rely on any gimmickery. Explorers is a really wonderful score, full of a youthful buoyancy.
In the 1980s the fantasy genre seemed to inspire some of Goldsmith's richest and most imaginative writing. The Final Conflict (the final installment of The Omen Trilogy) is rich with both music of light and darkness. The Secret of N.I.M.H. contains some of his most hauntingly lyrical writing. Both Poltergeist films let Goldsmith both reach back to his days in television (scoring several fantastic episodes of The Twilight Zone) and stretch his orchestral chops, creating music that is dense and terrifying yet never loses sight of the humanity of the story, embodied in the theme for the little girl, Carol Anne, and her mother who tries to retrieve her2. So what's my favorite? Legend. It was a toss-up between that and Poltergeist but there's something so...magical about this score. It simply shimmers and to my ear is probably Goldsmith's first truly successful blending of orchestra and electronics where you don't really "hear the seams" as it were. It also lays bare the fact that Bartók and Stravinsky weren't the only composers important to Goldsmith. If Legend - and Poltergeist for that matter - has a concert hall cousin, I would hazard a guess that it would be Ravel's Daphnis Et Chloé (not the suites, but the whole damned thing3.
The 1990s:
From 1990 to his death in 2004 my favorite sci-fi score of the period is a no-brainer. Total Recall. Is it completely over the top? Yes. Is it a great film? Maybe. Maybe not. Does it take a lot of liberties with Philip K. Dick's original story, rendering it nearly unrecognizeable? Pretty much. It also happens to be one of the most solidly developed scores in Goldsmith's entire career with nearly every cue developed from a single, audaciously simple musical idea and functions on multiple levels within the film4. My other favorite sci-fi score for this final period is Hollow Man (also directed by Paul Verhoeven). Compositionally, though, Hollow Man doesn't really sustain its musical interest beyond the first hour or so. Once everything goes to hell Goldsmith basically turns on the blood and guts scoring and goes straight for the musical throat of the film (It's still a wonderfully constructed score).
At first I was tempted to choose The Mummy as my favorite fantasy score of Goldsmith's final period. And I do love. How I love it so. I bought this score album the same day as Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Guess which one got more play time in my CD player that summer? As I've mentioned before, it was reported that Goldsmith hated this score and the fact that director Stephen Sommers wanted him to keep going over the top musically and basically wanted Jerry to abandon all subtlety. Which he did. So I'm going to change midstream. The Mummy is my favorite over-the-top fantasy score of the period. My favorite subtle fantasy score? Powder. Nobody saw the film, and I'm not going to comment here about the "extracurricular activities" of the film's director, but it has a beautiful and tender score that just warmly draws you into the story of a boy who is an outcast because he looks different and has a unique gift.
So there you have it, dear reader(s). Feel free to weigh in as you see fit.
1. Even then, Goldsmith's score is far more listenable and - I think - more involved with the film's diegesis on a subtextual level).
2. Astute observers will note the similarities between Poltergeist and an episode of the original Twilight Zone series entitled "Little Girl Lost", in which a girl falls through her bedroom wall into another dimension - scored by Bernard Herrmann.
3. You don't know it? Go check it out. Right now.
4. One day I hope to get to that blog post.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
A Very Good Year
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!!!
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!!!
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