Happy Birthday, Jerry Goldsmith.
Last year I lamented that it's sometimes still difficult to accept that there would never be another new Goldsmith score. The last twelve months, though, have seen a flood of releases of Goldsmith scores in expanded or previously unreleased form that amounts to an embarrassment of riches, including:
The Boys from Brazil
Cain's Hundred (t.v. series from the early 1960s)
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Freud
I.Q./Seconds
In Harm's Way
Innerspace
Islands in the Stream
Lonely are the Brave
One Little Indian
Rent-A-Cop
Sebastian (with additional music by Tristram Cary)
Twilight Zone: The Movie
The Pikey will let me know if I've forgotten anything. Most of these I haven't been able to acquire (legitimately) due to the lack of necessary funds but they're out there in one form or another and will be for awhile so I'm not too worried about it. The Pikey and I have discussed how it's quite likely that, at this rate, nearly all of Goldsmith's scores will be available commercially in the next few years. And why not, when there are folks like me clamoring for the stuff?
One score in particular that I'm looking forward to the prospect of is that of an early John Frankenheimer film called Seven Days In May, a taut political thriller wherein a cabal of generals threatens to overthrow the president because he supports nuclear disarmament. Goldsmith chose to score the film using only pianos and percussion and with typical sparse spotting. I think the score totals less than 30 minutes.
So there it is. Once again we mark the anniversary of the birth of the great Jerry Goldsmith.
2 comments:
Sweet.
I just watched The Edge. It was pretty good. It struck me that the music of Jerry Goldsmith lends as much credibility to a film as Sir Anthony Hopkins' performance, which says a lot, I guess.
I LOVE that score. I enjoy the film an awful lot, too. The simplicity of it is absolutely terrific and there doesn't seem to be an extra note anywhere in the score. I do wish the commercial release of the album were a little longer, clocking in at just over 38 minutes. Clearly he enjoyed scoring that film. He obviously had plenty of time, too, as he took an orchestration credit, which he almost never did.
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