September 11, 2001: The Sum of All Fears

Phil Alden Robinson's film of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears was delayed from release by the tragic events of 9-11.  The film, which depicted a nuclear attack on the United States by terrorists, was too raw, and far too real after the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center.

It weighed heavily on the minds of the film-makers, as it did on us all.  But one man in particular: Jerry Goldsmith.  At the time of the 9-11 attacks, Goldsmith was conducting his score for The Last Castle," and the emotion that suffused his main theme, he adapted, and turned into a concert-piece entitled "September 11, 2001."

The Sum of All Fears would be the next film he scored.

The music of the video above, underscores the first part of the film depicting an Israeli reconnaissance mission, carrying a nuclear pay-load, being prepped, launched and subsequently blown out of the sky by ground forces, its unexploded fission device then recovered, to be handed over by the terrorist agents hatching the plot.*  Goldsmith previewed the sequence and his first impression was "opera."  Phil Alden Robinson was taken aback by the idea, but trusted Goldsmith enough to let him go with his instincts.

But it was also more than September 11th that was weighing on Goldsmith's mind.  He was dying of cancer, in the middle of an aggressive chemotherapy treatment that would ultimately fail.  He was sick, weak and frail, and concessions were made by Robinson to allow him to finish his work, despite Goldsmith's slowed pace. 

The track, called simply "The Mission," is haunting.   Paul Williams was commissioned to write the lyrics, which were translated to Latin for the libretto, to be sung by Shana Blake Hill, accompanied by choir and full orchestra.

These are the words:

If we could remember

the moment of our birth,

we'd give our voice to song and whispers

and know what life is worth.

Suddenly, there's beauty

in pieces of the past

And sorrow clings to angry questions,

the days of dust at last.

And morning holds us

when worlds come tumbling down

A dance of ghosts and ragged dreams

Spinning 'round
Spinning 'round

If we could remember

the power of the light,

that crippled prayers are sometimes answered

and hope survives the night.

* I would have loved to show the sequence accompanying Goldsmith's work, but Paramount Pictures has enforced its copyright obligations, removing all traces of that sequence from video sites.  Too bad.  The full power of image and music is stunning, and I would encourage anybody reading to seek it out for viewing.

Update-9/11/2011: Here is the sequence from the film.  I have no idea how long it will remain available.

Personal Heroes: Jerry Goldsmith

(This one's for Warren...)

This falls under the category of "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Suffice to say that any attempts will be nothing but empty metaphors and vacuous hyperbole.

Jerry Goldsmith is my favorite composer. He wrote film scores--an odd little art not too different from the usual classical commissioned pieces but also having to fit the limitations of the medium, both mechanical and dramatic. Such was my appreciation that when I heard he was giving a series of concerts for his 70th birthday in Scotland (and realizing that he was getting "up there") I was determined to see Goldsmith in concert before one of us died ("Hey, honey, ya wanna go to Scotland?" was how I approached K.) It's one of the best decisions (for the most trivial of reasons) I've ever made. We spent 10 days in Scotland, primarily Edinburgh, which was absolutely wonderful. Truth to tell, the Goldsmith concert, though terrific, was a bit anti-climactic. Still, it was an opportunity to see Goldsmith conduct, and a symphony orchestra play, his wildly-weird music for the first Planet of the Apes movie -- piano players pounding on the strings, brass players playing with their mouth-pieces reversed, percussionists hammering on metal mixing bowls bought that afternoon at Harrod's. And its also important, in this world of recorded music, to see your favorite music performed live, and FEEL it--feel the power of the orchestra pushing against your body. I had a great time.

It hit me hard when he died. He was still composing up until a few months before his death from cancer (His last film, incongruously being Looney Tunes: Back in Action--a bizarrely eclectic and technologically challenging score for someone weak from chemotherapy).  I was inspired to make a compilation of some of my favorite music of his, combined with some of his most challenging pieces--and for the booklet, this is, in part, what I wrote:


Notes on Jerry Goldsmith

So, why this? And why these selections?

It came purely as a reflexive move upon hearing of Goldsmith's death, and as sad as that was, came another thought, purely selfish--well, that means no more new music (And with that, the remembrance of the story about the two directors leaving Ernst Lubitsch's funeral. "Well, no more Lubitsch." said the one. The other--Billy Wilder-- replied: "Worse! No more Lubitsch movies!"). The canon stops right here on this date. No more surprises. No more smiles of recognition. No more new music because the source of that music is no more.

Goldsmith is over.

From the time when I bought my second soundtrack album (with my own money), I have had a great love for the music of Jerry Goldsmith. I bought the Patton LP just to have a record of the Patton "speech." I played that a few times, but once I went beyond the words, I found the music spoke more eloquently of the man, and more importantly, had a life beyond the subject matter. It spoke of depths of time and emotion, and I was hooked for the rest of Goldsmith's output. I started to seek him out in record stores.  Papillon came out, and upon the first hearing I was disappointed--this wasn't the same music. It was undoubtedly Goldsmith, but he was doing different things. This music was more wistful, and also savage. I didn't know whether I liked it. But upon putting needle to record a second time, this "new" Goldsmith spoke to me. After the shock of the new, the appreciation took over, and each new release had its own shocks and new discoveries.

And that's what made Goldsmith so interesting. It wasn't the same old wine in new bottles ala Mancini and Horner and, yes, even Bernard Herrmann. This was new wine. As if he went back and re-constructed his career and experience for the sake of the next film. Sometimes, masterpieces would emerge:  The Wind and the Lion;  QBVII;  Islands in the Stream;  Hoosiers. But there would be the failures, also: the  I.Q.'s  and  Mr. Baseball's, and the Mom and Dad Save the World's. Interesting failures, to be sure, but sometimes in the quest for a solution to the film's problems, the music itself would suffer. And for some reason, the essence of film-comedies seemed to elude Goldsmith.

It was fun anticipating new works. What was he going to do for Logan's Run? He's doing Chinatown? When did that happen? Oh, man! Goldsmith landed Star Trek: the Motion Picture!! The new wine flowed and in amazing quantities, from a seemingly inexhaustible and eclectic vineyard. Sometimes it would be good. Sometimes bad. Sometimes magnificent. He reportedly didn't like science-fiction, and claimed he didn't understand it. Yet he scored seminal science-fiction films. Each had its own signature sound: whooping electronics for Logan's Run; High-flying nautica for Star Trek;  Filigreed textures for Alien. All were different. They were, in fact, worlds apart. Goldsmith did not write for the genre. He wrote for the drama and the story. Rather than overlay a double dose of emotion to tell the audience how it should feel, he wrote inside the story. His music told you how the characters feel.

And he could be counted on to bolster up the infrastructure of the film as well, the perfect example being Planet of the Apes. A cheap-jack story with obvious ape make-up filmed at the Fox Ranch.  But Goldsmith, in the film's first twenty minutes, sets up the crucial mystery and strangeness and other-worldliness. His music distracts us from the Utah locations these "astronauts" are hoofing over, and it's not some cheesy lightning mattes telling us that it's an alien planet. It is Goldsmith's tentative, echoing, uneasy music that takes us off Earth and someplace "not here." All those cooing notes, poinking mixing bowls and cracking balsa wood blocks tell us that despite all the apes speaking English, despite the silly suggestion of a reverse-Darwinism, despite everything on screen and in the story telling us (look, folks...) we're still on Earth.  The ending still comes as a shock. And it's Goldsmith--nothing else--doing that.

There's another example in a later minor film called Malice. It opens with a girl on a bicycle, and a sweet melody that evokes naive innocence. In fact, it's too sweet, in a morose and saccharine kind of way. It's icky-sweet, and you wonder if Goldsmith has fallen off his rocker. Well, the girl in the bicycle becomes a victim of a serial killer, but the sweetness of the melody stays, now tinged with regret and tragedy; what might have been. And it sets you up for the surprise ending of the film two hours later. The melody returns with its hints of victimization and a cruel world, and it blinds you to the fact that the villain of the piece is, in fact, the female lead. You should have seen it coming a mile off. But Goldsmith musically and intellectually trips you up. These movies needed Goldsmith desperately and he made them better than they were.


Well, that's the films. But, as to the selection of the music for the 2 disc overview, I'll admit to leaving off some standards. The Theme from Star Trek is there in the form of "The Enterprise." There's no Alien to speak of (but you could count the Freud selection which Ridley Scott and his editor chucked into the film's mix). No Papillon. There is none of his essential (and endlessly reused) music for the TV version of "The Twilight Zone." You don't even hear the cascading trumpets of the Patton march.

No. What I was going for was artistry. This is Goldsmith at his characteristic best. His way of taking a melody, adding an off-rhythm and punching up the adrenaline. There are themes that thrill or make you cry - music that may clobber you with its brio or savagery. It's music that bolsters the spirit, or dresses you down. I dare you to listen to "A Game of Pool" from Studs Lonigan, one of Goldsmith's very early film scores, and not have your eyes widen at the turns, cartwheels and jaunts that the young Goldsmith throws at his orchestra (and mention should be made, too, of the incredible performance of session musician "Johnny" Williams at the piano. I'm surprised Williams and Goldsmith remained friends after the rigors of that cue!). His themes for The Omen aren't here, but the horrors evoked from Goldsmith in "Jadwiga Revisited" from QBVII are more real, and unsettling.

There are very familiar pieces, too: The Blue Max, Chinatown, Basic Instinct and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E. "But there are some that aren't heard enough--or simply have not received the release they should, for example the amazing action writing from Lonely Are the Brave that features some kinetic writing for percussion--then followed by a similar technique used in his score for Under Fire, with a completely different sound. Goldsmith's plaintive melody for solo-guitar for Rio Lobo is far removed from the celebratory Copland-like Americana the (now) late Elmer Bernstein wrote for John Wayne. His music for the little-seen John Huston romp The List of Adrian Messenger sounds like it was written for Mr. Scratch himself. And a couple of his concert pieces--"Fireworks," "09-11-01," and "Soarin' over California"--are also included. If only there was room for his fanfares for the Academy Awards and for Universal pictures.

But, alas, that's the limitations of CD's. This compilation actually started out as one CD of some of my favorite Goldsmith music, and it was impossible. My first cut included an extra twenty minutes of music. So, a second CD was planned--and it was soon filled to overflowing as well. There are many things I'd wished I could include on this--"The Invaders" from "The Twilight Zone," for instance--but it would've gobbled up twelve precious minutes of CD-time. Time better spent on Goldsmith's masterful Prologue music for The Agony and the Ecstacy. This is a pretty good overview: Goldsmith at his most celebratory and introspective. Musical moments of high adventure and deep despair.

It's odd, though. There is a curious thing about the sequencing: it goes from a light mood to dark on both discs. Perhaps it's just my sadness at Goldsmith's passing, but it's actually the way I preferred the music to flow. One would wish to end on a note of triumph, but at the end of the day, it's the end of the day. For example, I felt that Goldsmith's triumphal music to Omen III: The Final Conflict was absolutely necessary, but once it soared announcing the Second Coming, it transitioned back into a dark section, and served as the lynch-pin between the two sections of celebration and darkness. That seemed to work naturally, just as the sad triumph of QBVII's End Titles seemed the perfect way to end Disc 2. And there was no better way to end disc 1 than the Patton coda. All glory is fleeting.

Long after the gold plating on Goldsmith's sole Oscar for The Omen flakes and cracks, the music will remain: constant and eternal.

Bravo, Maestro. Though I understand there'll be no encores, I'll keep applauding anyway.


Some Goldsmith video's: The first, a part of the featurette on the score with interviews with the participants on the creation of the movie Star Trek theme, that would go on to be the signature theme for the movie series.

The second: Goldsmith's cue from The Planet of the Apes—"The Hunt." You think it's frenetic here, you should see an orchestra playing it live!

The third: Goldsmith's devastating work for orchestra and chorus for the End Titles of the "ABC Novel for Television" QB VII.

The fourth: Goldsmith's quick turnaround composing the music for Chinatown belies its complete perfection for mood and nuance. A detective noir involving L.A.'s water supply, Goldsmith makes it drip with heavy romance and interesting tonal waves.

Finally, The Main Titles for Howard Hawks' Rio Lobo. The director must have really liked the music.

Jerry Goldsmith On-Line -a pretty definitive fan-site
Jerry Goldsmith at imdb-Wow! He got nm0000025
Jerry Goldsmith at Wikipedia
Film Score Monthly
FSM's tribute to Goldsmith
Goldsmith on WHYY's Fresh Air
NPR (All Things Considered) report remembering Goldsmith
NPR (Weekend Edition) Aprreciation of Goldsmith
Extended video interview with Goldsmith (ostensibly about "The Sand Pebbles but is fairly wide-ranging)

The Future As It Was

The Holy Grail of film-music appeared in my mail-box this week. The "lost" chord. The "score" that got away. It was just another mystery in a film that is full of them.

But now, all is revealed.

It's Alex North's unused score for "2001: A Space Odyssey." Stanley Kubrick commissioned it, probably to keep some worried MGM execs off his back. By North's telling, the director was already well on his way to using classical pieces for his cobbled-together "score." But North really enjoyed the results of his collaboration with Kubrick on "Spartacus" (it's one of his best scores in a career full of great ones), and felt he could write something that would top Stanley's record collection.

He scored half of the movie. But few have heard it. North attended a screening before the world premiere and was shocked to hear that none of his work made it in. It was a bitter experience for him. He worked hard on those pieces for the strange science fiction film, and nothing came of it. North kept one cassette of the music, and lost it. And there has been endless speculation about the work and what sort of difference it would have made in the film. Jerry Goldsmith recorded a CD of it, immediately after North's death, in tribute. But now, the original session tracks (in mono) have been released on CD thanks to the Kubrick and North Estates, and it is a revelation (and you can listen to selections of it here or here).

So, last night I pulled my DVD of "2001" out of storage and synced the music up to the film (using timings supplied in the booklet) and watched the film for the first time with North's score.

And it sucked.

Not the music. The music is superb; brutal and isolating in "The Dawn of Man" sequences: fluttering and keening in the "Heywood Floyd" sections. Beautiful. Jarring. Triumphant in places...especially in the piece accompanying man's first use of a thigh bone as a weapon--North's ballsy attempt to supplant "Thus Sprach Zarathustra." The music is exotic and daring apart from the film.

But it's an education to see the music with the film it was composed for. Never has so much fine music been so wrong-headed.

The Dawn of Man: filled with despair and quick-silver drums

First off, the "Dawn of Man" sequence is scored "wall-to-wall" (with the exception of a space for the music accompanying the apes dawn-discovery of the monolith) which makes the experience relentless and oppressive. The music "matches" well here (it was an early sequence shot and edited with no special effects) and communicates a sense of despair and foreboding.

And that's the problem with it. North's music is constantly telling you what you "should" feel whereas in the film as it stands the only accompaniment is a sparse sound effects track. You get the same sense of space and isolation from this, but without the theatrics of the score. And again, the music is non-stop. There is no "breathing room" for the sequence and no respite from the dramatics.

One becomes aware watching both "versions" that the non-scored film requires input (and attention) from the audience to tell its story. There is no dialog (sorry, the ape grunts don't count) and no narration (though in the screenplay there was), and so the audience has to meet the film more than half-way in order to get anything out of it. With North's score emotional information is provided, allowing less attention from the audience and I'd speculate less involvement. Plus, the music brings a very real sense of artificiality to the scene. For that reason, the ape costumes seem less real, the action more rehearsed, and for this sequence, at the very start of the film, that's like taking any semblance of verisimilitude and clubbing it with a tibia.

The Waltz of Technology: whispy flutters and keening strings

The section of the transit to the Moon is where it gets really messy.

The music is less of a perfect match (in "The Dawn of Man" North actually accentuates every little nuance) owing to the late arrival of special effects and Kubrick tinkering with the film after a disasterous preview. But you can get the direction North was going in.

For the space-docking sequence, his music is fluttery and high-flying--a valid evocation of grace and flight. But when the scene shifts to the ship's interior--and Floyd's floating pen--North's music turns atonal and strange--dissonant and other-worldly.

And that is so wrong.

Much criticism was leveled at Kubrick for the use of waltz-king Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube" for these sequences ("banal" and "kitsch" were the terms most used by the pigeon-holing critics). But faced with North's alternative the choice seems obvious. Kubrick is using this traditional all-too-familiar waltz to show the orbital mechanics of space flight as a form of dance, a pretty sophisticated concept, especially in comparison to North's high-flying "music of the spheres." The use of the waltz implies a contained circular movement while also covering a distance of ground and that is a perfect analogy to the careful approaches that objects encircling the Earth must take to "rendezvous." But it is the carrying over of the music into the passenger-area and cabin-scenes that is the master-stroke. Where North makes these scenes of passenger-space-travel exotic and unnatural, Kubrick's use of the waltz conveys a sense of common-place--an every-day occurence as familiar to the people of "2001" as a trans-continental flight would be to its contemporary audiences (and doesn't the use of Pan-Am as the shuttle-carrier make that stunningly obvious?) The comforting waltz of "The Blue Danube" conveys complacency with humor making the complications of zero-gravity not bizarre/strange, but an amusing inconvenience while travelling in space.

And one further observation. "2001" is a film built without the under-pinnings of melodrama. It is as un-theatrical as it could be. North's music, unfortunately, is very much a part of those traditions, and adding its histrionics to Kubrick's work is a bit like taking a subtle dessert and covering it in Hershey's syrup. His music, though sophisticated and lovely, tamps down the uniqueness and experimental nature of "2001" and turns it into "just another" Hollywood sci-fi epic, making it less an experience and more of a roadshow.

Film-music fans do a lot of breast-beating about the "slight" to North, and where Kubrick might have made a phone-call informing him of it, he also didn't let Martin Balsam know that he wasn't using him as the voice of "Hal" or all the participants in the planned "talking-heads" prolog that it had been axed. Why?Probably because Kubrick was feeling his way on "2001," eliminating things in the eleventh hour--like the initially-planned narration--that he might have wanted the option of using, after all ("never say never"), or maybe he just didn't want to justify a decision he wasn't too sure of in the first place. Whatever. The fact of the matter is, North took his "2001" music (with its pay-check) and re-used some of it for his score of "The Shoes of the Fisherman," and then again in the score for "Dragonslayer." Three on a match. And a separate salary was generated for each. Nice work if you can get it. Plus, North's reputation never suffered. He was always working as one can see by looking at the eclectic list of films on his imdb listing. He is, after all, the man who wrote "Unchained Melody" and introduced jazz to film-scores with his music for "A Streetcar Named Desire."

He'll always be remembered for that.

Alex North won a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 1986.*

Jerry Goldsmith

Jerry Goldsmith

This falls under the category of "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Suffice it to say that any attempts will be nothing but empty metaphors and vacuous hyperbole.

Jerry Goldsmith is my favorite composer. He wrote film scores--an odd little art not too different from the usual classical commissioned pieces but also having to fit the limitations of the medium, both mechanical and dramatic. Such was my appreciation that when I heard he was giving a series of concerts for his 70th birthday in Scotland (and realizing that he was getting "up there") I was determined to see Goldsmith in concert before one of us died ("Hey, honey, ya wanna go to Scotland?" was how I approached Katheryn) It's one of the best decisions (for the most trivial of reasons) I've ever made. We spent 10 days in Scotland, primarily Edinburgh, which was absolutely wonderful. Truth to tell, the Goldsmith concert, though terrific, was a bit anti-climactic. Still, it was an opportunity to see Goldsmith conduct, and a symphony orchestra play, his wildly-weird music for the first "Planet of the Apes"-- piano players pounding on the strings, brass players playing with their mouth-pieces reversed, percussionists hammering on metal mixing bowls bought that afternoon at Harrod's. And its also important, in this world of recorded music, to see your favorite music performed live, and FEEL it--feel the power of the orchestra pushing against your body. I had a great time.

It hit me hard when he died. He was still composing up until a few months before his death from cancer (His last film, incongruously being "Looney Tunes: Back in Action"--a bizarrely eclectic and technologically challenging score for someone weak from chemotherapy. Anyway, I was inspired to make a compilation of some of my favorite music of his, combined with some of his most challenging pieces--and for the booklet, this is, in part, what I wrote:

Notes on Jerry Goldsmith

So, why this? And why these selections?

It came purely as a reflexive move upon hearing of Goldsmith's death, and as sad as that was, came another thought, purely selfish--well, that means no more new music (And with that, the remembrance of the story about the two directors leaving Ernst Lubitsch's funeral. "Well, no more Lubitsch." said the one. The other--Billy Wilder-- replied: "Worse! No more Lubitsch movies!"). The canon stops right here on this date. No more surprises. No more smiles of recognition. No more new music because the source of that music is no more.

Goldsmith is over.

From the time when I bought my second soundtrack album (with my own money) I have had a great love for the music of Jerry Goldsmith. I bought the "Patton" LP just to have a record of the Patton "speech." I played that a few times, but once I went beyond the words, I found the music spoke more eloquently of the man, and more importantly, had a life beyond the subject matter. It spoke of depths of time and emotion, and I was hooked for the rest of Goldsmith's output. I started to seek him out in record stores. "Papillon" came out, and upon the first hearing I was disappointed--this wasn't the same music. It was undoubtedly Goldsmith, but he was doing different things. This music was more wistful, and also savage. I didn't know whether I liked it. But upon putting needle to record a second time, this "new" Goldsmith spoke to me. After the shock of the new, the appreciation took over, and each new release had its own shocks and new discoveries.

And that's what made Goldsmith so interesting. It wasn't the same old wine in new bottles ala Mancini and Horner and yes, even Bernard Herrmann. This was new wine. As if he went back and re-constructed his career and experience for the sake of the next film. Sometimes, masterpieces would emerge. "The Wind and the Lion." "QBVII." "Islands in the Stream." "Hoosiers." But there would be the failures, also: the "I.Q.'s" and "Mr. Baseball's," and the "Mom and Dad Save the World's". Interesting failures, to be sure, but sometimes in the quest for a solution to the film's problems, the music itself would suffer. For some reason, the essence of film-comedies seemed to elude Goldsmith.

It was fun anticipating new works. What was he going to do for "Logan's Run?" He's doing "Chinatown?" When did that happen? Oh, man! Goldsmith landed "Star Trek: the Motion Picture!!" The new wine flowed and in amazing quantities, from a seemingly inexhaustible and eclectic vineyard. Sometimes it would be good. Sometimes bad. Sometimes magnificent. He reportedly didn't like science-fiction, and claimed he didn't understand it. Yet he scored seminal science-fiction films. Each had its own signature sound: whooping electronics for "Logan's Run;" High-flying nautica for "Star Trek;" Filigreed textures for "Alien." All were different. They were, in fact, worlds apart. Goldsmith did not write for the genre. He wrote for the drama and the story. Rather than overlay a double dose of emotion to tell the audience how it should feel, he wrote inside the story. His music told you how the characters feel.

And he could be counted on to bolster up the infrastructure of the film as well, the perfect example being "Planet of the Apes." A cheap-jack story with obvious ape make-up filmed at the Fox Ranch. But Goldsmith, in the film's first twenty minutes, sets up the crucial mystery and strangeness and other-worldliness. His music distracts us from the Utah locations these "astronauts" are hoofing over, and it's not some cheesy lightning mattes telling us that it's an alien planet. It is Goldsmith's tentative, echoing, uneasy music that takes us off Earth and someplace "not here." All those cooing notes, poinking mixing bowls and cracking balsa wood tells us that despite all the apes speaking English, despite the silly suggestion of a reverse-Darwinism, despite everything on screen and in the story telling us (look, folks...) we're still on Earth. the ending still comes as a shock. And it's Goldsmith--nothing else--doing that.

There's another example in a later minor film called "Malice." It opens with a girl on a bicycle, and a sweet melody that evokes naive innocence. In fact, it's too sweet, in a morose and saccharine kind of way. It's icky-sweet, and you wonder if Goldsmith has fallen off his rocker. Well, the girl in the bicycle becomes a victim of a serial killer, but the sweetness of the melody stays, now tinged with regret and tragedy: what might have been. And it sets you up for the surprise ending of the film two hours later. The melody returns with its hints of victimization and a cruel world, and it blinds you to the fact that the villain of the piece is, in fact, the female lead. You should have seen it coming a mile off. But Goldsmith musically and intellectually trips you up. These movies needed Goldsmith desperately and he made them better than they were.

Well, that's the films. But, as to the selection of the music for the 2 disc overview, I'll admit to leaving off some standards. The Theme from "Star Trek" is there in the form of "The Enterprise." There's no "Alien" to speak of (but you could count the "Freud" selection which Ridley Scott and his editor chucked into the film's mix). No "Papillon." There is none of his essential (and endlessly reused) music for the TV version of "The Twilight Zone." You don't even hear the cascading trumpets of the "Patton" march.

No. What I was going for was artistry. This is Goldsmith at his characteristic best. His way of taking a melody, adding an off-rhythm and punching up the adrenaline. There are themes that thrill or make you cry - music that may clobber you with its brio or savagery. It's music that bolsters the spirit, or dresses you down. I dare you to listen to "A Game of Pool" from "Studs Lonigan," one of Goldsmith's very early film scores, and not have your eyes widen at the turns, cartwheels and jaunts that the young Goldsmith throws at his orchestra (and mention should be made, too, of the incredible performance of session musician "Johnny" Williams at the piano. I'm surprised Williams and Goldsmith remained friends after the rigors of that cue!). His themes for "The Omen" aren't here, but the horrors evoked from Goldsmith in "Jadwiga Revisited" from "QBVII" are more real, and unsettling.

There are very familiar pieces, too: "The Blue Max," "Chinatown," "Basic Instinct" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E. "But there are some that aren't heard enough--or simply have not received the release they should, for example the amazing action writing from "Lonely Are the Brave" that features some kinetic writing for percussion--then followed by a similar technique used in his score for "Under Fire," with a completely different sound. Goldsmith's plaintive melody for solo-guitar for "Rio Lobo" is far removed from the celebratory Copland-like Americana the (now) late Elmer Bernstein wrote for John Wayne. His music for the little-seen John Huston romp "The List of Adrian Messenger" sounds like it was written for Mr. Scratch himself. And a couple of his concert pieces--"Fireworks," "09-11-01," and "Soarin' over California"--are also included. If only there was room for his fanfares for the Academy Awards and for Universal pictures.

But, alas, that's the limitations of CD's. This compilation actually started out as one CD of some of my favorite Goldsmith music, and it was impossible. My first cut included an extra twenty minutes of music. So, a second CD was planned--and it was soon filled to overflowing as well. There are many things I'd wished I could include on this--"The Invaders" from "The Twilight Zone," for instance--but it would've gobbled up twelve precious minutes of CD-time. Time better spent on Goldsmith's masterful Prologue music for "The Agony and the Ecstacy." This is a pretty good overview: Goldsmith at his most celebratory and introspective. Musical moments of high adventure and deep despair.

It's odd, though. There is a curious thing about the sequencing: it goes from a light mood to dark on both discs. Perhaps it's just my sadness at Goldsmith's passing, but it's actually the way I preferred the music to flow. One would wish to end on a note of triumph, but at the end of the day, it's the end of the day. For example, I felt that Goldsmith's triumphal music to "Omen III: The Final Conflict" was absolutely necessary, but once it soared announcing the Second Coming, it transitioned back into a dark section, and served as the lynch-pin between the two sections of celebration and darkness. That seemed to work naturally, just as the sad triumph of QBVII's End Titles seemed the perfect way to end Disc 2. And there was no better way to end disc 1 than the "Patton" coda. All glory is fleeting.

Long after Goldsmith's sole Oscar for "The Omen" flakes and cracks, the music will remain: constant and eternal.

Bravo, Maestro. Though I understand there'll be no encores, I'll keep applauding anyway.

Below are three Goldsmith video's: the first is a short segment of a "Making of..." documentary, discussing some of the behind-the-scenes negotiating on "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."
The second showcases Goldsmith's writing supporting an evocative scene from "Patton."
The third is an editor's whimsical attempt to put "Planet of the Apes" into "The Twilight Zone" format (after all, they're both from the pen of Rod Serling) and features quite a bit of Goldsmith's score for "Apes" (and no, he didn't write the theme for "The Twilight Zone").







Jerry Goldsmith On-Line -a pretty definitive fan-site
Jerry Goldsmith at imdb-Wow! He got nm0000025
Jerry Goldsmith at Wikipedia
Film Score Monthly
FSM's tribute to Goldsmith
Goldsmith on WHYY's Fresh Air
NPR (All Things Considered) report remembering Goldsmith
NPR (Weekend Edition) Aprreciation of Goldsmith
Extended video interview with Goldsmith (ostensibly about "The Sand Pebbles but is fairly wide-ranging)