Jerry Goldsmith

A prolific composer, beloved especially for his themes for the television series Star Trek, Goldsmith is a key figure in the development of the language of contemporary film music.

The Life

Jerrald Goldsmith was born and raised around Los Angeles. His parents encouraged their son’s musical talents with lessons in piano, theory, and musicianship under pianist Jakob Gimpel, who later introduced Goldsmith to Miklós Rózsa, composer of the score to Spellbound (1945), a movie that had impressed Goldsmith as a teenager. He briefly attended Rózsa’s composition class at the University of Southern California and later decided to attend Los Angeles City College, where he studied with the leading composers Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Ernst Krenek.

In 1950 Goldsmith got a job typing scripts at CBS, which had a full music department on staff and had given several composers their start. His first assignments were composing for radio shows and then for live television; by the time he left in 1960, he had scored several series, notably episodes of The Twilight Zone, Climax, and Playhouse 90. Impressed by Goldsmith’s television scores, legendary film composer Alfred Newman hired him to do the music for the film Lonely Are the Brave, his first major feature film score.

By the late 1960’s Goldsmith was one of the most in-demand film composers in Hollywood, with credits such as Freud, A Patch of Blue, Planet of the Apes, and The Sand Pebbles, all of which were nominated for Academy Awards. The 1970’s brought him even more success with scores for Patton, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Chinatown, The Boys from Brazil, and The Omen, which won the Oscar for Best Score in 1977.

Goldsmith went on to bigger-budget movies in the 1980’s, mostly a mix of comedy and adventure films, including the box-office hit Gremlins and the Rambo series, among several other action movies, a genre that he helped redefine musically.

In the 1990’s Goldsmith’s career continued to flourish through his collaboration with directors Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall, Basic Instinct) and Fred Schepisi (The Russia House, Six Degrees of Separation), more big-budget action movies (Air Force One, The Mummy), thrillers (L.A. Confidential), and Star Trek sequels. He continued his successful career into the new millennium, with such projects as The Sum of All Fears, Along Came a Spider, and Mulan.

Beyond scoring films, Goldsmith also enjoyed conducting his music all over the world, building a strong relationship with the London Symphony Orchestra. He received an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and taught a graduate seminar in film scoring at the University of California, Los Angeles. He died on July 21, 2004, after a long battle with cancer.

The Music

A musical chameleon, Goldsmith came from an era when film composers were well trained in classical and contemporary idioms. Constantly experimenting, Goldsmith expanded the boundaries and scope of film music: Planet of the Apes and The Omen were essentially avant-garde scores, with textures and extended (or unconventional) techniques new to film music. Extremely sensitive to orchestral timbre, he explored unusual instrumental combinations. He embraced technology and experimented with a wide variety of electronic sounds and instruments as they became available. He also conducted and produced most of his scores.

Beyond his natural sense for melody, Goldsmith was inventive with rhythm and harmony, employing odd meters and dissonance to create musical counterpoint to the screen action. He was sensitive to the role of music and silence in dramatic and emotional control. His sense of timing and tension control, revealed in his skill at music spotting (placing music in the film), was extremely refined.

Planet of the Apes. Often mistaken for an electronic score, Planet of the Apes, one of Goldsmith’s most innovative and avant-garde, is all acoustic, save for an Echoplex, a delay device used to feed through pizzicato string tracks. The composer uses unusual sounds and extended techniques.

Chinatown. Goldsmith was hired in 1974 to replace Phillip Lambro’s rejected score, and he completed the job in ten days. Regarded as a classic period score, it features an unusual ensemble of solo trumpet, four pianos, four harps, guiro, and strings, a key aspect in defining the film’s film noir aspect.

The Omen. The haunting score to the 1976 thriller won an Academy Award for its creator. Goldsmith composed a daring contemporary score, using extended vocal techniques in the choir, unusual percussion and string techniques, and mounting ostinatos.

Islands in the Stream. Goldsmith’s favorite, Islands in the Stream, is based on one of the last works of Ernest Hemingway. The composer’s score is extremely lush and impressionistic, built around a web of haunting themes, one on solo French horn and supplemented by another playful theme using similar intervallic identity in a diminutive form. Most prominent is the introduction of a central whole-tone rising-and-falling motif for the sea.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Probably Goldsmith’s best-known score, Star Trek (1979) was inventive in its instrumentation and use of massive orchestral forces. It was intended to be as dramatic as John Williams’s score for Star Wars, yet not derivative of it.

Musical Legacy

Goldsmith thought of himself not as a film composer but as a composer who writes for film. He cited Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók as his influences, placing himself within the context of twentieth century serious music. Goldsmith credited his work in live television as his training ground for learning how to score films. What set him apart from other film composers and the source of his long-lasting career was his ability to adapt and evolve musically. His scores are models for younger generations of composers.

Bibliography

Burt, George. The Art of Film Music. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995. An academic look at film music, including analyses, aesthetics, and philosophical issues. Goldsmith is mentioned prominently, and his score to Tora! Tora! Tora! is analyzed.

Cordes, Cynthia Ann, et al. On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring. New York: Routledge, 2004. A comprehensive technical guide to film scoring, this book includes quotes and score excerpts by Goldsmith.

Darby, William, and Jack Du Bois. American Film Music: Major Composers, Techniques, Trends, 1915-1990. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999. History and development of film music, focused on the careers of prominent composers, including Goldsmith. Several film scores are considered, and there are musical examples and filmographies for each composer.

Morgan, David. Knowing the Score: Film Composers Talk About the Art, Craft, Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Writing for Cinema. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. A collection of interviews with and essays by film composers. Goldsmith offers insight on choosing projects, orchestration, working with directors, using electronics, finding the sound of a film, and more.

Prendergast, Roy M. Film Music: A Neglected Art— A Critical Study of Music in Films. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. Academic look into film scores, including essays on Goldsmith’s music style as well as some of his classic scores.

Thomas, Tony. Music for the Movies. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1997. A survey of film-scoring styles and composers for the general reader, with a chapter dedicated to Goldsmith.