February 8, 2011

  • Celebrating Goldsmith & Williams -- Personal favorites

     

     

    February marks the birthdays of two of my favorite late-20th Century film composers, Jerry Goldsmith (Feb. 10th) and John Williams (Feb. 8th).  In memory of Goldsmith and in honor of Williams, I thought it might be fun to pick my favorite scores by both composers and hope others will share their favorites here as well. 

    I came into film music through my love of John Williams’ scores and sort of discovered that I had also seen many of the films Goldsmith had scored, beginning with Planet of the Apes when it was shown on TV (though for me Rosenman’s score for Beneath the Planet of the Apes held the most fascination).  As I reflected on what to do, I started by thinking about listing my favorite “10” scores by each composer.  Mind you, my choices are not based on whether the scores worked well in their films or are considered “best” in a list of “great scores”—all subjectively determined lists anyway.  In the cases of both composers, I have recordings of nearly everything they have composed so I did not fine tune from 20 scores I have heard down to the ones here. 

    Perhaps it is the growing familiarity with Goldsmith’s earlier music that has shaped some of my choices from the 1960s.  I first picked up Lonely are the Brave just to fill out my collection but it has continuously made it to my CD player a lot.  This is one of those films you need to watch though because Goldsmith’s score works on so many levels that it makes the film a richer experience.   I sort of think of both A Patch of Blue and Papillon together only because I first heard them about the same time.  But the Bernstein-like innocence of the former and fabulous theme from the latter stay with you for some time.  The Blue Max is an early example of Goldsmith experimenting with other sounds (a wind machine) in the context of more traditional scoring and it is simply amazing to listen to on its own.  It is hard to appreciate scores like Chinatown when the underscore is so sparse but boy does it work when it appears.  Compare that to the massive and tuneful orchestral scores for The Wind and the Lion, The Boys from Brazil, or Star Trek-The Motion Picture.  All these are distinctly unique scores with rich thematic writing and with a blend of interesting orchestration and sounds.  When Alien was finally given a full treatment a while back on CD we all got to hear just how amazing this score really is and though its use in the film is controversial, there is no denying its visceral power.  The connection to ethnic musics in Under Fire is also a testament to Goldsmith’s ability to capture a geographic location and infuse a score with exciting rhythms.  Total Recall was one of the films whose score caught my ear as an adult.  I remember waiting to see the credit scroll at the end of the film and joined others who were furious when the theater decided to turn off the film before it ran to the end.  The 1990s found Goldsmith in fine form with many strong scores among them the Herrmann-like Basic Instinct with a unique sound that would reappear in a few later works.  The music for Rudy is simply gorgeous and just slightly beat out Islands in the Stream (one of the composer’s own favorites) for my final list.  Finally, The Edge continues to be one of my favorite late Goldsmith scores with its strong themes and amazing orchestration.  So here is my main list from latest to oldest:

    1.      Edge, The (1997)

    2.      Rudy (1993)

    3.      Basic Instinct (1992)

    4.      Total Recall (1990)

    5.      Under Fire (1983)

    6.      Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

    7.      Alien (1979)

    8.      Boys from Brazil, The (1978)

    9.      Wind and the Lion, The (1975)

    10.  Chinatown (1974)

    11.  Papillon (1973)

    12.  Planet of the Apes (1968)

    13.  Blue Max, The (1966)

    14.  Patch of Blue, A (1965)

    15.  Lonely Are the Brave (1962)

     

    Some favorite scores that didn’t quite make the cut are more like guilty pleasures.  The two scores below from 1999 are practically the same in many ways and revisit The Wind and the Lion in their general sound.  Both The Shadow and Capricorn One feature striking main themes and great action music.  Comedy scoring did not play as big a role in Goldsmith’s career but I just love the joyous music of Dennis the Menace—a film that still makes me laugh even though it’s just not a great piece of cinema.  And I probably would choose Escape from the Planet of the Apes over its 1968 companion just to hear those pop guitar riffs.  The score beat out Goldsmith’s music for the two Our Man Flint films—which make for great car listening!  So here are the five Goldsmith guilty pleasures from newest to oldest.

    1. 13th Warrior, The (1999)
    2. Mummy, The (1999)
    3. Shadow, The (1994)
    4. Dennis the Menace (1993)
    5. Capricorn One (1978)
    6. Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

     

    John Williams

    I was one of those people that had microphone in hand when John Williams conducted his premiere appearance with the Boston Pops which I saw on television.  It was one of the greatest joys as an adult to be able to see him and the Pops live in concert at Symphony Hall when we lived out East.  It was a friend who invited me over to hear his new LPs of this great music.  It might seem a bit weird to think there were two elementary age boys enthralled with the music of Star Wars but those of us who heard that music at that time were all of one mind—this stuff was great!  And for many of us it led to pursuits in a variety of musical ways.  When I think about the films I saw in the late 1970s, I realize how many of them were shaped by either Spielberg or Lucas.  My first score LPS after Star Wars included Close Encounters (which also had that disco bonus version in the extra cover!) Jaws 2 was my introduction to Williams’ famous shark theme on film (I was too young to see the original) so it tends to be my shark music of choice.  I was not a big Superman fan but Raiders of the Lost Ark grabbed my attention and became one of my favorite soundtrack LPs.  I came to both The Reivers and The Cowboys through their introduction in Williams’ inaugural concert with the Pops and then in tracking down their scores later on CD.  Midway too had very little music but was still a favorite and I am always surprised that Williams chose the main title march as the music to concertize as the music for the Yorktown is simply amazing.  If I were to choose one of the Jaws film’s music over another it would have to be the score for its sequel which I still play more than its first appearance. 

    It was not until Hook that I started paying attention again to Williams’ music and the score might have been one of several that relaunched my film music interests.  Jurassic Park would soon follow along with Schindler’s List—two scores that couldn’t have been more different from each other.  The final more recent additions to Williams’ catalog are among the discs that I return to often the Africa-flavored music of Amistad to the brilliant Asian-sounding Memoirs of a Geisha.  It is a bit surprising that these works are all somewhat atypical of the composer’s action and sci-fi hits (Seven Years in Tibet just barely lost out to being included here) but at least there was the first Harry Potter score to remind us of Williams’ amazing penchant for multiple themes and brilliant orchestration.

    1. The Reivers (1969)
    2. The Cowboys (1972)
    3. Midway (1976)
    4. Star Wars (1977)
    5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
    6. Jaws 2 (1978)
    7. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
    8. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
    9. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
    10. Hook (1991)
    11. Jurassic Park (1993)
    12. Schindler's List (1993)
    13. Amistad (1997)
    14. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
    15. Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

    When one looks over the career of John Williams, one finds that he had a penchant for picking fairly good films and when he was involved in a bad film the score often reflects it and is usually not all that interesting in the way Goldsmith tended to write even better music the worse the film.  That said, my favorite guilty pleasure scores are also works that are somewhat outside the norm of the composer’s more well-known films.  In the 1960s, Williams cut his teeth on a variety of comedy scores and I suspect that if more of them become available they would make my list of guilty pleasures.  Two from 1966 definitely get a great deal of play throughout the year.  How to Steal a Million isn’t really a bad film and has a fun score and Mancini-esque feel that already sounds like Williams in its orchestral dressing.  Penelope has one of the best love themes the composer wrote with those classic French horn countermelodies supporting it in a pre-E.T. sort of way.  I love Hitchcock movies and always found Family Plot to be odd, but fun to listen to musically.  The problem was that only the end credits existed on CD so you had to watch the film to pick up the music until Varese Sarabande released their limited edition disc last year.  Now this transitional comedy/drama score (itself again similar to Mancini’s Frenzy) is available to enjoy in its entirety.  The love theme in Sabrina is another of those great Williams’ themes and that CD almost never left the player the year I acquired it.  This is almost like a trip back to the composer’s early days when he led his own little pop orchestra.  Finally, it might be hard to use the words “guilty pleasure” for such a deeply moving drama as Rosewood, but I simply love this score with its blues and gospel overtones.  This was one of those last-minute replacement scores and regardless of how he ended up with the assignment, we can appreciate the way the score captures the sense of the tension in such amazing themes.

    1. How to Steal a Million (1966)
    2. Penelope (1966)
    3. Family Plot (1976)
    4. Sabrina (1995)
    5. Rosewood (1997)

     

    So there are my “favorites” for these two amazing composers and I know there are many great scores missed in both lists.  It would be great to hear from those of you who also enjoy their music here or even your own memories of the films they accompany them.