Air Force One and the Goldsmith Continuum

I once read an excellent article by John Caps which broke John Williams's film music career into four sections. The first was his Mancini-esque comedy period which lasted from Checkmate until A Guide for the Married Man. The second was his transitional period into a more symphonic vein beginning with The Reivers and arriving at Jaws. The third period was his Star Wars to E.T. string of monster hits. And the forth section, representing a turn towards lyricism, began around the time of The Accidental Tourist.

However, I think we can view the compositional output of Jerry Goldsmith as less of a partitioned entity and as more of a continuum. True, viewed from a distance we can probably find three vague periods—the vast and rich period from the beginnings of his film career until the mid 1980s, the mid 1980s until the very early '90s, and the early '90s on. But the overall trend through these periods has been a movement towards greater and greater thematic simplicity. His first period scores like Freud, Planet of the Apes, or even Coma all revolve around strange little figures and motives. The music is rooted in serialism and synthetic scales—in other words, it's highly dissonant. Sure, during this period we would occasionally hear somewhat more dulcet scores/themes like The Blue Max, Patton, or Islands in the Stream, but even these more approachable tonalities are bathed in complex rhythms and thick, post-Romantic harmonies. Or sometimes there would be something like A Patch of Blue that was very simple, but was orchestrated for small, interesting throw-together ensembles. In short, this was Goldsmith's most complex period. Colors and influences were all over the map, but everything stuck together wonderfully. Conch shells existed along side major chords, steel drums existed along side tone rows.

Next came the period in the mid '80s where a more traditionally orchestral sound would prevail. While many of the '60s and '70s films Goldsmith worked on were psychological dramas, his '80s films were largely brawn-over-brains fare and his harmonic style changed accordingly. His stringent dissonances were largely replaced with smoother sounding stacks of fourth and fifth intervals—ideas he toyed with as far back as The Wind and the Lion, but simplified here even more. These harmonies were placed very transparently within the orchestra, creating that wide-open sound the late '80s Goldsmith scores all carry. Rhythms were now much more jagged, and much more present in scenes that would have been scored more atmospherically before. The most notable change, however, was in his melodic approach. Almost every score had a slightly pop-influenced, easily digestible main theme. Themes like the lonely, wistful Alien tune began to defer to marches, or rock/rag time mixes like Gremlins, or the iron syncopations of Total Recall. Almost every score of this period had this sort of in-your-face theme as its driving force.

And this "big theme" has become almost completely dominant in the third portion of Goldsmith's career. These themes represent the ultimate simplicity in his output. They are almost entirely triadic and diatonic, there is little to no motion in accompaniment lines, and the melodies are dependent upon the harmonies in the truest sense of the phrase. Rudy, The Ghost and the Darkness and Star Trek: First Contact are all prefect examples of this style.

One on One

This past week has seen the release of Goldsmith's latest, Air Force One. Occasionally, there are remnants of 1980s Goldsmith heard in the Air Force One action and tension scoring, but he's never been one to turn a corner without looking back occasionally. However, like the past few scores, the crux here is the big emotional theme. I could talk until I'm blue in the face about the merits or lack there of present in this theme, but the fact of the matter is if you like this sort of thing, you'll like this theme. There's also a Russian anthem of sorts, a recurring fanfare, and a few repeated action licks, but the hero theme is what you'll leave the theater remembering. It's the sort of theme that usually seems to click with the movie going crowd as well as the soundtrack collecting community. And in fact, I think that among the general public, Goldsmith may be at his most popular right now. While his score to First Knight didn't win him many critical accolades, it certainly generated a lot of talk. One of the network morning shows even visited a scoring session where we could watch Jerry Zucker don a white Goldsmith wig in an attempt to lead the orchestra. Many have claimed that Goldsmith's shift to this kind of scoring is his cry to be noticed, to win some sort of popular acclaim. It's probably true that the delicate Bartokian violin solos he would write in the 1960s didn't do too much for John Q Public. Elsewhere, it's been surmised that this new trend is Goldsmith's effort to sound like John Barry.

There has also been the suggestion that the needs of movies have changed and Goldsmith is simply keeping himself marketable. Well, if any movie could have handled a dissonant, non-heroic score it was Air Force One. After all, this is the movie the actually shows the president beating up terrorists. It couldn't have been any more quasi-heroic/patriotic if Harrison Ford was dressed as Uncle Sam and bludgeoned the Russians with a rolled up copy of the Constitution. Darker, more ambivalent music may have underlined the family everyman aspect of things more than the super-American side. Or maybe not. Maybe the synergy of music and patriotism is exactly what's making this movie such a hit.

No matter, the film was scored with a giant, patriotic strings and brass hymn. Personally, I don't think that this is Goldsmith's attempt to accomplish anything like acclaim, or an overall John Barry-ness. I just think he's changed. Many composers develop vastly different aesthetics as they get older. Some of the original French avant garde composers from the early 1900s are now writing entirely tonal operas—although some are over 24 hours long. And, of course the same Stravinsky who began musical life writing such primitivistic barn burners as "Sacre du Printemps" ended up writing pristine Neo-Classical numbers like "Pulcinella." Goldsmith has always been a fairly honest composer. He seems to write from his heart no matter what venue he's composing for. While writing this column I've been listening to his Toccata for guitar (a concert work credited to Jerrald K. Goldsmith) written during his fruitful 1960s period, and there it all is—the wonderful color and harmonic interest, the rhythmic vitality, the sheer enthusiasm of composition—just like in his film music of this period.

So, has Goldsmith's stylistic change been for the better or the worse? It depends on which style you prefer. Generally, within each microcosm, they're done equally as well.

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