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Whether Goldsmith or any film composer can be classified as "genius" is endlessly debatable. Ask around in composer circles and you will find higher regard for Goldsmith than almost any other composer of his generation (Gabriel Yared and Wendy Carlos specifically mention him in interviews- Williams' name is absent- why is that you think?). Even in that video from Yavar, with the roundtable of esteemed musicians/engineers/historians, there is an acknowledgment that, while Williams was/is a consummate musician, Jerry was the more daring and innovative of the two.
Musicians and composers are in awe of Williams' prowess, don't get me wrong. But they also recognize the indelible contribution Goldsmith had on the art of film music and are suitably reverent to his brilliance.
I’m curious what you mean by composer’s circles as I haven’t really seen anything disparaging about Williams. I find a lot of respect for Williams but I can see how the absence of comments can say something too.
The difference between the two actually is something that I think is probably widely accepted and might explain what you’re saying - and it’s that I do think Goldsmith is hands down the more experimental composer while Williams is kind of the more technical/polished orchestrator and instrument composer. Not sure how to explain this, but I see the compositional/orchestrational brilliance of Friedhofer and some of the classical composers like Ravel and Walton in Williams.
I wouldn’t be surprised that Yared and Carlos found Goldsmith particularly inspirational because they themselves were experimental. For one thing, Goldsmith’s highly unusual embrace of synthesizer and INTELLIGENT use of synthesizers really set him apart from other composers, especially when scores like “The Forbidden Planet” were the benchmark of “electronic music”. Also keep in mind that Goldsmith was around before Williams.
Anyway, when I think of listening to them and studying, I go for Williams for emotional writing and studying how he balances the orchestra and uses specific instruments. I think his orchestration is much more complex than Goldsmith. But I go for Goldsmith when I want to study interesting techniques, meters, experimental theories.
And I think the ultimate difference is that Williams consistently presents highly buttoned-down works that are extremely smooth and precise, and he honed and honed and honed this consistently in the classical space. Whereas Goldsmith did almost too many things at once and his experimentation covered so much ground yet the only consistency was synths and meters. There’s a lot to be said for that - Don Davis was very experimental with the first Matrix film, but came nowhere close to Goldsmith’s level of decades of consistent experimentation. I just think Goldsmith’s constant experimentation makes him a fascinating composer to study but a little harder to access when the experimentation wasn’t well-integrated into the larger score.
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I hold this truth to be self-evident.
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