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The first 2 notes of "Goldfinger" are the same as "Moon River" and they stick out like a sore thumb.
When Barry first played them for Newley and Bricusse they both sang "MR".
FYI John Scott plays the ad-lib alto sax solo on "Miami". I met Mr. Scott a few times and we discussed Barry's style.
The first THREE notes are the same as Moon River. That “completes “ the phrase so to speak...
Oops. Typo. I've been playing "MR" for decades. I'll proofread comments in the future.
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Hey, guys, I don't expect everyone to share my enthusiasm for GOLDFINGER, and of course legitimate critisim and healthy debate is welcome.
(And, let's face it, this wouldn't be the Film Score Monthly Forum without a fair dose of negativity too!)
But to complain you can hear a two-note interval that's the same as a two-note interval in something else is a bit daft.
Music is centuries old. There probably aren't any two or three note intervals that work melodically that haven't been done before.
We didn't mind that we hear John Williams' JAWS in The Rite of Spring, for instance, or James Horner taking some his danger music from Alexander Nevsky.
Not to mention the wealth of film music that is based on Ave Maria or Veni Sancte Spiritus.
There's nothing 100% original under the sun, except perhaps in music Tech, and I think we have to make allowances for that to have a sensible conversation—otherwise everything in film music is hack.
It's true, very little ground has been genuinely broken in music per se, by film music. Pretty much everything has precedent.
Even something as brilliant as Jerry Goldsmith's PLANET OF THE APES wasn't really groundbreaking in music per se, because serialism was around long before that and even other film composers were doing it before him, like Elizabeth Luytens, Benjamin Britten, and, of course, Bernard Herrmann.
So, to OnyaBirri's point, yes, I do mean culturally, yes. I'm aware that even a fresh and exciting score like GOLDFINGER has plenty of musical precedents.
We have to judge music from a much higher platform than scanning for two-note intervals and perfect originality.
Perhaps it's more how people piece music together than their ability to never use a previously used two-note interval that matters more.
Now, I get it, that in some cases, yes, there is blatant copying. Although it's not many notes, the opening bars of the song LICENSE TO KILL clearly do intentionally copy the opening bars of GOLDFINGER.
But for the most part, noticing a two or three note interval that's familiar from something else is happenstance.
In THE FINAL CONFLICT, there's a place where there's a few phrases of music which is identical to something in THE LION IN WINTER. Not similar. The exact same. Plagiarism? Definitely not!! Something two composers might easily come up with independent of each other? Yes, very, very credibly.
Sorry, long winded, I just think we need to take a broader view of music than micro-similiarities.
Cheers
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Sorry, but no one comes close to The Living Daylights score, even Goldfinger 
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Sorry, but no one comes close to The Living Daylights score, even Goldfinger
I agree that THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS is one of the occassions that John Barry surpassed GOLDFINGER, but GOLDFINGER was the one that broke ground.
Cheers
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Posted: |
Sep 8, 2020 - 7:12 AM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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So, to OnyaBirri's point, yes, I do mean culturally, yes. I'm aware that even a fresh and exciting score like GOLDFINGER has plenty of musical precedents.
OK, thanks for the clarification. I guess I was getting hung up on the semantics of "ground-breaking."
"Goldfinger" is certainly an iconic film, and I think it was here that the 60s spy genre really crystallized in a number of ways. For its cultural impact, I think you need to look at the film in totality and not just the score. Obviously, the main title theme was a hit, and the LP sold very well, in the US at least, but I would attribute the film's iconic stature to a combination of factors and not to Barry's score by itself.
If we are looking at the music in isolation, I would argue that the "James Bond Theme" in "Dr. No" was more groundbreaking than anything in "Goldfinger," in that it created, more or less, the template for the spy sound. But predecessors to even that theme can be found.
I hear some Herrmann in "Goldfinger," not so much in the musical composition itself, but rather in the arrangements, especially the more static sections.
I am admittedly not a big fan of Barry - my interest drops off in the 70s - but I love the scores to the Connery-era Bond films, especially "Goldfinger" and "Thunderball," and also "The Knack" and "The Ipcress File."
I would also say that Barry and Mancini were probably the two most imitated composers in the 1960s. There are so many 60s scores that emulated either the Bond sound or "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
Also, back to "Goldfinger," the UK track listing is really the best. I wish the CD would have followed the UK version, but I think they had to follow the US version for contractual reasons. I made a CD-R with the UK version, ending with the Roland Shaw instrumental version of "Goldfinger" instead of Barry's, because of phasing/azimuth issues with Barry's instrumental version on the "Goldfinger" CD.
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Also, back to "Goldfinger," the UK track listing is really the best. I wish the CD would have followed the UK version, but I think they had to follow the US version for contractual reasons. I made a CD-R with the UK version, ending with the Roland Shaw instrumental version of "Goldfinger" instead of Barry's, because of phasing/azimuth issues with Barry's instrumental version on the "Goldfinger" CD.
I just now listened to the 2003 expansion of Goldfinger from start to finish. I haven't fully played any version of the album in at least 20 years, because (I confess) the idea secretly struck me as old hat and over-familiar.
But the CD was a blast! Tons of stuff I was grooving to like crazy. And there isn't a dull track on the whole album, though "Auric's Factory" (quoted in The Incredibles) is best in the movie as opposed to sit-and-listen music. And I would have liked the little two-note motif near the end when Bond is boarding the Learjet, the one that sounds like "Bridge on the River Kwai."
Still: I'd always known it was James Bond greatness, I just didn't know how fresh and alive it could still be when your mood meets the music.
One oddity: I was surprised at how unfamiliar "Dawn Raid on Fort Knox" sounded, and the reason is that Roland Shaw's performance is the one I have in my head, deeply memorized. This is something I would never say for OHMSS or Diamonds are Forever, but Shaw really captured the spirit of the earlier Bonds, to the point of giving Barry competition.
So in recent weeks I have listened to
- Thunderball
- You Only Live Twice
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service
- From Russia with Love
- and now Goldfinger
from start to finish. (Since work-from-home began, I've had a lot more freedom during the slow hours of my job.) I got the greatest pleasures from OHMSS, GF, and YOLT in roughly that order. Needless to say, Diamonds are for next week. 
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Did you place the tracks in the UK LP track sequence? It works much better than pasting the other four tracks at the end.
No, I just played the CD straight. I should re-sequence it.
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I challenge soundtrackers to find a real challenger to this incredible achievement.
Similar big band swagger can be found in other areas, such as a TV series or Italian soundtracks.
A few I love are Gianni Ferrio's main title for Toto' contro i 4 (1963) & Piero Piccioni's "red hot" theme in Colpo Rovente (1970). Let us not forget Edwin Astley's 1960 DANGER MAN half-hour shows, which merged late-'50s cops-n-robbers crime jazz with the up-n-coming international espionage trend in the '60s.
Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini, John Dankworth, Ed Astley were all doing jazzy big band before John Barry.
(check out, too, Masaru Sato's anachronistic music for Kurosawa's '61 Yojimbo)
East of U.K., Polish and German composers were doing jazz scores in this era, too.
Was pleasantly surprised to hear Hans-Martin Majewski do some brassy/jazzy scores during '58 & '59 for German cinema.
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