I merely started a goofy thread about two 80s Goldsmith scores. I didn't start likening them to the greatest suff by Ravel and Debussy. And I've stated time and again my admiration of JGs music.
Did you expect goofy answers like "LIONHEART smells better because it uses less synth farts"?
While POTA is often trotted out as his contribution to 20th century music, at the end of the day, he was still just applying the 12 tone/serialism that already existed with a few stylistic touches (and arguably an extension of what Alex North was doing). Yes, he is a titan of Hollywood* film music, but the reverential idolatry of him - certainly here - can be a tad disconcerting.
Well, Jerry Goldsmith was a "musician's musician". He did a lot of things which were impressive to those of us who have studied and / or performed music ourselves. I'm not saying non-musicians "can't understand" but I find there are a lot of "How did he think of that???" moments in his work, that pop-out to a musician.
When I first met John Corigliano I asked him if there were any Hollywood composers he admired. "Jerry Goldsmith" was his immediate response. Elmer Bernstein called Goldsmith "The composer I would pick if I was a film's producer". I think that speaks volumes of Goldsmith reputation among other composers. I've met musicians who weren't particularly interested in film music at all, but who were aware -- and had a high opinion -- of Goldsmith.
That doesn't mean Goldsmith is the only great film composer, and yeah, he was building upon the techniques established by his forbears, but he was not incapable of innovation himself...
We can debate this at the pub next time I'm in Liverpool Kev!
I didn't start likening them to the greatest suff [sic] by Ravel and Debussy.
There's an interesting story about a then unpublished composer named Ernest Fanelli who aroused some measure of controversy in 1912 when his "Symphonic Pictures: The Romance of the Mummy" (of 1886) was premiered (following the efforts of Gabriel Pierné, a French “impressionist” composer, who had sought to have it performed) because the harmonic language he employed would seem to predate that of both Debussy and Ravel by some 20 years.
There were rumblings that they had prior knowledge of Fanelli’s work. It was said Debussy actively avoided Fanelli. Even George Antheil got into the mix.
Not to long afterward, however, the consensus was that self-studied Fanelli, deemed a minor talent, had simply stumbled upon something like “impressionism” and so Debussy and Ravel would get to keep their “impressionist”* crowns.
In the end, Fanelli got his 15 seconds of fame and then sank back into obscurity, only to die 5 years later.
It is quite unique to this forum to witness the constant attempts to deify Jerry Goldsmith and his film music. I love a lot of his music and would say he's in my Top 5 film composers of all time, probably even Top 3, but I don't feel he did anything above and beyond what the likes of Elmer Bernstein, Alex North, Bernard Herrmann, Miklos Rozsa, John Williams, John Barry, Ennio Morricone (insert YOUR favourite composer here) did. While POTA is often trotted out as his contribution to 20th century music, at the end of the day, he was still just applying the 12 tone/serialism that already existed with a few stylistic touches (and arguably an extension of what Alex North was doing). Yes, he is a titan of Hollywood* film music, but the reverential idolatry of him - certainly here - can be a tad disconcerting. I sometimes think it may be down to his lack of success when compared to the likes of John Williams and John Barry or the global reach of the likes of Ennio Morricone and Henry Mancini, or the number of accolades accrued when compared to Maurice Jarre and Gustavo Santaolalla Over compensation perhaps? And I say all this as a huge fan of his music. Just without the rose tinted spectacles or blinkers maybe.
*and we must acknowledge we are only talking Hollywood film music here.
I tend to think that Bernard Herrmann and Alex North were better composers than Jerry Goldsmith.
But don't tell anyone...
Herrmann was a true original. He carved his own music language. I would cite him as the greatest film composer of all time. And one of the masters from the 20th century.
I didn't start likening them to the greatest suff [sic] by Ravel and Debussy.
There's an interesting story about a then unpublished composer named Ernest Fanelli who aroused some measure of controversy in 1912 when his "Symphonic Pictures: The Romance of the Mummy" (of 1886) was premiered (following the efforts of Gabriel Pierné, a French “impressionist” composer, who had sought to have it performed) because the harmonic language he employed would seem to predate that of both Debussy and Ravel by some 20 years.
There were rumblings that they had prior knowledge of Fanelli’s work. It was said Debussy actively avoided Fanelli. Even George Antheil got into the mix.
Not to long afterward, however, the consensus was that self-studied Fanelli, deemed a minor talent, had simply stumbled upon something like “impressionism” and so Debussy and Ravel would get to keep their “impressionist”* crowns.
In the end, Fanelli got his 15 seconds of fame and then sank back into obscurity, only to die 5 years later.
* Debussy didn’t like the “impressionist” tag.
Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was composed between 1892 and 1894, and as David Coscina said, he didn't come from nowhere.
Maurice Ravel always said what he owed to Gabriel Fauré and Emmanuel Chabrier, and he never searched for crowns since he refused the Légion d'honneur.
Manuel de Falla thought that the "impressionism" of Claude Debussy came from some chords from Spanish music.
The modal music of Gabriel Fauré was certainly important, as well as the first step of Richard Wagner toward atonality.
It's a whole, and this is what is interesting.
The music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel is very different, though, and "impressionism" doesn't mean much.
Well, Jerry Goldsmith was a "musician's musician". He did a lot of things which were impressive to those of us who have studied and / or performed music ourselves. I'm not saying non-musicians "can't understand" but I find there are a lot of "How did he think of that???" moments in his work, that pop-out to a musician.
That's what I was trying to elude to. I've been composing for 30 odd years now and I marvel at the sophistication in something like Legend or POTA or Capricorn One with its bi tonal variation of Strauss' Zarathrusta, or ST:TMP (made even more clear when studying the recent Omni Music full score).
Maurice … never searched for crowns since he refused the Légion d'honneur …"impressionism" doesn't mean much.
Is this some kind of language barrier thing?
The Fanelli story was a recounting of history, it wasn't presented as an argument. "Crown" was a figure of speech, as in: "Goldsmith is no Ravel". And I did use scare quotes around impressionism for a reason.
Maurice … never searched for crowns since he refused the Légion d'honneur …"impressionism" doesn't mean much.
Is this some kind of language barrier thing?
The Fanelli story was a recounting of history, it wasn't presented as an argument. "Crown" was a figure of speech, as in: "Goldsmith is no Ravel". And I did use scare quotes around impressionism for a reason.
Je ne c'est pa…
I may have misunderstood you. Ernest Fanelli was just a composer of his time, and not a very good one (you said it more clearly than I thought, sorry). Gabriel Pierné was an excellent composer, though, and an important conductor.
I just said that Maurice Ravel, like Jerry Goldsmith by the way, didn't want and didn't like to be honored. Contrary to Claude Debussy.
The latter didn't like the "impressionist" tag, for sure. And that tag doesn't mean much since Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel music is radically different.
That doesn't mean Goldsmith is the only great film composer, and yeah, he was building upon the techniques established by his forbears, but he was not incapable of innovation himself...
The Main Title still sounds like Holst, Debussy, Schoenberg and Ives.
The reference to Debussy and Pelléas et Mélisande is the most interesting since it's a symbolistic opera filled with dark forests, grottos and castles, very psychological and metaphysical where the characters are locked into themselves, time and space.
The solo trumpet also echoes Ives's Unanswered Question, which is particularly appropriate.
One of Jerry Goldsmith's finest film scores which shows his musical culture, intelligence and sensitivity.
That doesn't mean Goldsmith is the only great film composer, and yeah, he was building upon the techniques established by his forbears, but he was not incapable of innovation himself...
The Main Title still sounds like Holst, Debussy, Schoenberg and Ives.
The reference to Debussy and Pelléas et Mélisande is the most interesting since it's a symbolistic opera filled with dark forests, grottos and castles, very psychological and metaphysical where the characters are locked into themselves, time and space.
The solo trumpet also echoes Ives's Unanswered Question, which is particularly appropriate.
One of Jerry Goldsmith's finest film scores which shows his musical culture, intelligence and sensitivity.
Well put. Just listened again to Miraculous Mandarin today (Boulez, CSO)... ok, I stand corrected. The dude was brilliant... no film composer can get close (and I expect none would ever admit to being). But Jerry, as you say, did take compositional devices from these masters and used them very effectively in his own work. Nowadays, I doubt most composers could or would try to approach that same level of orchestral sophistication.
It's curious that while Bartok is renowned for various things, he's never lauded for his orchestration which is actually incredibly complex and refined. Looking through his scores to Four Orchestral Pieces or Wooden Prince or Bluebeard's Castle reveals someone very attuned to subtle orchestral colors. He also had absolute pitch.
I think it was Graham Watt who advised me to listen to certain pieces by Bartok to hear where Goldsmith was often coming from. His music, by and large, almost forms the DNA of Jerry Goldsmith's music.
Bartok and Stravinsky, for sure... though for my money Jerry Goldsmith eclipsed both of them (and frankly anyone else in history) when it came to writing naturally in mixed meters / odd time signatures. Not deifying him or anything, but that for me is Goldsmith's truly unique claim to fame. I disagree with the notion that no film composer could hope to reach the level of Bartok (and I adore Bartok). All composers are different and have different strengths. Some are more original than others, but I don't think concert hall composers are always as original as they're chalked up to be. Most of them liberally take inspiration from their peers and predecessors just like film composers.
But I even think "originality" and "greatness" are overrated and often not very helpful when appreciating music. The excellent music journalist Alex Ross wrote an excellent article a few years ago, ostensibly about Florence Price (a composer whose work I love and I couldn't care less if it isn't groundbreaking enough for the musical intelligentsia) but which he broadens out later on into some particularly insightful observations about art in general:
"In progressive musicological circles these days, you hear much talk about the canon and about the bad assumptions that underpin it. Classical music, perhaps more than any other field, suffers from what the acidulous critic-composer Virgil Thomson liked to call the “masterpiece cult.” He complained about the idea of an “unbridgeable chasm between ‘great work’ and the rest of production . . . a distinction as radical as that recognized in theology between the elect and the damned.” ... I feel some ambivalence about the anti-masterpiece line. Having grown up with the notion of musical genius, I am reluctant to let it go entirely. What I value most as a listener is the sense of a singular creative personality coalescing from anonymous sounds. I wonder whether the profile of genius could simply evolve to include a broader range of personalities and faces. But there’s no doubt that the jargon of greatness has become musty, and more than a little toxic. I recently had a social-media exchange with the Harvard-based scholar Anne Shreffler, who wrote of instilling different values in her classes. She said, “Instead of telling students it’s Great, you can say it’s worth their while: historically fascinating, well crafted, genre bending, or just listen-to-this-amazing-moment-at-the-end. Rather than a religious icon.” If we are going to treat music as a full-fledged art form—and, surprisingly often, we don’t—we need to be open to the bewildering richness of everything that has been written during the past thousand years. To reduce music history to a pageant of masters is, at bottom, lazy. We stick with the known in order to avoid the hard work of exploring the unknown."
I guess I find myself leaning even more towards Virgil Thompson's view (love his music too, by the way -- wish he'd scored more films!) than even Alex Ross does. But I bolded my favorite sentence of Ross's, which for me crystallized what I value most from a composer as well...and suffice to say I think Jerry Goldsmith (and Bernard Herrmann, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Miklos Rozsa, and Hugo Friedhofer, and...) satisfies that criteria as well as any concert hall composer.
Bartok and Stravinsky, for sure... though for my money Jerry Goldsmith eclipsed both of them (and frankly anyone else in history) when it came to writing naturally in mixed meters / odd time signatures. Not deifying him or anything, but that for me is Goldsmith's truly unique claim to fame. I disagree with the notion that no film composer could hope to reach the level of Bartok (and I adore Bartok). All composers are different and have different strengths. Some are more original than others, but I don't think concert hall composers are always as original as they're chalked up to be. Most of them liberally take inspiration from their peers and predecessors just like film composers.
Yavar
I think it's probably best to avoid comparing apples with oranges. Goldsmith, as we both can agree, was a visionary in the field of film music. And as a composer myself, I can appreciate the full range of technique, talent and innovation he brought to the table. I doubt we will see anyone quite as remarkable partly because of the modern system, partly because of the world, and partly because the training ground in tv and radio doesn't exist anymore. Music technology has turned most composers into producers where they arrange sounds, not music ideas in the traditional sense.
However, Bartok, Stravinsky, Schoenberg (tho, I prefer Berg myself), Varese- all these composers were pioneers... and the levels of complexity and design in their works are unmatched. They had more time to conceive and execute these grand music experiments, where any working film composer has had much more restrictions on time and even creative license. In that capacity, it's amazing we have such a diverse and exceptional body of work from any film composer, much less a huge one from the Golden Age through to the Silver and Bronze Age of film music.
Music really ought not to be a competition anyhow and I should have avoided qualifying the worth of Jerry's Legend in comparison to Ravel or Bartok. But as I mentioned earlier, I doubt even Jerry would feel comfortable comparing himself to those giants of the 20th century.
Classical music, perhaps more than any other field, suffers from what the acidulous critic-composer Virgil Thomson liked to call the “masterpiece cult.”
Unsurprisingly, in the end it always seems to come down to who's got the biggest dick.
Both scores are top drawer Goldsmith for me. But can you imagine if Goldsmith had got to record Lionheart with the NPO? Wow that would have been something!
I tried Legend again and I'm sorry but the orchestration makes it sound like half the orchestra are drunk. I hear some ST:TMP, NIMH and Poltergeist in here and I'd rather just listen to those far superior scores.
