What are your top 10 favourite film composers?
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Hollow Man is like a mix of TOTAL RECALL and BASIC INSTINCT (incidentally all Paul Verhoeven films).
It’s one of the great “sci-fi concept” scores Goldsmith was so good at; Goldsmith was excellent at scoring science-fiction movies with musical ideas and motives representing concepts within the movie.
I recently had a look at my Goldsmith collection and tried to categorize them somehow like Western, Horror, Science Fiction, Action, Thriller, Historical Drama, Fantasy. But I found out quite quickly that this is easier said than done because he had so many hybrid projects.
Anyway, I would say, I have a special preference for his Western scores and Fantasy, if we count in Legend, The Mummy and Poltergeist, maybe The Omen.
The topic science fiction by Goldsmith is really a mixed bag.In a way to me it seemed often that a brillant musician spent a lot of technical effort to sound cheap (I only say “synth farts”).
Also often he seemed to give away his best themes for low profile projects.Anyway, somehow you don’t get around Goldsmith as a movie score fan, but when I look at him purely as a fan of orchestral music he is in the “weird” corner.
Also often he seemed to give away his best themes for low profile projects.
Well, Goldsmith is the king of good score for not so good moves, isn’t he?
Yes, on some of his 80s synth score it sounds a bit cheap. At least nowdays. I think I read somewhere that he basically always used factory sounds and perhaps that is a bit too “plain”. Although other 80s score often suffer from the same.
I don’t like to use the term “dated” because every music is a child of its time. I think it primarily affects his scores from the mid-80s on. UNDER FIRE, LEGEND or GREMLINS find less problematic. I find RUNAWAY exspecially weird. I like it but I always felt it is actually written for orchestra and not really for synths.
Hollow Man has, as I recall it, one of the better DVD audio commentary tracks from Goldsmith. I think he only did two or three of those, while that whole concept was trending in the early 2000s. I’ll have to revisit those tracks at some point, as it provides a unique window into his way of interpreting a picture.
On the subject of Goldsmith, I find the Star Trek Voyager Theme to be the best of the Trek-themes. To have a theme so simple, yet projected with such nobility, grandeur and sophistication, is astonishing to listen to. I could listen to it every day, and never tire. I believe there is an interview with Joel McNeely, who orchestrated for him, where he of Goldsmith says something to the effect of “so few notes, so much music”.
I don’t know any of his 80s scores that sound “cheap”…. Even the purely electronic ones, like CRIMINAL LAW, tend to be very well constructed.
Goldsmith used almost always “standard” samples, because he treated synthesizers like any other instrument, preferring to find out what he could do with the standard sounds rather than have custom sounds made.
I have always enjoyed Goldsmith’s blend of orchestral and electronic sounds, it gave many of his scores a very unique and individual sound palette.What sounds “cheap”? Sounds like an orchestra with additional synthesizers.
(Presumably more expensive than just the orchestra without synthesizers.)Yeah, sorry. I am a John Williams fan. Cheap are the synth farts, the repetitions, short melody lines…
Goldsmith used to be pretty regular in my top 10, but he’s now edged slightly off. Still like him a lot, with 70-80 titles in my collection, but his is not a sound I gravitate towards anymore. He’s now located in what I call “Waiting Room No. 1”.
Yeah, sorry. I am a John Williams fan. Cheap are the synth farts, the repetitions, short melody lines…
The synth effects sound a little dated like many mid 80s synths sound nowadays but that’s all to me… JW and JG fan so I guess we can agree that disagree 😉
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