Composer Spotlight
Jerry Goldsmith 1929-2004
Compositional Style:
- American born composer
- Worked for CBS radio for his first composing job
- Composed music in the late 1950s for T.V. including The Twilight Zone & Gunsmoke
- 1957 began writing for films
- Is a fast writer, inventive
- Has been hired by some filmmakers to rewrite a new score at the last minute replacing another composer's score
- Scored more than 160 feature films
- Cameo appearance in Gremlins (1984) as a phone booth user and disgruntled yogurt shop customer in Gremlins II (1990)
Compositional Style:
- Feels that film music should enlarge the scope of a film
- Approach is for emotional penetration, not complementing the action
- Doesn't believe in Mickey Mousing
- Constantly experimented with new sounds to use in his scores
- His approach is mostly monothematic-Develop a principal theme that can sum up what the film is about
- Piano is his most frequently used solo instrument
- Normally needs two weeks to develop basic material for a score
- Believes a good film will carry a weak score but a strong score won't save a mediocre picture
- Music should be subordinate within a film. The less music there is in a film the more emphasis it has when it enters
- Finds the score of the 1930s and 1940s cluttered and excessive
- Heightened awareness of when to remain silent in his scoring of a film
Planet of the Apes (1968)
- One of Goldsmith's most innovative scores
- Influences from composers such as Bela Bartok and Igor Stravinsky
- The movie opens with the sound of a prepared piano
- Makes use of the following instruments:
Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls
Ram's horn
Water-drop bars
Brazilian culka (used to create the vocalization of the apes)
Patton (1970)
- One of Goldsmith's most intellectual and ingenious scores
- Film won 7 Oscars
- Score contains about 32 minutes of music for a film 172 minutes in length
The Waltons
- T.V. series that ran from 1972-1981
- Main theme by Jerry Goldsmith
Papillon (1973)
Depicts daily life in a French prison
Chinatown (1974)
In Herrmannesque style Goldsmith scored this for 4 pianos, and 4 harps but played by striking their strings or by plucking them to achieve unusual sounds.
The Omen (1976)
- Jerry's first and only Oscar win for best score
- Has over 8 Oscar nominations
- Opening main title music Ave Satani is somewhat similar to Carl Orff's scenic cantata Carmina Burana (1937)
- Alfred Newman's brother Lionel conducted the scoring sessions
Listen to Ave Satani mp3 below and view the score of the themes on page 3 of the Unit 11 Scores .pdf in Edmodo.
3-09_the_omen_-_ave_satani.mp3 | |
File Size: | 2463 kb |
File Type: | mp3 |