Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004)

As you can read in my personal data, Jerry Goldsmith is my favorite composer. Even though this great composer has already left this mortal plane of existence, his great scores still serve to provide us with great joy in listening.

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a few concerts of his, in 1987, 1989 and between 1999 and 2001 in London. I also wrote a small booklet about the man for the Jerry Goldsmith fanclub way back in the 1980s, which merited a few letters of thanks from the man himself.

Jerry Goldsmith got his start in the days of live television in the early 1950s. He slowly graduated to feature films, until his works of the early 1960s garnered him acclaim from his peers for the John Huston film FREUD. Bernard Herrmann also commented favourably on his score for LONELY ARE THE BRAVE, a 1962 Kirk Douglas cowboy drama. Remaining in the television arena with one foot, Goldsmith balanced scoring episodes for The Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff's Thriller, The Man From UNCLE and other shows with musical chores for major features such as THE SATAN BUG, THE BLUE MAX and Otto Preminger's IN HARMS WAY.

Building up a formidable body of work on both levels, Goldsmith managed to impress his audiences with unusual sounds for Franklin Schaffner's THE PLANET OF THE APES, resulting in an Academy Award Nomination. He would receive many more of these before his score for the horror flick THE OMEN (1976) garnered him the Oscar itself. In the late 70s, Goldsmith revitalized science fiction with a masterfully potent score for the much maligned STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE, which served to redefine the musical landscape for Star Trek television scores for years to come.

During the 1980s Jerry started to incorporate synthesizers into his standard orchestra to enrich his orchestral sounds. He occasionally also tried to experiment with fully performed synthesizer scores for films like Runaway (a 1984 Michael Crichton thriller starring Tom Selleck) and Criminal Law (a 1989 Martin Campbell directed legal thriller). The 90s (and 2000s) saw Goldsmith diversify his music over a number of film genres as well as retool his Star Trek music for three more Trek outings. Even though his music for these Star Trek films became more intricate and impressive, the films turned out to be less and less interesting for a general audience. It is therefor unfortunate that Goldsmith crafted a fantastic score for the least interesting film of the Trek genre, which would also almost serve as his own swang song.

Since his passing, none have been able to take his place. Jerry Goldsmith was a composer whose music will not be forgotten, for as he said, if it is good, it will be remembered. And yes, Jerry, your music was very good.

I will talk about his work on this site on numerous occasions, if I feel the need to criticize younger composers, or if I just need to vent my admiration for what he managed to achieve in music.

You may no longer be among us, Jerry, but you will never be forgotten.