The 13th Warrior (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Spies and Secret Agents Film Score Concert

Soul Stirring Choral Works Film Score Concert No. 1

Western Themes Film Score Concert No. 1

Sports Themes Film Score Concert No. 2

Sports Themes Film Score Concert No. 1

Super Heroes Film Score Concert No. 2

Fantasy & Adventure Film Score Concert No. 1

Science Fiction Film Score Concert No. 1

1992 - Film Score Concert of Highlights from the Year

1993 - Film Score Concert of Highlights from the Year

1984 - Film Score Concert of Highlights of the Year

Best of Jerry Goldsmith

Steven Spielberg: A Soundtrack Anthology

Post by Travis Elder

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Steven Spielberg: A Film Score Anthology

Films Directed by Steven Spielberg:

1964 Firelight

1971 Duel

1974 The Sugarland Express

1975 Jaws

1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind

1979 1941

1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark

1982 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

1983 Twilight Zone: The Movie

1984 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

1985 The Color Purple

1987 Empire of the Sun

1989 Always

1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

1991 Hook

1993 Jurassic Park

1993 Schindler's List

1997 The Lost World: Jurassic Park

1997 Amistad

1998 Saving Private Ryan

2001 A.I. Artificial Intelligence

2002 Minority Report

2002 Catch Me If You Can

2004 The Terminal

2005 War of the Worlds

2005 Munich

2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2011 The Adventures of Tintin

2011 War Horse

2012 Lincoln

2015 Bridge of Spies

2016 The BFG

2017 The Post

2018 Ready Player One

2021 West Side Story

2022 The Fabelmans

Jerry Goldsmith Award for Excellence in Action Scoring

Post by Travis Elder

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Imagine there is a #JerryGoldsmith Award for Excellence in Action Scoring that honors the best in scoring for action set pieces in film, television, and video games. What cues/composers are your nominees for 2021? pic.twitter.com/ro5vGyCPV2

— ScoreCues (@moviescores) November 22, 2021

Related:

Jerry Goldsmith's 1990 Commencement Speech

2021 - Action Set Pieces From Scores (YouTube Playlist)

Commencement Speech of Jerry Goldsmith at Berklee College of Music's 1990 Commencement Exercises

Post by Travis Elder

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Jerry Goldsmith receives his honorary doctorate 

degree from Berklee College of Music

On Saturday, May 12, 1990, Jerry Goldsmith received an honorary doctorate degree from Berklee College of Music at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts. A video of Goldsmith's commencement address is available to view on their website. What follows is a transcription of his remarks:

Thank you. I'm Jerry Goldsmith. Class of '90 also. Thank you Mr. Carter for the extra Academy Award. Glad somebody finally gave it to me! Shows what kind of taste there is back here.

When appearing before a group of students I am invariably asked, "How do we get started? How do we get our big break?" I really regret that I don't have an answer for that. As a matter of fact, upon seeing so many new names in motion picture and television credits, and after hearing their music, I would like to ask them how they got their big break. In my case, I suppose it was just being in the right place at the right time.

After I dropped out of college, which by the way makes today's event all the more important since I will finally get my college diploma. A fact, that is not looked upon lightly by my father who is attending today's ceremonies. Anyway, at the time of my departure from college, I was asked by a friend of mine to write the music for the experimental CBS Radio workshop. This was a program that was produced by the non-production employees at CBS Radio, all looking for their big break. I wrote the music, copied the parts, begged my musician friends to come and play, and it was a great success. The composer who regularly did the show had gone on to write the music for a commercial radio show. It was Dragnet, which at that time was only on radio. I don't want to say how far back I go, but yes. So it became possible for me to do the show on a regular basis.

Since these productions were auditioned by the various producers and directors at the studio, all in volved were hoping that these shows would be their passport to fame and fortune, but there was one catch. In order to participate in these discussions, one had to be an employee of CBS. Since I had one semester of typing in junior high school, someone suggested that I take a typing test and perhaps work in the script department or the mimeograph department. So, with a little help from the supervisor in charge, who just happened to be a producer of the workshop, I passed the test and was hired as a script typist. The next six months, I typed scripts, wrote music for the workshop, and courted the favors of the various secretaries, especially the secretary at the head of the music department. One day, she arranged a meeting with Lud Gluskin, then the West Coast Vice President in charge of music for CBS Radio and Television. I came to his office armed with a bundle of manuscripts and recordings of the workshop shows I had done. I made my appearance. He listened to some of the shows and thumbed through some of the manuscripts. I don't think he could really read music, but he seemed to give me that impression. I don't know. He seemed impressed and hired me right then and there to work in the music department. to

About a year after doing every conceivable job in the music department, from filing titles in the record library, to writing the score for dramatic radio broadcasts, I got my really big break. Live, dramatic television had come to the West Coast and with it the need for young and talented people who would work endless hours for very little money. I was assigned to write and conduct the music for a weekly anthology called "Climax". Each week a new production was done, and with it came a new score. Since in those days--it was in 1955--there was no tape, you would do the show live at 5 p.m. for broadcast to the East Coast, and then three hours later it would be played back to the West Coast in what was called a "hot kinescope," a sixteen sixteen-millimeter film that was quickly developed and then rushed to the studio so it could be broadcast. Therefore, the first rehearsal was at 6:30 a.m.

I'll never forget arriving at the studio, ready to start the orchestra rehearsal the first day. Placing my music on the podium, I noticed that someone had carved in its wooden surface the word "Experience". That really stopped me in my tracks. For what the hell was I doing there, ready to conduct eighteen professional musicians in music to accompany real-life movie stars and a drama to be seen by millions of people that evening? It was a very humbling experience. One that I have never forgotten.

I remember some years later recording a score for a motion picture, the director asked for a change in the music. I thought for a second or two, and then dictated the changes to the orchestra of a hundred players. Someone looking on in amazement asked, "How in the world did you do that?" "Simple," I said, "experience." That word carved in the wood of that podium still is vivid in my memory. It keeps reminding me that today's experience is only a preparation for the unknown of tomorrow. You know I remember we would be there hours and hours, and in between each piece of music, one would sit and wait for the next moment to play while the drama was continuing, and out of boredom because I had seen the show so many times, I would sit there with a pencil and go over that "exper…" and it would get deeper and deeper after five years. I felt like someone was trying to tell me something and I have learned that they were telling me the right thing.

We are so lucky to have chosen music for a career. Yes, it can be difficult, but the excitement and joy of what we create can and will far outweigh the disappointment that we will inevitably experience. Along with the wonderment of creativity, we are now witness to some of the most innovative technology now available to musicians. I remember some thirty years ago sitting with an engineer in front of a bulky mono-tape machine. The engineer, armed with a razor blade, hour after hour, tediously splicing away making intercuts in attempts to improve a piece of music. I then think back to just a week ago assembling the music for a new CD, the engineer sitting in front of a digital editing console, made 48 complicated intercuts and sequenced the album in a matter of four hours.

We are bearing witness to some of the most sophisticated and ingenious means of making music ever known. But with this dawning of new technology, we must be ever cautious that we are in command of these new tools and not vice versa. It's far too easy to touch the keys of a sophisticated new synthesizer, and hear some new magical sound and think that we are creating heavenly music. It's far too easy to step time a complicated figure into a sequencer, and play it back and think we are great virtuosi. Nothing will replace the education that you have received at Berklee and will continue to receive as you enter the professional world. The continual gathering of experience will make you the masters of these new machines.

I sometimes think that the people creating all this new technology think at a much faster rate than I do. For as you all know, the moment you receive a new piece of equipment, it is already obsolete. I laugh at myself when I think that five years ago, my first computer was an Apple Plus with 64k of memory and now I used a Mac 2 with a 40 megabyte hard disk, when I probably never realized more than .01 percent of the old Apple 64k.

My use of electronics is used ninety percent of the time in conjunction with acoustic instruments. Since I generally work with an orchestra of 75 to 85 musicians, samplers are not necessary. My use of electronics is to help me realize certain sounds and colors that cannot be reproduced acoustically. I someday envision the standard symphonic orchestra to consist of its normal four sections--strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion--to include a new fifth section, which would be the electronic.

I remember when midi was first introduced and the fun it was to layer five different synthesizers. The very success of that indulgence along with a full symphony orchestra, made for quite a sonic mess. Through my continuing experience, I learned to paint electronic colors far more simply and judiciously so that every electronic sound became something very special in the total musical fabric.

One of the problems I have experienced in combining electronic with acoustic instruments is the need to be in the hands of a competent mixer. While the orchestra can be balanced and nuances adjusted in the room, the levels of the electronics--since they are being recorded directly and not acoustically--must be balanced by the engineer. At first, recording the electronics and the orchestra simultaneously required me to mix down the music for proper balances after the recording was finished. With the continual practice and relationship with one mixer, I have been able to record my last few scores completely without having to mix down, thus getting a truer performance.

Again, I go back to the word "experience." This time it is the experience of my mistakes. As a matter of fact, as I look back on my career, it's my mistakes that have taught me the most. So many of us are so frightened when we sit down to work. We must be perfect. We must be different. The list of "musts" is so endless that it can paralyze our brains. We must learn to accept imperfection as part of the path to perfection, the latter being unattainable, but nevertheless, the constant goal. Through these imperfections we will grow. Once we can accept the imperfections that creep into our work as part of the norm, we can then release ourselves from that mind-numbing paralysis. Only my years of experience have given me that kind of freedom and that's why you must now begin to realize that your education is just beginning. You've been given the tools to work with. You've learned how to use those tools. Now you spend the rest of your lives perfecting their use for the unknown of tomorrow. Thank you.

The Vanishing by Jerry Goldsmith (1993)

A review of the soundtrack album by Travis Elder
Posted December 2, 2017
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The year 1993 was a renaissance of sorts for my youth. I worked at a movie theater, watched lots of movies, consumed popcorn in bulk, drank gallons of soda, and did my homework in between movie showings. What more could a geeky teenager ask for? It was during this time that I discovered Jerry Goldsmith's alluring score for The Vanishing. The score quickly grew on me as I caught segments of it during my theater checks, so much so that when Varese Sarabande finally issued a limited edition album in 2007, I quickly snatched it up.

The Vanishing is an obscure, psychological thriller that was poorly received by audiences and critics alike. The film follows Jeff Harriman's (Kiefer Sutherland) obsessive search for his girlfriend Diane Shaver (Sandra Bullock) after she mysteriously disappeared at a gas station while they vacationed. So clinically obsessed is he that when Diane's abductor, Barney Cousins (Jeff Bridges), shows up on his doorstep, he is all too eager to follow a path that few would take. Cousins promises to reveal Diane's fate if Jeff gets into his car and comes with him right then.  So begins Jeff's unlikely and unsurprisingly chilling journey to discover what befell his girlfriend including a return to the gas station where Cousins abducted Diane.  Fortunately for Jeff, his new girlfriend, Rita (Nancy Travis), intervenes to attempt saving him from his own blind stupidity.

The film's main theme opens the score in The Practice, which plays as Cousins, a chemistry teacher and ironically family man, sadistically practices and plans his abduction.  He even times how long a chemically infused handkerchief held over his own nose takes to knock him out.  Goldsmith's theme for Cousins' villainous planning is a fiendish two-note motif, a smooth and flowing, waltz-style theme accompanied by precisely calculated rhythmic backing.  The theme's harmonic slinkiness belies so well Cousins cruel intentions as it leads you along with its attractive, flowing grace.  It becomes all the more frightening when Goldsmith morphs the theme into dissonance as if to say, "Gotcha!"  Of course, Goldsmith does these kinds of themes so well.  He did so in the previous year's Basic Instinct and he would do so again in the next year's even more superior effort in The Shadow.

For the relationship between Jeff and his girlfriends, Goldsmith crafts a love theme that he most often arranges in plaintive form because it represents the loss Jeff feels for Diane.  As such, it often comes across mournful and regretful such as it does when it first appears in Apologies.  It never reaches the glitzy heights of Forever Young, or the elegance of The Russia House, though these themes share commonalities.  The theme does get a few tender performances such as with woodwinds in Forever and with both strings and woodwinds in A Night's Sleep.  Perhaps the most effective, technical use of the theme occurs in Drink where Goldsmith intertwines it in counterpoint to unsettling effect with the nefarious two-note motif.  The highlight performance though occurs in End Titles where we are treated to a sultry performance pared with jazzy percussion and piano much like Goldsmith did with even better results in The Russia House's concluding cue with that score's love theme.  This closing rendition saves The Vanishing's love theme from footnote status.  Even so, it pales in comparison to another romantic theme in another thriller that same year composed by James Horner for Darby in The Pelican Brief.

Mention must also be made of the pivotal role synth elements play in the score.  Throughout, Goldsmith incorporates his trademark electronics of the time (think Total Recall, Star Trek Insurrection, and even Rambo).  Included are synth rhythms, pulses, pops, claps, tings, and growls. For example, in New Message (at 2:19) and Abduction (at :02) we hear an elongated synth growl that Hans Zimmer would later replicate with great effect in Crimson Tide two years later. The electronic elements add to the suspenseful ambiance and enhance both the intrigue textures and the action set pieces. What could otherwise function as mundane underscore becomes much more interesting as Goldsmith morphs, arranges, contracts, and expands his synthetic elements in a variety of ways.

No doubt this score remains obscure because of the film's box office failure and its limited release by Varese in 2007, long after its debut. If not for my job at a movie theater, I could easily have missed it. Much of the score, its themes and synth elements, are very typical of Goldsmith, which is both a strength and a weakness.  However, too often thriller scores become tiresome because the quieter sections tend toward boring, monotonous droning.  Not so here as Goldsmith's keeps things interesting with his intelligent and snappy integration of synth permutations.  Goldsmith's effective use of counterpoint is also appreciated.  In the end, the score remains a nostalgic favorite that I return to for its slyly seductive main theme, the end credits performance of the love theme, and Goldsmith's trademark combination of orchestra and synth in both in its suspenseful sections and its action music.  Sadly, the Varese Sarabande limited release is now out of print, but copies remain on the secondary market including  Amazon.com. 

1. Practice (4:50)*+#

2. The Stars (1:05)
3. Statistics (1:52)+
4. Steps (1:07)
5. Apologies (2:13)~
6. Forever (1:37)~
7. Diane’s Missing (2:34)*^
8. That’s It (:55)~
9. Passing Time (:37)~^
10. A Night’s Sleep (1:40)~
11. Weekend Duty (2:12)
12. The Password (4:40)#
13. The Vision (3:44)~#+
14. New Message (2:29)
15. Hello, Jeff (:39)
16. Let Me Tell You (3:18)+#
17. A Variation (2:18)
18. The Lure (1:00)+
19. Abduction (2:40)*+#^
20. Don’t Tell (:52)
21. Drink (4:01)+#~
22. Surprise (2:07)#
23. Where’s Jeff? (3:46)^
24. Let’s Talk (9:00)*+#~
25. End Titles (3:17)*~

Total album time: 65:02
Album release year: 2007

+Contains main theme
#Contains two-note villain motif
~Contains love theme
^Action cue
*1993 Favorites Pick
Recommended, shortened album program

5 for $5 - Rousing Sports Score Greats

by Travis Elder
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This year on ScoreCues we are excited to present a new feature for the budget conscious looking for some great music.  If you are like me you a) don't have the funds to buy even a tenth of the large number of score cues released each year and b) have limited time for listening to the gargantuan amount of hours of score music available.  With these ideas in mind we will regularly feature each month a playlist of five cues costing no more than $5.99 that will let you get the most bang for your listening pleasure buck.  So with out further adieu we present our first 5 for $5: Rousing Sports Score Greats. 

Sports movies often bring out a composers best.  Perhaps this is because sports movies at their core are almost always about an underdog overcoming great odds to triumph.  This theme lends itself well to musical interpretations as this fine playlist below shows: 


Titans Spirit by Trevor Rabin from Remember the Titans (7:25).  First up is Trevor Rabin's muscular manthem from Remember the Titans.  Rabin gave the Titans a spirit in his music that resonates to the core and is sure to arose your inner titan.

The Final Game by Jerry Goldsmith from Rudy (6:13).  Jerry Goldsmith set the gold (couldn't resist the pun) standard for sports movie scoring with his scores to Hoosiers (aka Best Shot ) and Rudy.  The Final Game highlights the final pivotal sequence in Rudy where Daniel "Rudy" Ruettgier fulfills his dream to play football as a player for the University of Notre Dame.  The scene brought me to tears and Jerry's score packs an emotional wallop.

Overture by Bill Conti from Rocky II (8:38).  The Overture from Rocky II is arguably the best cue from the entire Rocky franchise particularly as it states most all of the great themes from the first two movies including the Rocky fanfare including the discoized version, the heartful theme for Adrian, and the new Redemption theme.  This cue is sure to get your heart pumping, energize your disco juices, and inspire you to run ever faster and work harder during your exercise routines.

From Master to Student to Master by James Horner from The Karate Kid (10:33).  This cue from the 2010 Karate Kid reboot was a highlight for me that year.  If you listen to the thirty second sample for this cue you are scarcely given any idea of the powerful punch this cue has to offer.  The cue starts off soft and builds until the last amazing five minutes and 44 seconds, the training montage sequence from the movie, which will blow you away with its stirring and inspirational fanfare.

Ballet for Brawlers by James Peterson from The Red Canvas (11:29).  Don't be fooled by the use of the term 'ballet' as this cue is definitely not Tchaikovsky, but a modern, epic action brawl for a little known mixed martial arts movie.  Its obvious the composer put his heart and soul into this cue and hopefully more will come to appreciate it.  

With so many other great sports cues remaining we are certain to revisit this theme again for our 5 for $5.  At $4.85 and clocking in at over 44 minutes this playlist of sports score cue classics is an out of the park deal!