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Thanks Joan. I find that the more I listen to Goldsmith, the more I like him and the less I dislike the things that used to bug me. Kinda like Shostakovich in that way...I used to find much of his music very grating and now he's my favorite Russian composer. With other composers I find that over the years listening to their music more and more some of their stylistic traits annoy me. I can't help but be bored by some (not all by any means) of Barry's or Horner's scores and unlike with most Goldsmith works they don't reveal more of interest with subsequent listens. A lot of Tchaikovsky's music I still love, but some of his stuff now strikes me as less than brilliant. I guess it's a matter of taste in the end but I do believe some composers tend to reward relistening more than others.
Modern composers I most admire and don't get bored with or burnt out on include Beltrami, Giacchino, Powell, Newton Howard (okay, some of his stuff bores me but when he's ON I love him as almost as much as Goldsmith), Portman (like Howard dr can sometimes be on autopilot but listen a masterpiece like Never Let Me Go means she must be on the list), Shore, and Korzeniowski. Also in television Murray Gold's work for Doctor Who has often wowed me...
Yavar
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Posted: |
Nov 5, 2014 - 7:01 AM
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By: |
Smitty
(Member)
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Yes, sooner or later I buy every new Goldsmith issue. I really got obsessed with him around 2002 or so, and it's only gotten worse since then.  Back in the 90s I was just as much a fan of Williams or Horner or Elfman or Barry...now the only composers who come close to my love of Goldsmith are Bernstein, Poledouris, and Rozsa (all three of which I've created similar threads for, I just unfortunately don't have cause to regularly update them because labels don't release their work nearly as often). Other composers on that level of obsession for me for whom I didn't make 'what's left' threads for are Golden-Agers Herrmann, Newman, Friedhofer, Waxman, Korngold, Webb, and Skinner...but their releases are so infrequent nowadays and so much of their music is lost that I have my doubts about whether listing all of their in expanded scores would have much of a point.
But Goldsmith has been my single favorite composer for quite some time now, so I'm glad that he at least is popular enough with so many others that the labels find it worthwhile to put out pretty much anything he ever did...except for a complete S*P*Y*S I guess...lol.
Yavar
P.S. There are also a number of classical composers with whom I am as obsessed as I am with Goldsmith (ie. I am to own and appreciate their complete works): Shostakovich, Saint-Saens, Sibelius, Barber, Raff, Mahler, Dvorak, and a handful of others who are lesser-known...
You are certainly a learned listener, Yavar. Your enthusiasm is good for the hobby. It seems that many other collectors mostly stick to blockbusters and sci-fi stuff.
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Hey, I'm very drawn to blockbusters and sci-fi stuff too...at least I was until they all started sounding alike about 15 years ago! (I know, that's an exaggeration -- some composers definitely stand out, like Powell...or Giacchino with John Carter. But when a truly great composer like Patrick Doyle has to town down his style and fit in the "Remote Control mold" for his big blockbuster scores, it's a tragedy.)
You know where I think most people have a blind spot? We've got tons of people who love classical music. We've got tons of people who love current stuff, or stuff from what's called the Golden Age, Silver Age, or what I long ago termed the "Bronze Age" (for the return of Golden Age-ish writing, heralded by John Williams and Star Wars, which started in the mid-70s and in some ways lasted until at least the 90s, alongside music that was very much not in that vein).
What we don't have is people who are vocally enthusiastic about film music *before* the "Golden Age"...I am of course referring to original orchestral music written for silent films. It really surprises me just how many people think Max Steiner invented original Hollywood scoring in the 30s. He may have introduced some helpful developments, but before him there was Huppertz's great score to Metropolis, or (one of the first film scores,) Saint-Saens's Assassination of the Duke d'Guise, or this excellent music Florent Schmitt wrote for Salammbo, which our own Doug Adams was interviewed about:
http://florentschmitt.com/2014/06/12/film-music-specialist-doug-adams-talks-about-florent-schmitts-salammbo-and-other-music-scores-from-the-silent-film-era/
I guess this kind of stuff tends to get lumped in with "Golden Age" if it's thought of at all, but man, there was a lot of awesome orchestral music being written for films long before Max Steiner ever showed up. I guess it's just a generational thing. "Golden Age" scores are selling less and less because the people who were around when the films came out have sadly been leaving us. Those who were around when the silent age of cinema was in full flower have already been gone for a while. But it feels like even when they were still alive the era was kinda being ignored. In the big film music renaissance of the 70s, it's not like Gerhardt or Bernstein included Florent Schmitt along with Korngold/Rozsa/Newman/Waxman/etc. in their surveys of old Hollywood film music....
Yavar
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Hehe...I must admit to not being big on most silent movies; I mainly love the scores themselves! But then I often love scores to films I've never seen and probably won't ever see. I guess I'm kinda like Thor in that on album I'm able to view them as a completely separate, independent art form even though the music was originally subservient to a film (which isn't to say that there aren't many great scores I love in the films, sometimes more so than on CD).
Unlike Thor though I far prefer not to have a version of the music that's already been edited down for me.
Yavar
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Rather amazing Gremlins 2 has still not been expanded. Although admittedly, the original Varese release has all the essential stuff.
I think Basic Instinct Jerry's masterpiece, and I don't like the mastering job on the Prometheus release. The best track, Games Are Over, is SO soft it's irritating.
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I agree the Prometheus was a little lacking in the mastering dept. and it definitely could use better liner notes and art design! Since it's one of the few 90s titles that Varese apparently doesn't hold in perpetuity, I hope LLL tackles it at some point with Mike Mattessino, Jeff Bond, and Jim Titus doing what they do best! Plus then the unreleased film takes of some cues can finally be released.
As for Gremlins 2, I hope it's coming out in the recently announced December Varese batch! At least there's a decent chance of *some* Goldsmith title they control (because they did so many) getting the Deluxe treatment this year. Or maybe they'll do NIMH out of the blue...
Yavar
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Updating this thread with a little disappointing news and some very happy news!
First, as we all know, none of the four Varese December batch titles was a Goldsmith (though they were all very good titles!) And more recently, Roger answered my inquiry at the Intrada boards by saying they have no more Goldsmith coming this year. This unfortunately means (about 99% sure) that we are getting no new Goldsmith for Christmas...
...HOWEVER, Roger also kindly revealed that Intrada has more Goldsmith coming in early 2015! So everyone start asking Santa in advance so Mrs. Brisby can stop being so sad...
Yavar
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Now that we know there are no further Goldsmith releases coming in 2014, let's have a belated Thanksgiving celebration for all the wonderful ones that came out this year.
First of all, thanks to Tadlow and Prometheus for giving us a wonderful definitive complete recording of QB VII, a serious contender for Goldsmith's magnum opus. The Goldsmith-conducted LP recording (different from the film recording which is lost) merely scratched the surface of this great 90+ minute work, which had to be reconstructed by ear since the written scores were also lost. (Technically, this started shipping at the end of December 2013, but I don't think many people listened to it until early January 2014.)
A new recording started the year and a new recording finished it: thanks to BSX for their neat Goldsmith piano album.
Thanks to everyone involved at LLL for their wonderful reissue of The Blue Max (especially Michael Mattessino who "rebuilt it from the ground up" for noticeably improved sound, and Jim Titus for his amazing package design). Unfortunately the timing prevented Tadlow from going ahead with a then-imminent complete re-recording, but it sounds like that may still happen, just a bit further in the future. No one can deny however that LLL's results were spectacular and it was a very worthy reissue. They also gave us premiere complete versions of The Sum of All Fears and Dennis the Menace which nicely fleshed out those scores as compared with their previous issues.
Similarly to LLL's The Blue Max, we all owe our thanks to Bruce at Kritzerland who had Mike M. tackle Goldsmith's great western score Rio Conchos, restoring it to stereo (except for three short cues) and amazing sound quality!
Thanks to Varese Sarabande for finishing off their early Goldsmith at Universal series with the lovely long-awaited release of The List of Adrian Messenger.
Thanks to Intrada for their definitive complete Psycho II & Deep Rising, as well as three long-desired reissues: Night Crossing (with nearly Blue Max-like sound improvement and some unreleased alternates) and the two Flint LP album recordings!
All told, this year there were 11 new Goldsmith CD albums this year (almost 1 per month!), breaking down as follows:
Re-recordings: 2 (including the BSX piano album, and counting QBVII as early 2014 release)
Reissues (all with improved sound): 4 (though Intrada's Flint two-fer should maybe count as two since they were released separately as LPs even though they easily fit on one CD)
Expansions: 4
Premieres: 1 (The List of Adrian Messenger, because bootlegs don't count!)
(For anyone who's curious how that compares to last year, we had: 1 re-recording, 7 reissues, *9* different score expansions, and 2 premieres! This is not even counting the expansions-as-isolated-Blu-ray-tracks for The Other and In Like Flint...)
And finally, we also had Goldsmith releases on other formats: Mondo issued The Omen on vinyl, while Twilight Time put out Blu-rays with isolated scores for The Blue Max, The Vanishing, and Under Fire. The latter sadly turned out to not feature the complete score by itself as had been initially reported, but it still had a music-and-effects track for previously unreleased cues, which was more than we'd had before for this great score. Hopefully the complete sessions will still turn up some day (I think this might be the most recent "lost" Goldsmith score). Finally, for true Goldsmith completists, Twilight Time's The Flaming Star has a single 1-minute original Goldsmith cue.
Once again, thanks to all the great labels for everything they've done to get these titles out -- and I'm sure we all look forward to seeing what you've got up next!
Yavar
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Has Fox been really cooperative about sharing written scores for re-recordings in the past? I'm completely in the dark about the process, but apparently James didn't have any luck, no...that said, he's had no problem re-recording Goldsmith scores in the past for which there are NO surviving written sources (ie. QB VII, The Salamander). So I'm a bit mystified as to why he would let a lack of cooperation on Fox's part stop him from commissioning a reconstruction of The Chairman by ear if it's the only option.
But perhaps it is wiser to prioritize other things first and hope that eventually Fox will give in, to save work and allow the possibility of a (even more faithful?) re-recording from the original scores. At least we've had *something* of The Chairman released, RM -- wouldn't you rather get Black Patch and Face of a Fugitive represented, for example? Or a Shamus/Pursuit twofer? Heck, maybe the original recording for The Chairman could still turn up...
Yavar
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So what 2014 Goldsmith release are you most thankful for?
I think for me it is QB VII. As I said, it is possibly Goldsmith's magnum opus and overlooked by many people. It doesn't help that the Intrada CD had been out of print (and expensive to get second hand) for well over a decade, and neither did it help that it barely scratched the surface of the full work and many people didn't even realize how much more there was (I seem to recall Roger F. at Intrada acting like there wasn't anything significant missing from their album of the LP recording). The final strike against the score was that it did not even survive any longer in written form.
Enter James Fitzpatrick, reconstructionist Aaron Purvis, Nic Raine with the City of Prague Philharmonic, and Luc at Prometheus footing the bill, and we have one of the most significant (and probably most difficult) film music recordings in all of history. Eternal thanks again to everyone involved!
Now if I have to pick the original recording released this year that was the most pleasant surprise, it would have to be Psycho II.
Yavar
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WOW!!! I couldn't have been more wrong about Goldsmith releases being over this year. Out of left field (or rather, the Facebook page of Quartet Records):
"The December releases are at the plant right now and will be announced next Monday, the 15th.!... This year our Christmas dinner guests are Morricone, Goldsmith and Mancini... Not bad! Three expanded releases, two of them on a double-CD set. Lots of action and adventure music here... Lots of fun, too!"
Though Quartet has done a Goldsmith release once before (Studs Lonigan) it was a straight reissue, not an expansion. This is extremely exciting and I can't think what it could possibly be! I wonder which of the three are the double-CD sets?
Yavar
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Thanks, Yavar, for posting the 2014 summation--QB VII and THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER flew under my radar so I scooped those up (along with THE RED PONY). With around 70 Goldsmith titles in my collection I'm pretty comfortable saying that I'm firmly on "Team Goldsmith." 
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You're welcome and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on QBVII...practically every kind of Goldsmith is encompassed by it.
Yavar
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You're welcome and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on QBVII...practically every kind of Goldsmith is encompassed by it.
Yavar
I'll be sure to let you know. I just listened to Intrada's CAPRICORN ONE release last night (I'd never heard the score before at all) and really, really enjoyed it. (On first pass it reminded me a little of ST: INSURRECTION. Maybe not on the whole, but tiny bits and pieces....) I'll be hitting up QB VII this weekend.
I've been working my way through LLL's ENTERPRISE set which I owe you a response on (concerning DS9 and ENT music) in the LLL News thread.... So much great stuff to listen to right now!
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Wow -- how'd you lay your hands on a copy of THAT anytime recently? SAE's got a copy up for $150, and I can't imagine it's all that much cheaper on Amazon or Ebay. Hope you didn't pay an arm and a leg for it, since Roger recently said they were planning to reissue it sooner or later.
Anyways, if you like the score I highly recommend you pick up the inexpensive LP recording Goldsmith did as well. With the possible exception of Masada, it is probably *the* most different (from the film recording) album recording he ever did, but it is equally good (some say better...it makes the score sound more like his 80s stuff whereas the film recording sounds squarely in the 70s). Only $12.95 @ SAE:
http://screenarchives.com/title_detail.cfm/ID/21976/CAPRICORN-ONE/
I can see what you mean likening it to ST: Insurrection. That Trek score had the most similar action music to Capricorn One. Obviously the synths set them apart, and the rest of the score sounds nothing like the constant chase of Cap One, but there are definitely some reminiscent action bits.
Yavar
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