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Jerry Goldsmith. I've never shed that many tears for a person I didn't know. I spent the day listening to his music.
This right here. I am still eternally grateful to the FSM member who got me his autograph when it was hard to get one.
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I was deeply affected by the loss of Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone and Basil Poledouris.
Elmer and Jerry for me, I felt both personally. Still do.
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Jerry without a doubt. There had been rumors of illness and he had pulled out of a couple concerts at the time but for the most part it came out of nowhere for me.
In a lot of ways I'm still in disbelief Michael Kamen is not alive. It seems inconceivable. Same with James Horner. Sad sad sad and somewhat cruel. They had so much good left. Just too early.
The last one is strange in that Johan Johannsson was not someone I knew very well outside of a piece of work I feel is one of the top sci-fi movie and scores of the last 20 years - Arrival (2016). I was *just* starting to take notice and he was gone in an instant. It seemed at the time and still does that the world was robbed of someone with great great promise.
In the future there will be two specific losses I have no idea how I'll deal with and I've been mentally and emotionally preparing for a couple of years. I won't say names because that would be weird, but I think everyone has their people that the loss of will be very trying.
But to paraphrase a respected doctor - "They're not really gone, as long we remember them."
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Elmer Bernstein--the first composer whose signature style I could recognize.
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"When you are young, in any generation, major public names surround you like great trees. When you grow older, and start losing friends, one day you realize that you don't have many left. And then there is another dark revelation: even those famous figures are going, and one day it comes to you: They're clear-cutting the landscape of your life." - Gene Lees
I think this is relevant. It's like having a part of your own being torn away, and especially if it's part of your childhood. Sometimes, as in the case of Morricone - who I just assumed was eternal - there's almost a sense of anger, a "How dare you leave me orphaned", once one realises that there aren't many trees still standing. I think, in my case, that's why I'm actually MORE affected by elderly "celebrity" deaths. They were older than me, and so they guided me in forming, for better or worse, what I am now.
I don't think I'd read that Gene Lees quote before, but there's a compendium of Lees' Jazzletter articles floating around, and in one he speaks about his reaction to Hugo Friedhofer's death in 1981. David Raksin called him and said, "Hugo is gone". Lees did not know how to react... like he'd lost a father? No. A friend? Sort of but not quite.
Lees finishes the article by saying something which reminds me of Morricone's passing. I think perhaps that both Friedhofer and Morricone shared a very dry and wry sense of humour. Morricone had stated beforehand that he didn't want a memorial service becuase he didn't want to bother anyone. Friedhofer did have a memorial service, attended by Lees, David Raksin, Leonard Rosenman, Elmer Bernstein...I can't remember who else. But Lees recalls it as being not remotely sad. Full of laughter. The "funniest" part was that Friedhofer's dear wife did not turn up, somehow "upholding Hugo's tradition of not attending affairs in his honor".
There's a footnote which talks about how, as lives go, Friedhofer's was quite long, that he was brilliant, and that he left us with thousands of hours of wonderful music to explore. Same as Morricone I suppose. We should be rejoicing.
I do realise that I started off on one subject and finished on another, but I didn't really know where this was going to go when I started.
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Jarre
Goldsmith
Horner
Kamen
These were my 'John Lennon's' and this tough guy cried for days on end it seems, rejoicing in replaying albums I had already worn out.
Morricone is a tough one, but his legacy and catalogue. I feel he said everything.
The aforementioned I feel were cut short & that hurts the most. There is an unheard symphony or concerto beyond film scores from those four men we will never hear and that hurts, deeply.
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Jarre
Goldsmith
Horner
Kamen
These were my 'John Lennon's' and this tough guy cried for days on end it seems, rejoicing in replaying albums I had already worn out.
Morricone is a tough one, but his legacy and catalogue. I feel he said everything.
The aforementioned I feel were cut short & that hurts the most. There is an unheard symphony or concerto beyond film scores from those four men we will never hear and that hurts, deeply.
That's actually quite a good sentiment. I shouldn't bring my work (old folks home) into this but the simple fact is that the guy went while he was still great. The way we all want our loved ones to be remembered. So for a genius like EM I suppose it was actually 'good'.
There's so much of his jolly stuff around it won't be long before we can forget the sad part.
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Posted: |
Jul 10, 2020 - 11:20 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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That's true, Paul. Even if I started exploring Morricone's work aggressively, at age 42, with the intention of hearing it all, it would no doubt take me the rest of my own life to do so, and maybe even that wouldn't do.
I'm thinking the same of my alltime favourite Williams. Even though I've seen all of the films he's scored, and have a more comprehensive collection than most, there's still a lot of television work I've never seen, and which -- again -- will take me many, many years to track down, long after he himself is gone.
Composers who leave behind that kind of legacy will very much continue to be part our lives, even finding "new" things that we've never heard before.
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That's true, Paul. Even if I started exploring Morricone's work aggressively, at age 42, with the intention of hearing it all, it would no doubt take me the rest of my own life to do so, and maybe even that wouldn't do.
I'm thinking the same of my alltime favourite Williams. Even though I've seen all of the films he's scored, and have a more comprehensive collection than most, there's still a lot of television work I've never seen, and which -- again -- will take me many, many years to track down, long after he himself is gone.
Composers who leave behind that kind of legacy will very much continue to be part our lives, even finding "new" things that we've never heard before.
A friend once said to me when I was intent on buying EVERY Bernard Herrmann score/soundtrack... why don't you just buy the best? Why worry about the stuff that maybe wasn't as good as the rest? There's a philosophy in that.
But he didn't quite get our obsessive nature did he? Lol. There's no way I'm going to get every EM score, but I know for sure that the ones I've got bring me SO much pleasure it doesn't really matter. But it will be nice discovering some new stuff because he was prolific as well as a genius...
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I've never been terribly moved by the death of celebrities, athletes or artists. I loved Karen Carpenter, she had the voice of an angel and I even had a crush on her growing up. I was sad when she died but not crushed. Nor did it really affect me when Jerry Goldsmith passed away.
Pretty well sums up my viewpoint. I certainly had a tinge of sadness with Jerry Goldsmith's passing, made all the more poignant by his will to work to the very last possible moment, but otherwise, celebrities, for the most part, aren't people close to me. A friend, a relative, a pet, a person who inspired you on a personal level (as a mentor for instance), I can easily relate to.
I am always a bit baffled with the teary-eyed reactions (such as in Horner's case) from perfect strangers, but I'm not judging them.
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Posted: |
Jul 11, 2020 - 10:24 PM
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By: |
Ray Worley
(Member)
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I was saddened when many of my favorites died: Miklos Rozsa, Bernard Herrmann, Maurice Jarre.
But the only ones who really affected me to the point of even shedding a little tear were Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and of course, Ennio Morricone.
I hate to admit it, because it seems a little callous, but when a composer whose work I don't have a deep fondness for dies, I just go "Oh, that's too bad." And that's the end of it.
Kamen and Horner fell into that gap I was shocked at the news because they went too soon, but I never really was a big fan of their music. If you have an emotional connection to the music, it hits harder when you lose the composer. Goldsmith, Bernstein, and Morricone were the giant redwoods in my "landscape of life" that fell victim to clear-cutting because they have been my favorites since my earliest days of collecting. Rozsa was one my "Top 5", but it's been over 20 years , so I don't really remember how I reacted. Probably felt gutted.
When the last, John Williams, goes, it will probably hit extra hard because none of my Top 5 will be living.
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