Jerry Goldsmith Scoring Session

[CoveTom]

I don't know if this has been posted here before or not, but I ran across it on YouTube and thought it was fascinating. It is part of a piece on Jerry Goldsmith's music for Star Trek V, and it includes some actual footage of the scoring session, which I always enjoy seeing.

It also includes him personally playing his Klingon theme on the keyboard, which I think is very cool.

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[Doug Otte]

I don't know if this has been posted here before or not, but I ran across it on YouTube and thought it was fascinating. It is part of a piece on Jerry Goldsmith's music for Star Trek V, and it includes some actual footage of the scoring session, which I always enjoy seeing.

It also includes him personally playing his Ralph Vaughn Williams' Klingon theme on the keyboard, which I think is very cool.

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Thanks for the interesting link. I fixed your post for you.

 

[CoveTom]

Thanks for the interesting link. I fixed your post for you.

No, my original post was fine and did not need fixing, but thank you.

 

[Admiral Archer]

Dude it's so awesome to see Goldsmith working his magic. I wish there was more footage like this, and not just for him scoring Star Trek; I'd probably sell a kidney to see a recording session of him with the orchestra for the film RUDY, which is my personal favorite music ever.

 

[Admiral Archer]

Before I post this, I want everyone to know I did my best to add the below quoted text (and my response to it) to my previous post, but for some reason in order to include the quote I had to make a new post. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thanks for the interesting link. I fixed your post for you.

I'm curious as to what you mean by your "correction". The text you corrected indicates that a composer named Ralph Vaughn Williams composed the Klingon theme, but he died 21 years before the Klingon theme was composed for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Which makes it sound like you are accusing Goldsmith of plagiarizing music composed by a musician from decades earlier. I'd be interested in seeing a source cited to back up this claim.

 

[CoveTom]

I'm curious as to what you mean by your "correction". The text you corrected indicates that a composer named Ralph Vaughn Williams composed the Klingon theme, but he died 21 years before the Klingon theme was composed for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Which makes it sound like you are accusing Goldsmith of plagiarizing music composed by a musician from decades earlier. I'd be interested in seeing a source cited to back up this claim.

There's a piece of music composed by Ralph Vaughn Williams that sounds similar to the Klingon theme. This argument comes up again and again, with people saying composers stole anything that is similar to something they wrote. I find it tiresome. Every composer has influences and oftentimes will write things that are similar to something that has been written before. To suggest that Goldsmith didn't write the Klingon theme is ludicrous.

 

[CoveTom]

Dude it's so awesome to see Goldsmith working his magic. I wish there was more footage like this, and not just for him scoring Star Trek; I'd probably sell a kidney to see a recording session of him with the orchestra for the film RUDY, which is my personal favorite music ever.

I don't know about Rudy, and I haven't yet found more footage of him scoring Star Trek films, but there are pretty extensive videos on YouTube of him doing the scoring sessions for The River Wild.

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[tharpdevenport]

There is more:


Not Without My Daughter:

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Mephisto Waltz:

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The Music From the Movies 1995 DVD has footage from Lionheart.

 

[Firebird]

There's a piece of music composed by Ralph Vaughn Williams that sounds similar to the Klingon theme. This argument comes up again and again, with people saying composers stole anything that is similar to something they wrote. I find it tiresome. Every composer has influences and oftentimes will write things that are similar to something that has been written before. To suggest that Goldsmith didn't write the Klingon theme is ludicrous.

I can hear a lot of what would become the Klingon theme, as well as some other Star Trek V cues, in Goldsmith's score for The Wind and the Lion:

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​

Goldsmith was one for recycling old melodies he'd written and giving them a bit of a twist, just like Alex North and even Miklos Rozsa. He did crib some ideas for some of the V'ger flyover music ostinato portions from Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score.

 

[Tosk]

Jerry is possibly my #1, but I still can't forget his infamous (but awesome) Total Recall opening theme, sounding suspiciously like the temp score was Basil's Conan and Jerry ran out of time.

 

[Doug Otte]

Before I post this, I want everyone to know I did my best to add the below quoted text (and my response to it) to my previous post, but for some reason in order to include the quote I had to make a new post. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.



I'm curious as to what you mean by your "correction". The text you corrected indicates that a composer named Ralph Vaughn Williams composed the Klingon theme, but he died 21 years before the Klingon theme was composed for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Which makes it sound like you are accusing Goldsmith of plagiarizing music composed by a musician from decades earlier. I'd be interested in seeing a source cited to back up this claim.

There's a piece of music composed by Ralph Vaughn Williams that sounds similar to the Klingon theme. This argument comes up again and again, with people saying composers stole anything that is similar to something they wrote. I find it tiresome. Every composer has influences and oftentimes will write things that are similar to something that has been written before. To suggest that Goldsmith didn't write the Klingon theme is ludicrous.

My "correction" line was a common sarcasm that people online use. My winking emoji was meant to convey that I'm joking.

However, as it was pointed out to me on this forum a couple of years ago, the theme does sound very close to the Scherzo theme in Vaughan Williams' 4th Symphony.

We often note that film composers often seem to copy or pay homage to favorite composers, including Goldsmith, Horner, et al. We can hear passages in their work evoking many composers such as Prokofiev, Stravinsky, etc. And, as you wrote, composers have always done this throughout the centuries. Some composers even "copy" themselves!

 

[tharpdevenport]

Jerry is possibly my #1, but I still can't forget his infamous (but awesome) Total Recall opening theme, sounding suspiciously like the temp score was Basil's Conan and Jerry ran out of time.

My personal theory is it was a nod to Basil, who was asked/attached to score TR (he gave an explanation once, but it doesn't line up at all with the timeline facts):

Supposedly rejected. Help me figure them out.

(link goes to the Supposedly page on my website: Rejected Film Scores. Just change "supposedly" to "list" to see the REJECTED/UN-USED/DEMOS scores)

Just like The 13th Warrior he scored, that was originally called Eaters of the Dead (with a different director) and scored by Graeme Revell, ended up with a cue that seems to just lift part of a theme and instrumentation right from Revell's score. A nod, I think.