Jerry Goldsmith
Concert Works
* Music for Orchestra
* Fireworks
* Christus Apollo
Anthony Hopkins (narrator), Eirian James (mezzo), London Voices, London
Symphony Orchestra/Jerry Goldsmith.
Telarc CD-80560 TT: 51:21
Summary for the Busy Executive: Fireworks indeed.
It took me a while to realize that movie scores actually had composers.
When I was twelve, I heard Rozsa's score to Ben-Hur, which bowled me over
and moved me to buy a piano reduction "for home use." That was my road
to Damascus. I now understood that the music didn't just appear or was
somehow painted on the film, but that someone actually chose the notes,
just as Bach and Beethoven did. Later, Goldsmith's American pastoral music
for Lilies of the Field had the same effect. Rozsa and Goldsmith became
names to watch for. Goldsmith has had, of course, a fairly successful
movie career, with distinguished scores for The Illustrated Man, Patton,
The Sand Pebbles, Planet of the Apes, The Wind and the Lion, music usually
many times better than the movies it supported. I've not encountered
Goldsmith's concert works before this disc, so these are really the only
three pieces I know.
Two qualities stand out: Goldsmith's sense of drama and his mastery
of several idioms. Each score is all of a piece, but each does differ
from the others. Music for Orchestra is twelve-tone, Christus Apollo
I would call "eclectically twelve-tone," and Fireworks a big, tonal,
extrovert extravaganza befitting its title. In all three scores, however,
Goldsmith's ability to find a dramatic structure carries the listener
along. Whatever one may think of the ultimate aesthetic success of these
works, one can't really deny their expressive power.
Music for Orchestra comes from a low point in the composer's life --
a divorce and the death of his mother from cancer. In the late Sixties
and early Seventies, Goldsmith found the technique "liberating," a way
to express his deepest feelings. Most important, the feelings came first.
This is no academic exercise just to see if he can do it. Goldsmith lays
out his materials clearly. If you know something about dodecaphonic
process, the ease with which you can follow his (non-trivial) motific
argument will amaze you. This music wants to communicate rather than to
obfuscate. The work falls into three large sections: a cry of pain, a
section of heavy introspection, and a final allegro full of Crestonian
cross-rhythms and big strides. For me, this is the finest piece of the
three.
Christus Apollo shows greater ambition and achieves less success. It's
the most elaborate piece on the program -- nothing less than a full-scale
oratorio with soloist, chorus, speaker (Anthony Hopkins, no less), and
an orchestra large enough to include organ, extra percussion, maybe more
than one harp, as well as the usual suspects. The text, by Ray Bradbury,
dissatisfies in the way most Bradbury does: beautiful writing to express
lousy ideas. The cantata is dodecaphonic, but the effect differs radically
from the Music for Orchestra. It comes closer to Impressionism than the
Edvard-Munch Expressionism of most twelve-tone pieces. The "edges" are
less sharp. Goldsmith interests himself in finding a sensual, palpable
beauty to the idiom, rather than merely rigorous consistency of pattern.
The rigor is there, of course, but it's not an end in itself. He has
mastered the orchestra to such an extent that he finds both beauty and
power much of the time. Indeed, the music (and Anthony Hopkins) carries
the text. I should also admit that I seem to hear long stretches of music
eminently, beautifully tonal. Whether the composer has in fact generated
them from a 12-tone row I can't confirm or deny without a score. Again,
the procedures of composition matter less than the resultant music. The
plot, for those who care, is essentially Jesus Goes into Space. The idea
is too silly to bother calling it blasphemous, but in fairness I must say
I doubt these misgivings would occur to someone while listening to the
piece. Bradbury has always had a gift for bewitching word-music,
occasionally stepping over the line into pure purple.
A Voice spoke in the dark,
And there was Light.
And summoned up by Light upon the Earth
The creatures swam
And moved upon the land.
And lived in garden wilderness;
All this, we know.
The Seven Days are written in our blood
With hand of Fire.
A neat conflation of Genesis and John. Bradbury also comes up with great
"scenes," to appeal to a dramatic composer, which of course Goldsmith is,
and Goldsmith rises to the occasion. I can best describe the function
of the music as an accompaniment to scenes -- its great strength and
limitation. Although we get almost thirty-five minutes of drama and
some very effective moments, we get very few "hits," like Berlioz's "Holy
Family's Farewell" or Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus. In part, this is due
to Goldsmith's decision to proceed by large scenes, rather than by separate
numbers. Goldsmith's cantata is thus a creditable piece of work, but I
doubt it will prove a loveable one.
Fireworks, on the other hand, asks for nothing more than to be liked.
Although he originally wrote the piece to accompany a fireworks display,
Goldsmith realized that he was actually writing "a celebration of Los
Angeles ... the city where I was born and had lived my entire life."
As a portrait of L. A., it doesn't do much for me. It's way too
noble. To me, the only thing it really captures about the city is its
self-aggrandizement and its love of masks. When I think of Los Angeles
in musical terms, I think of something more like Michael Daugherty's
Metropolis Symphony. Fireworks misses the giddiness, the glitz, the
amalgam of so many different cultures, the loony utopianism. The music
is just way too generic as a portrait. It would be equally inappropriate
for Sandusky, Cleveland, Detroit, Miami, Boston, and Charleston. On the
other hand, it's gorgeous music sustained over nearly nine minutes -- no
small feat.
The performances are all first-rate. Balances, particularly in the
texturally tricky Christus Apollo, are nothing short of miraculous,
and the recorded sound is Telarc's usual outstanding.
Steve Schwartz
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