Book Excerpt of the Day

The film of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man (’69) was considered an interesting failure upon release. Undoubtedly, Jerry Goldsmith’s score is the interesting part. Even Bradbury thought it outshined the film. Because the film is episodic, the score shows some stylistic range. At times it is melancholy and lyrical, and at other times sterile and electronic. It goes from tunefully impressionistic (“Theme”) to chillingly atonal (“Angry Child”). Goldsmith excels at atonality being a self-described serial composer. But his themes aren’t so much austere as they are formal and frequently haunting. The electronic bits are often subtle (like the use of an Echoplex on woodwinds), but on tracks like “21st Century House” the electronics branch out to constitute most of the sound. In fact, his use of electronics anticipates his work on Logan’s Run.

– from Chapter 5: Sci-fidelity and the Superhero Spectrum of Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979

Book Excerpt of the Day

"One of Bernard Herrmann's finest sci-fi scores is Fahrenheit 451. The project came along at a difficult time in the composer's private life, as he'd just gone through a painful divorce. Then Alfred Hitchcock fired Herrmann from Torn Curtain, their seventh big-screen collaboration, for failing to deliver a pop-oriented score. Ironically, it was Hitchcock disciple Francois Truffaut who hired the composer to score his adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a cautionary tale of a dystopian future where books are forbidden and burned by firemen... When Herrmann asked Truffaut why he'd been selected when the director had access to younger, more avant-garde composers, the director said that those composers would supply him with music of the 20th century, and that Herrmann would compose music for the 21st century."

– from Chapter 5: Sci-Fidelity and the Superhero Spectrum of Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979