Composer, Jerry Goldsmith was born in 1929. He was known to many for composing the film scores for Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run, and for five of the Star Trek films. Some of the other mainstream credits include Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, and Alien. Goldsmith’s contribution to the horror genre included Poltergeist, Gremlins, The Mummy, and one of his most famous scores, The Omen.
For many who are not familiar with the intricacies of music, Goldsmith gained some notoriety with Planet of The Apes for what is known as an echoplex. This is a kind of delay effect with a very complex explanation behind it. Goldsmith used looping drums, horns without mouthpieces, and woodwind players using their fingers, not their mouths, to play their instruments. He also used stainless steel mixing bowls and had the orchestra imitate gorilla sounds for the score. This escape from convention earned Goldsmith a nomination for Best Original Score. The soundtrack score remains number 18 in the top 25 of American film scores of the American Film Institute.
In 1976, Goldsmith composed the score to the film, The Omen. As he had with Planet of the Apes, he took an unconventional approach to the composition. With the exception of the film’s love theme, The Omen’s score is a combination of haunting violins, brass instruments, and a choir. This was the first film score to utilize a choir, who sang/chanted Latin phrases throughout. This harrowing combination provides one of the most haunting backgrounds for a film ever.
Called Ave Satani, the theme song to The Omen was nominated for Best Original Song. It was one of the few foreign language songs ever to be nominated. It was in Latin, remember. The film won the 1976 Academy Award for Best Original Score. Carol Goldsmith, Jerry’s wife, also wrote lyrics and performed The Piper Dreams for the film.
In 1978, Goldsmith would return to compose the score for Damien: Omen II. This score is without a love theme but contains a lot of the same grand pipes and strings as the first. Like the first film’s score, this one does not seem to give the listener a second to rest from its uneasy feeling. It seems to focus more on the darker side of the film’s title character.
Goldsmith would return in 1981 to score Omen III: The Final Conflict. The National Philharmonic Orchestra would perform the score, conducted by Lionel Newman, who conducted for the first two films. This score would also include a mixture of both an orchestra and a choir. As it was part of growing technology, Goldsmith used some electronic additions but they would not overpower the other, more traditional elements. Instead of using the previous theme, Ave Santani, Goldsmith wrote a new theme for the Damien character. It would be introduced during the opening credits.
Although best known for The Omen theme, Goldsmith had the ability to create music which fit the film he was composing for. It would never be confused with the score of another and would remain, in its own way, distinctive. As with any composure, there would be signature portions which would make the composure recognizable but Planet of the Apes is very different from The Omen.