Whoa, I’m awfully late with this one…anyway, here’s a bit of science fiction film music. As great as Jerry Goldsmith was at his best, I had trouble with the last decade or so of his career, because a lot of the time I found his work…well, boring. He still wrote some gems in that period, though, chief among them the score to Star Trek First Contact. The action writing in that score is pretty good, but the real meat-and-potatoes comes in the music he wrote for the film’s depiction of First Contact, the moment when humans first meet representatives of an alien race (in this case, the Vulcans). The theme he came up with for that is just a wonderful musical depiction of maturity, which suits the film perfectly as the moment of First Contact is the moment when humanity starts to really “grow up”. I once had a guy tell me, on some message board or some such, that this music sounds of “mournful farewell”, and I couldn’t possibly have disagreed more. This is music that, in my ears, drips with lyrical optimism. I just love it!
Here’s “First Contact”, from the film Star Trek First Contact.