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Jerry Goldsmith
Jerry Goldsmith At 20th Century Fox

Compil. US 2004 on Varèse Sarabande label
Soundtrack (Score)

Jerry Goldsmith at 20th Century Fox: (Jerry Goldsmith) In one of the most comprehensive compilations ever to be released in the genre of film music, the Varèse Sarabande label built a 6-CD set based on the vast collection of material written by composer Jerry Goldsmith for films of the studio 20th Century Fox. According to Varèse, the 2004 set was meant to kick off a year-long celebration of Goldsmith's 75th birthday by the label (which had already announced in late 2003 that they would be releasing an SACD of Goldsmith's rejected Timeline score), though the composer passed away just a few months thereafter. Before diving into the debate about the concept of the 6-CD set itself, as well as the circumstances of its release, a summary of its contents may help you decide if it is worth the enormous expense. The set does not include all of Goldsmith's work for Fox; among the six exclusions are Capricorn One and Sleeping with the Enemy, both extremely unfortunate omissions, but it does offer at least one cue (and often many more) from Goldsmith's 39 other projects for Fox. For a comprehensive track listing, browse further down this page. All of the material on the first three albums has been released before, with the first album showcasing Goldsmith's war and action music, the second album containing Westerns, and the third album limited to suspense and horror. A considerable amount of the material on the first two albums had been recently released by Film Score Monthly in its limited Silver Age series of CDs. The third album contains a strong collection from the franchise of The Omen, however. The three latter CDs are the ones that will likely interest the collector of more obscure Goldsmith music. Among the more notable first-time releases are cues from Von Ryan's Express, Fate is the Hunter, The Agony and the Ecstasy (the original recording), and Alien, from which the original main titles and a medley of unreleased cues was offered for the first time. While most had never been heard even on commercial LP albums, The Chairman was making the transition for the first time. Although many of these scores had long been bootlegged, a few of them (such as Fate is the Hunter) were truly new to the ears of even the most avid Goldsmith collectors. More modern collectors appreciated The Vanishing as the only new inclusion from the digital era, though Varèse released that score in full as another of their Club entries not long after. In sum, there were 79 previously unreleased tracks between those final three CDs at the time of the set's debut.

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