Poltergeist

Poltergeist is the Jerry Goldsmith score for the 1982 film directed by Tobe Hooper and produced by Stephen Spielberg. The modern-day, suburban haunted house tale follows the exploits of the Freelings, a family whose daughter is swept into a supernatural plane by restless spirits of the dead, their attempt (with the help of a team of paranormal experts and a psychic prodigy) to get her back, and the ultimate resurgence of the ghostly powers and the Freeling's escape.

The project represented the first composer/producer collaboration between Goldsmith and Spielberg (though not the last—they would work together again on several future films, including Twilight Zone: The Movie, Gremlins and Gremlins 2, and Innerspace, among others).

Composition
Spielberg met composer Jerry Goldsmith in 1973 while serving as judges for a student film contest (along with Marvin Hamlisch and Douglas Trumbull, the special effects director for Close Encounters of the Third Kind). When the time came for Spielberg to find a composer for his first major motion picture, The Sugarland Express, he initially considered Goldsmith—before giving the job to John Williams instead and beginning their decades-long collaboration. The summer of 1981 saw Spielberg mounting two major productions at the same time: Poltergeist and E.T. The Extraterrestrial. Though Spielberg had helmed the idea for Poltergeist through a number of evolutionary changes (what was first intended as a follow-up to Close Encounters became a haunted house story)—and despite having personally rewritten the original Michael Grais and Mark Victor screenplay—the production schedule for E.T. prohibited him from directing the project himself. He instead chose Tobe Hooper to direct, who'd made his own name in the horror genre with the cult classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In late September, as it became clear that Williams would be unavailable to write the score, Spielberg tapped Goldsmith for the job.

Goldsmith didn't view a rough cut of the film until November, yet the schedule allowed him until the end of January to complete the score. The advanced notice gave Goldsmith an unusually long period of time to compose and revise (about 15 weeks), which in turn provided him much more relaxed situations and environments in which to present the progress of his work. Instead of trying to play piano against a rough cut of film on a Moviola—the normal process at that time—he played developing themes and passages for the filmmakers at dinner parties while they discussed the script.

The downside of the lengthy scoring and post-production process was that Goldsmith had to work entirely without having seen any of the film's extensive visual effects—some of which changed the pace and timing of the final cut, and therefore the editing of the score. "The sequence where the Victorian ghost comes down the stairs was originally blocked to be twice as long," Goldsmith said in reference to one such instance. "If you hear the album and see the picture you’ll see where it had to be cut for the picture. When the effects came in, there were only half as much of them. Of course you would like to have it all there . . . but that's what you're dealing with when you have special effects."

While much of the score features plenty of music fitting for a haunted house extravaganza, Goldsmith also wove into its tapestry an equal amount of highly melodic, lyrical, elegant themes portraying innocence and goodness in contrast to the wicked forces at work in the house. Goldsmith explained his reasoning for the contrast: "Poltergeist is not a horror picture. Poltergeist is a love story. A scary love story. The idea was to try to get the suspense, but also get the emotion. And I always felt the emotion—the love—was more important than the suspense."

Spielberg oversaw the post-production process of Poltergeist alone. (According to executive producer Frank Marshall, after Hooper delivered his final cut in October of 1981 he was barely present until the final mixdown of the film in April of 1982.) Goldsmith's own account of the creative process confirms this. "I worked only with Steven," he told CinemaScore Magazine—an arrangement that he apparently enjoyed. "He's very articulate about music, and one can discuss for hours about approaches. Anything I did was not on my own volition; it was a joint effort in that we both agreed on what we were trying to do for the picture. We both worked on the music."

Goldsmith composed the score in a nine-line sketch, later orchestrated by his long-time collaborator Arthur Morton. (The cue "Rebirth" was orchestrated by Fred Steiner, who had similarly helped Goldsmith with his score to Star Trek: The Motion Picture; the cues "The Clown" and "The Tree" were orchestrated by Herbert Spencer.) The score is unique among most of Goldsmith's works of the 70s and 80s in that it uses no samplers or synthesizer music. All music was recorded live with a standard orchestra, augmented with additional percussionists and a violinist who played a saw with a bow.

Recording
Sessions were scheduled for late January at the historic MGM Studios Music Scoring Stage (the same stage where The Wizard of Oz had been recorded in 1939). Due to simultaneous bookings, most of the musicians Goldsmith was accustomed to working with were engaged elsewhere at the time. A player-by-player arrangement between Harry Lojewski, MGM's Music Supervisor, and Los Angeles Philharmonic manager Ernest Fleichmann provided the musicians necessary for the scoring sessions.



Recording commenced on January 25th, 1982 at 10:00 a.m. sharp. Low temperatures and humidity resulting from a stretch of rainy weather lent an unusual clarity and reverberation to the stage during the recording process. On the third day of recording, John Williams paid a visit to the sessions, staying for most of the day. The combination of the recently reconstructed mixing booth—featuring a Quad-8 mixing console and six Altec Lansing Voice of the Theater speakers 50 feet behind the console—the exceptional sound produced by the Stanley Church MGM condenser microphones, and the acoustics of the stage itself convinced Williams that he and Spielberg should record E.T. on the same stage.

Recording Engineer Lyle Burbage and Sound Supervisor Bruce Botnick recorded the film mix directly to two four-track 35mm magnetic film recorders with Dolby A noise reduction, as well as a four-track 1/2" Ampex ATR analog tape recorder (also with Dolby A). Three Sony PCM 1610 digital processors and six Sony BVU 800 digital recorders were used as a backup. Two of the PCM 1610s were locked up via time code to constitute a digital four-track recorder; the third was used as a live stereo for the album (the channel breakdown was the standard L/C/R, with the fourth track used for Surround).

The emotional impact of the score became obvious during the recording process. Goldsmith once related the story of how, at the end of one particularly long and exhausting piece (very likely either "Night Visitor" or "Rebirth"), "I looked in the booth, and everyone was applauding and crying. . . . For me, it was an incredible experience, to get that kind of reaction, because that's what music's supposed to do."

The recording sessions concluded on February 9th.

Critical response
The film was a box-office smash, though it didn't smash quite as much as its companion Spielberg project of the same year. Goldsmith's music was nominated for an Academy Award in 1982. . . though it lost, of course, to E.T.

Motive and thematic layout
Poltergeist is built on two major themes and a number of minimalistic two-, three-, four-, and five-note motifs. The shorter motifs are the more numerous, and seem to represent the primal and fundamental spiritual forces at conflict within the Freeling house. In simple (though hardly simplistic) fashion, Goldsmith ascribes the quality of the force represented through the direction of the notes: ascending for good characters, descending for the evil spirits, and "balanced" (neutral) for those whose nature is unknown.

Cue times are taken from the Film Score Monthly release (listed in the next section).

Primary themes

 * Carol Anne's Theme: This lullaby-gentle theme, often rendered in its fullest form (during pieces like "The Neighborhood-Day" and the End Credits) by strings, harp, celeste, and flute or oboe, represents the purity and innocence of its title character in contrast to the dark forces occupying the Freeling's house.


 * The Light: The primary phrase, a five-note rising and falling subject (C-D-A-F#-E), is followed by a descending four-note reply (B-A-F#-E), the latter of which which serves as something of a counterpoint to the Beast motif. Occasionally, at times of elevated tension or suspense [such as at 4:18 of "Twisted Abduction"], the theme is constricted into a conjunct perversion of itself (A-B-D-C-B). [The short piece "The Light" gives the theme its fullest statement. "Let's Get Her" presents a sort of symphonic contrast between this theme and the Beast motif in its two halves. "Rebirth" gives full flight to the Light theme (particularly at 11:24), and also gives it a heroic turn at 14:01 as mother and daughter emerge from the ethereal plane.]

Secondary themes and supporting motifs

 * The Calling: Contains the earliest and most basic elements of the motifs that will be used throughout the score to represent the "otherworldly" influences. Beginning with a descending minor third (D-B—one of the first musical intervals most children learn in song), it moves into a four-note rise-and-fall passage (Ab-Bb-Db-Bb) personifying the mystery and unknown nature of the presence in the house. [The descending third motif can be heard at the very beginning of "The Calling"; the four-note motif can be heard in "The Calling" at :08 (see sample at right) and in "The Tree" at 1:33.]


 * The Neighborhood: A sprightly scherzo of dancing strings that, with the incorporation of Carol Anne's theme, paints the picture of suburban peace and bliss. [Begins at 1:31 of "The Neighborhood - Day."]


 * The Underworld: This extension of the "calling" motif registers the first note before dropping it an octave, descends the minor third, then raises the latter note another octave before returning to the original note (Eb-Eb(8va down)-C-C(8va up)-Eb). The reiteration that sometimes follows changes the middle descending minor third to a major third (Eb-B). The motif is alternately used as a clever countermelody to the Light theme during the pieces "The Light" and "Let's Get Her." [Played in deep bass by contrabassoon at the very start of "Twisted Abduction"; at 1:08 of the same piece, strings and a female chorus render it with an eerie, almost religious, reverence as the closet in the children's room "awakens" (see sample at right). Perhaps its most unique rendering comes at 4:43 of "Let's Get Her," when the motive is played on low piano notes—with fingers on the piano strings to deaden their tone.]


 * The Beast: This prominent motive starts with the same descending minor third first heard in "The Calling," then adds a descending whole tone starting a half-note lower (Eb-C-B-A). It makes its first appearance in "The Calling," as Carol Anne speaks with the voices in the television; other early iterations (such as at 1:14 of "The Hole/TV People") use only the first three notes of the motif, leaving it unfinished as the concept develops. Once it emerges as the major musical symbol of the evil forces inhabiting the house, it finds representation in a wide variety of articulations, alternating tempos, and instrumental voices. [The second half of "Twisted Abduction" contains a number of these variations, and the psychic's description of the dark force menacing the house contains several iterations rendered in low horn (one such variation is at 3:33—see sample at right).] Occasionally the motif resolves itself with a slight variation, shifting the last two tones to a minor third (Eb-C-B-Ab).


 * Lost Souls: A five-note combination that bounces between the same two notes (again, a minor third apart). This is the best example of a "balanced" motif: neither rising nor descending, retaining the mystery about nature of the elemental force. [This is the central figure of "Night Visitor," first heard at 1:53 (see sample at right) before moving into numerous modulations and variations throughout the piece, reaching a beatific height at 3:40.] (Note: Goldsmith used the same sequence of five notes throughout much of his score for Alien, though the interval in that score was the tritonic rather than a minor third.)


 * The Star-Spangled Banner: Though this could be considered "source music," rather than making use of a prerecorded sample of the national anthem this piece was scored and performed specifically for the film. Goldsmith had originally considered using Igor Stravinsky's unorthodox arrangement (with its infamous application of the dominant 7th chord); ultimately, he elected to use a traditional presentation of the anthem.

Original Soundtrack
Goldsmith produced the original album release of Poltergeist through MGM Records (MG-1-5408). Released on June 4, 1982, it featured 8 pieces (38 minutes, 55 seconds of music), one of which—"Carol Anne's Theme"—was a concert version of the theme and not used in the film. (That piece, along with the last on the album, "The Rebirth," ended with an added effect of children's voices laughing which then morphed into an echoing synthesizer ostinato—an augmentation not present in any film version of the music.)

Premiere Soundtracks/TCM (Turner Classic Movies) Music Expanded Edition
In 1997, UK record company Premiere Soundtracks released an expanded version of Poltergeist (#7243-8-21957-2-6), produced by Nick Redman and edited by Micheal Matessino, featuring an additional 23 minutes, 58 seconds worth of unreleased music.

Film Score Monthly Special Edition
In December 2010, Film Score Monthly released a two-CD set with the complete score from Poltergeist (FSM Vol. 13 No. 18), produced, edited, and remastered by Michael Matessino and co-produced and engineered by Bruce Botnick (the sound supervisor during the original recording sessions). The first CD featured an expanded version of the originally recorded score; the second CD contained the original 1982 OST, seven bonus and alternate track cues, and a five-piece collection from the original soundtrack from Jerry Goldsmith's score for the Paul Newman film The Prize. The set also includes a booklet with extensive liner notes, cue-by-cue analyses, and the story behind the making of the film and the score.

Cue Listing
The original reel, part, and slate numbers for the score, along with the title of each piece, the date it was recorded, and various notes: