The great Jerry Goldsmith was at the top of his game for decades, innovating and evolving and always looking to do something new. He could – and did – score any kind of film and almost without fail found some interesting music to write. Taking highlight tracks from his scores produces a playlist that lasts for many hours – but what are the real belters, the ten pieces that represent the breadth and depth of his output the best? Any Goldsmith fan will have a different list – this is mine.

1. “The Enterprise” from Star Trek: The Motion Picture
   This is one of the few that would find its way to just about any list of Goldsmith’s best – and it’s remarkable how close it came to not being, given the composer’s first stab at this led director Robert Wise to point out that he hadn’t written a theme. Away went Goldsmith, at the last minute and under huge pressure, and he created his masterpiece. In the film it’s six minutes of shots of the USS Enterprise and shots of William Shatner looking at the USS Enterprise – for Goldsmith, that grand, famous theme presented in its most romantic guise, full of everything that Star Trek is about. The composer always said he didn’t understand Star Trek – but he was being so modest. He just got it. This film is a Jerry Goldsmith symphony accompanied by some special visual effects, and this piece is film music bliss.

2. “End Title” from Alien
   Goldsmith’s two collaborations with Ridley Scott were amongst his most miserable experiences – he had more than a few choice words for the director and his editor Terry Rawlings afterwards – and this piece was excised from the movie in favour of a classical piece. But again, here is the film in a nutshell – just three minutes this time, dazzling romantic brilliance, moving from distant chills to sweeping emotion as it goes.

3. “The Second Coming” from The Final Conflict
   Goldsmith scored a few duds in his time and it is remarkable how he put his heart and soul into them anyway – he can’t have sat and watched this wretched movie for the first time and failed to realise how terrible it was – and yet he wrote one of the truly great film scores for it. I had just about worn the album out before I ever saw the film – this cue I assumed must accompany some grand biblical scene of epic proportions – but no, it’s someone looking at primitive digital effects, a couple of small blinking dots shown traveling into Earth’s atmosphere on a little monitor – that’s it – but in Goldsmith’s hands it really does make it sound like the second coming.

4. “The Construction” from Explorers
   Full of warmth, childlike excitement, a killer hook alongside the long-lined theme, this piece just sums up the sunnier side of the composer. He wrote some great music for Joe Dante, including one of his funnest themes for Gremlins, and for me this is the piece that sums it all up brilliantly.

5. “Main Title” from Capricorn One
   The apex piece of music from the 1970s conspiracy thriller genre, this rhythmic beast – which has to be heard in its special album arrangement for the full effect – is a masterpiece of pulse-pounding excitement, copied so frequently by others in the decades that followed.

6. “Raisuli Attacks” from The Wind and the Lion
   The ultimate piece of action music, and for me the most exciting two or three minutes of score that’s ever been put in a film. It’s exotic, epic, crams in full-length versions of no fewer than three themes – takes the breath away.

7. “The Mutant” from Total Recall
   One of Goldsmith’s great reinventions came in this film, where he crafted a new style of action music and reached arguably the peak of his unique blend of orchestra and synths. This cue isn’t action – but is still so rousing and exhilarating, the new age electronics adding so much to the London orchestra.

8. “Rafael” from Under Fire
   It would be a great mystery how an otherwise-unremarkable film like Under Fire could produce what is genuinely one of the finest film scores ever written, if not for two words: Jerry Goldsmith. Every track on the album is great and I could have picked any, but I’ve always just loved the way this take on the score’s great march theme builds in intensity as it goes.

9. “The Demise of Mrs Baylock” from The Omen
   Goldsmith hadn’t done much film music featuring a choir before he scored The Omen – which has gone on to become one of the most iconic choral film scores. Again there are numerous tracks to choose from, but I opted for this because its just the perfect blend of thrills and chills, the Stravinskyesque orchestra alongside the demonic chanting producing perhaps my favourite piece of horror film music.

10. “Main Title” from Star Trek: Voyager
    I’ll end my list in the same franchise as where I started it. Goldsmith did many great tv themes and perhaps picking one from 1996 will make the true cognoscenti’s blood boil – but it’s perfect. He’s got those great harmonic leaps representing the crew’s accidental jump to the other side of the universe – and the grand, stately melody not just reminding us of the heart of Star Trek but also representing the great hope of returning home. I’m not sure anyone else involved in the show ever managed to satisfactorily get across to the audience the point of what it was supposed to be about – but Jerry Goldsmith managed it in a shade under two minutes.

That I couldn’t even squeeze in “The Hunt” from Planet of the Apes or anything from Patton or Papillon is to my great regret. My conclusion is that you just can’t represent Jerry Goldsmith with just ten pieces – he was so good, so often – but it’s fun to try. Leave your own lists in the comments.