TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

Jerry Goldsmith, who began his career in the late 1950s, began using the Echoplex delay device^[2] in 1967 for the soundtrack of Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes and, twelve years later, for Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). For these two scores, Goldsmith blended orchestral music with, on the one hand, electro-acoustic techniques and, on the other, the use of unusual instruments (ram’s horn and cuica for the former, didgeridoo and serpent for the latter).^[3] Although in both films an avant-garde approach derived from Penderecki, Ligeti and Bartók takes precedence, the world of Alien is more diatonic and consonant, with a Debussy-like flavour.^[4]