Art & Creativity Quote by Jerry Goldsmith

Goldsmith’s confidence lands like a quiet rebuke to both nostalgia and marketing: if the work lasts, it won’t be because fans were loud or studios were generous, but because the notes earned it. Coming from a film composer - a job often treated as disposable, tethered to release calendars and box-office cycles - “survives” does a lot of work here. He’s talking about music built for scenes, cut to picture, sometimes mixed under dialogue, and yet he’s staking a claim to longevity on the oldest, bluntest standard: quality.

The line also sidesteps sentimentality. Goldsmith doesn’t argue that his scores deserve preservation because they’re culturally important or personally meaningful. He doesn’t even say “because people love it.” He says “because it is good,” a phrase so plain it functions as armor. In an industry where credit is fragmented and authorship can feel negotiated, “good” becomes his final jurisdiction: the craft itself.

There’s subtext, too, about the insecurity baked into screen music. Film scores are frequently remembered as mood rather than composition, as atmosphere rather than argument. Goldsmith’s wager is that rigorous thematic writing, orchestration, and invention can outlive the films they served - that a cue can graduate into repertoire. The confidence (“no doubt”) isn’t ego so much as a working composer’s ethic: durability isn’t bestowed by institutions; it’s engineered, bar by bar.