Buy it... at any expense if you maintain a collection of Jerry Goldsmith's works, for Hoosiers is not only a major achievement in the composer's balance of symphony and electronics, but it remains one of the best sports genre scores of all time.

Avoid it... if you're so cold-hearted that the best of the inspirational sports genre of film music, including Goldsmith's Rudy, does nothing to inspire you.

Goldsmith

Hoosiers: (Jerry Goldsmith) One of the definitive sports movies in the history of Hollywood, Hoosiers is an essential piece of Americana filmmaking. Directed by David Anspaugh (who would continue on to direct another similarly themed concept in 1993's Rudy), the film captures a piece of Indiana life with an authenticity that few have ever accomplished. A disgraced, out of town basketball coach, performed brilliantly by Gene Hackman, arrives to guide an underdog high school basketball team, the Hickory Huskers, to an improbable title. It is, like Rudy, the ultimate message about motivation, faith, self-confidence, and achievement against the odds. The small-town spirit depicted by Anspaugh is almost religious in its powerful appeal, and the film's heart and loyalty to character depth required a score that could help motivate those characters onto their path to rewarding success. Jerry Goldsmith was emerging from arguably the most successful period of his career, with several of his most dynamic scores produced in the early 1980's. He had branched out from his usual science fiction, horror, and war drama assignments to compose for children's films, fantasy, and animation. Also a pioneer in the integration of synthesized elements into a symphony orchestra, Goldsmith was becoming fond of utilizing electronics as a fifth member of the ensembles for his works at the time. In fact, by 1986, he had completed the electronically rich Legend, and while that score would be partially replaced in the final theatrical cut, it proved to film music collectors that his techniques of applying his Yamaha keyboards and other electronic instruments to an orchestral canvas was truly mastered. Goldsmith loved scoring the adversity of sports dramas, and when approaching Hoosiers, he had the additional challenge of augmenting the autumnal setting of Indiana in the 1950's. With a fully symphonic score expected by his fans, it was a complete shock when Goldsmith's end product for Hoosiers was a piece of music dominated by electronics. The fit didn't seem natural when mentioned by the word of mouth, and yet, when all was said and done, the composer somehow managed to pull off the impossible.

Goldsmith single-handedly proved the legitimacy of employing electronics in period dramas by composing and mixing one of greatest scores of all time. So natural is his music for the film that the listener is completely enveloped into the world of 1950's Indiana during the heartfelt scene of travel at the start of the film, without realizing that the score is, despite its organic elements, electronically defined. That opening title cue, heard tacked on as the last five minutes at the end of the score's albums, is a pure melody of historic beauty. This cue single-handedly launched the film and score from their opening minutes all the way to several Academy Award nominations. Some film music veterans have gone so far as to argue that the opening five minutes of Hoosiers, with only the score heard in association with the visuals, is one the most impressively understated moments of music and film congruence ever. It's hard to disagree, though people who are fixated on the tender moments of the Hoosiers score forget that Goldsmith's innovative sounds during the climatic scenes on the basketball court are another true treasure. It's not often that even the greatest composers accomplished what Goldsmith did for the game scenes in Hoosiers. He took the sound of a basketball bouncing off of a hardwood floor and mutated it into several variations, depending on how distant the ball was from the listener. He then utilized the main, up front bouncing ball for the majority of his beats in the score and accentuated other moments dictating percussive beats with the other bouncing variations (often in drum pad style). The result is a powerful and bass-rich score that sounds strangely effective even though most casual movie-goers likely didn't clearly make the bouncing ball connection. Along with other tingling synthetic elements, including some straight forward keyboarding on his Yamahas, these sounds are accompanied by a full orchestra. The strings are consistently utilized in every cue, and solo brass accents are similarly woven into the percussive texture without also resorting to obvious thematic duties. Rhythmic propulsion is expertly applied, with tempi carefully tailored, much like Rudy, to how well the team is performing during game sequences.

The score is, however, extremely melodic, almost to a fault. You can understand by the victory scene at the end of the finals why Goldsmith spent so much time developing his themes until to that one, massively heroic statement of emotion. His primary theme has many different components that are remarkably interchangeable, all of them capturing the spirit and charm of the team, its individuals, and community in Indiana. Goldsmith does separate two of these parts with specific intent; in the concert arrangement of the "Theme from Hoosiers" (which is performed electronically only by Goldsmith on the albums and could have served as a demo for the assignment), the composer divides the piece between its driving, inspirational half for the game and its intimate half of introspection that eventually flourishes as a representation of triumph. Boiling them down to their most simplistic descriptors, the idea in the first two minutes of this suite is the "game theme" and the following two minutes offer the "victory theme" (after which they alternate). The former theme is largely static in its applications, with cues like "You Did Good," "Get the Ball" and the first two-thirds of "Finals" exploring its potential with all the driving intensity that Hackman's character inspires in his players. An intriguing Western-styled rhythm inhabits a variant of this idea in "The Pivot," though the theme is still the backbone of this cue. Less transparent is the victory theme, which understandably experiences the most growth throughout the picture. This is the idea that delicately opens the film (after a ghostly, solo synthesizer foreshadowing of the game theme), with a lovely trumpet and electronic flute performance of the theme accompanied by a friendly, two-note rising motif that accentuates each shift in harmonic progression (this high range effect gorgeously concludes the album presentation of the score). The theme is eventually passed to the violins in this early cue, with Goldsmith's trademark rambling of soft keyboarding flowing with elegance underneath. Those who appreciate the composer's mid-range, tingling synthesizer effects will enjoy their contributions to this score. The "victory" theme, like Hackman and his players, gains confident throughout the score until its cymbal-crashing explosion at 8:45 into "The Finals."

It's interesting to note that this victory scene concluding the film, in which Goldsmith's score once again holds the soundscape alone for a time, is one of the only moments in which the full ensemble performs without any electronics, a redemptive, organic way to conclude such a personal story. The performances of both the two halves of Goldsmith's theme for Hoosiers convey the ultimate in major-key excellence, warming the listener's heart and begging for repeat listens. The only cue that slows the score's inevitable sense of propulsion is "Town Meeting," though hidden about two minutes into this piece is a beautiful electronic performance of the victory theme (which at this point is something of a perseverance theme). This portion of the score illustrates another interesting aspect of Goldsmith's recording; its masterful variation in wet and dry mixing of different elements. Just before the aforementioned electronic woodwind effect in "Town Meeting," a real woodwind is very dryly presented. The subsequent synthetic variant is extremely distant and echoing. This technique exists from the opening cue, and it establishes the electronics as a dream-like element of yearning (causing some to term the score "optimistically dreamy"). If the orchestra always bursts forth at moments when the players actually achieve their goals, then the synthetics represent their intangible aspirations. As the coach enters town at the start, nothing better reflects his personal demons and hopes than the slightly nebulous atmosphere created by these tingling and echoing electronics. Still, intimacy is key to the success of Hoosiers. The fact that Goldsmith was able to capture this spirit of closeness in the victory theme is no surprise, but the engaging personality of the game theme is indeed a significant achievement. Every moment of this score envelopes the listener equally, just as the film remarkably makes you care about this small town basketball team. In his long, illustrious career, Goldsmith's most personally affecting scores are often his less heralded in the mainstream. Whether it's A Patch of Blue for the Silver Age or The Russia House for the Digital Age, Goldsmith's most touching work isn't always his flashiest. While a different animal in terms of its higher activity levels than those other scores, Hoosiers clearly occupies this definitive position for the composer in the Bronze Age.

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The awarding of the original score Oscar for 1986 to Herbie Hancock for 'Round Midnight is considered one of the greatest of the many injustices that have befallen nominees for that category. Ennio Morricone and, to a lesser extent, James Horner were worthy of recognition that year, though Goldsmith's Hoosiers stands in a class of its own because of its immense impact on the picture. There will always be debates about the merits of Hoosiers when compared to Rudy, though while the later score equally captured the spirit of competition on the field of play, the former better addresses the soul of the narrative in its entirety. Tragically, Hoosiers has never been released on a regular commercial CD in America. It exists under its international name of Best Shot (after all, who outside of America actually knows what a Hoosier is?) on a European (and British distributed) branch of the Polydor label called "That's Entertainment Records," and it has always been available at a slightly higher price as an import in America. A cassette was ironically released in America with the same contents and the correct Hoosiers name. Similarly, an identical CD album with the Hoosiers name came out of Japan in the mid-1990's. The pressings of these albums ranged from 1987 to 1995, so many copies of all versions are floating around the market, waiting for your highly likely enjoyment. The editing of the rearrangement for the album is not the best, with the opening suite existing after a sharp edit and several cues badly out of order and artificially pieced together. Even though the sound quality of the recording of the orchestra is slightly dated in its analog master form, the electronics of the score are so dynamic that you will not notice that age to any great extent. The score remains a prime candidate for eventual re-release in a properly arranged, re-mastered form. Such treatment would give it a feel very similar to that of the composer's subsequent Extreme Prejudice. It is one of Goldsmith's crowning achievements, a testament to the notion that you can take the intellectually wrong instruments for the job and make them work brilliantly. Not only should Hoosiers be the staple of any Goldsmith collection, it should be a top priority for all film score enthusiasts. Few scores demand the level of respect that is due this infectiously lovely and enthusiastically inspiring classic. *****

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