Jerry Goldsmith (The Mummy) The Mummy (1999)
Jerry Goldsmith (February 10, 1929 – July 21, 2004) composed the score for The Mummy (1999). The Mummy was one of the largest-grossing films of his career and a return — at age 70 — to the orchestral action-and-suspense vernacular he had largely abandoned in the 1990s.
The Mummy returned Goldsmith to action scoring after a decade away
By the late 1990s, Goldsmith was best known as the composer of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Alien (1979), Poltergeist (1982), Total Recall (1990), and Rudy (1993). His more recent work had drifted toward smaller dramas and animated features (Mulan, 1998). The Mummy pulled him back into the kind of large-scale orchestral adventure-horror writing that defined his prime.
"Goldsmith wrote and recorded nearly 100 minutes of music with nods to his beloved action-and-suspense vernacular of the late '70s and early '80s, and here Goldsmith revisited a musical language he had largely moved away from, using real percussion and low brass and strings to deliver almost all the rhythms." — Filmtracks, The Mummy review
The score was orchestrated by Alexander Courage, Goldsmith's longtime collaborator and the original composer of the Star Trek TV theme. The score was recorded at AIR Studios in London with a roughly 100-piece orchestra and the Metro Voices choir. Native Egyptian instruments and Arabic vocal performances were woven through the orchestral writing without ever quite tipping into pastiche — Goldsmith's Egypt is filtered through Hollywood, but with enough specific texture to register as a place rather than a soundstage.
Goldsmith reportedly disliked the film
Anecdotes from the period suggest Goldsmith was not a fan of the picture itself. He apparently expressed his opinion candidly at a London concert before the film's release.
"Goldsmith said the film was 'a piece of shit' before it had even been released, speaking to an audience of thousands before one of his London concerts." — Movie Music UK / Filmtracks, summarizing reports from the period (1999)
Whether or not he warmed to it later, the score itself shows no sign of disengagement. The main theme — a sweeping minor-key statement that opens over the Thebes prologue and recurs throughout — became one of the most recognizable Goldsmith themes of his late career.
Imhotep's theme is the score's emotional spine
The score's strongest motif is Imhotep's. Goldsmith treats the villain the way Sommers and Vosloo do — as a love story rather than a threat. The Imhotep theme is built on slow, low-register strings with a soaring vocal line, more lament than menace. It stands in pointed contrast to the brass-heavy action cues that score Rick and Evelyn's scenes. The film's argument that Imhotep's love is real, not pretextual, is musically embedded in the score before any character argues for it on screen. (See Themes and Analysis (The Mummy).)
The score won the BMI Film Music Award
Goldsmith won the BMI Film Music Award for The Mummy in 1999 — one of the few formal honors the film picked up beyond its Saturn Award for Best Make-up and Oscar nomination for Best Sound. The score did not receive an Academy Award nomination, an omission that has been noted in retrospectives as one of the period's clearer Oscar oversights. (wikipedia)
The Mummy was Goldsmith's last commercial peak
Goldsmith continued working until his death in 2004 from colon cancer. His subsequent scores — Hollow Man (2000), Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) — were on smaller films or franchises in decline. The Mummy was the last time a Goldsmith score sat on top of a $400-million-plus blockbuster, and its place in the late-'90s pulp adventure cycle alongside Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace (John Williams) means it stands as one of the era's last great traditional orchestral action scores.
Track highlights
The 1999 Decca soundtrack release runs 15 tracks across approximately 58 minutes (Wikipedia, Discogs); a 2018 Intrada expanded edition presents the complete score across two discs. The most-cited cues: