Given the huge amount of behind-the-scenes material now available to even the most casual movie fans in the form of DVD supplements and cable-TV programming, it saddens me to note how little of it pays tribute to film music. Music is one of the most underappreciated elements of quality filmmaking; while everyone oohs and ahhs over the latest visual spectacle to emerge from the special effects shops, only the most hard-core cinephile gives any thought at all to a movie’s score.

I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that music slips beneath the attention of most people, considering that the trend these days is for film scores to be as unobtrusive and generic as possible, the aural equivalent of the blandly inoffensive wallpaper you find in budget motel rooms. Things were different twenty or thirty years ago, when movies had bold, memorable scores, and orchestral soundtracks in the style of classic Hollywood adventures sold as many LPs as collections by The Bee Gees. Film composers — some of them, at least — became celebrities in those days. For instance, everyone knows John Williams, the composer of such well-known movie themes as Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman, and E.T..

As great as Williams can be, however, there are other, lesser-known composers whose work is also worthy of notice. One of these is Jerry Goldsmith, who I’ve just learned died last week at the age of 75, following a struggle with cancer.

Goldsmith had a long career writing music for both film and television. His work was, in most cases, less flashy than that of Williams, but it was frequently more inventive, if not more effective. Take, for example, his score for the 1968 version of Planet of the Apes. It’s not something you’re going to want to put on the stereo and listen to for entertainment, as you would with just about any of Williams’ scores. Apes is jarring, atonal, lacking anything that can be described as melody, and downright weird — but in the context of the film it’s simply brilliant, setting the viewer’s teeth on edge with shrill, grating effects that do far more to convey the sense of being lost on a distant planet than the very earthly desert locations do. (I’ve never been able to confirm it, but I’m pretty sure that the lake Charlton Heston crashes into at the film’s beginning is Lake Powell, hardly an alien-looking environment to us Utahns.)

Another interesting example is Logan’s Run. Released in 1976, this nearly-forgotten slice of sci-fi cheese shows us a future in which pretty, vacuous people spend their brief lives inside domed cities that resemble shopping malls (not surprising, considering the interiors were shot in one) while, outside the domes, rampant vegetation and animal life has reclaimed the ruins of our 20th Century civilization. Goldsmith’s inspired idea for this movie was to use then-novel synthesizer sounds inside the domed city to illustrate the mechanized inhumanity of the place, and then gradually transition to more “normal” orchestrated music as the titular hero finds his out of the city and into the natural world. It’s incredibly effective.

In 1979’s Alien, Goldsmith’s work is quieter, even gentle in nature. He doesn’t use “stingers” of sound to cue the audience when to be startled. Rather, his music is sedate, trembling just at the edge of the audience’s notice, building the film’s haunted, threatening mood. The music becomes as much as a character as the human actors or the Gothic production design, as vital to the film’s atmosphere as the smoke and steam of which director Ridley Scott is so fond.

Goldsmith has been quoted as saying he was more interested in character-driven films than action flicks, but ironically enough one of his most exciting scores was for the Arnold movie Total Recall. The score is, in fact, the best thing about this over-the-top crapfest.

My favorite Goldsmith score, however, is also probably his best known. The music he composed for Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a radical departure from the familiar theme and endlessly recycled incidental music of the classic television series, but somehow it suited the material, so much so that the jaunty main title was later reused as the theme for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Other Goldsmith cues from ST:TMP found their way into future incarnations of Trek as well, including the odd, rhythmically martial theme he put together for the Klingons. The movie itself was mediocre at best (although the recent “Director’s Cut” DVD edition did much to improve an irreparably flawed movie), but the music was top-notch. It was also the rare example of a film score that sounds beautiful both within the context of the film and on its own. Anyone, Trekkie or otherwise, who can listen to the lush, string-heavy “Ilia’s Theme” and not feel… moved has obviously lost the will to keep breathing. It’s romantic and melancholy and will remind any feeling being of loves lost and love yet to be found. It’s a perfect track, and still easily found on CD.