Goldsmith's score for Alien was mostly "impressionistic" (especially when Scott and the editors incorporated lots of bits from his earlier score from "Freud")...nevertheless, the original "Main Title" theme, and "Hyper Sleep" were incredible, and these themes recurred in variations throughout the film. And the musical cue during the reveal of the Space Jockey ("The Skeleton") was simply sublime.
Yup. What a lot of people don't grasp with "impressionistic", dissonant horror scores is that there's a difference between noise and
artful noise. Goldsmith and Goldenthal's ALIEN scores? Artful noise. Even the most dissonant passages have the touch of genius to them. Most of the suspense cues for PROMETHEUS are just noise, though--aimless droning and flaccid passages for whispily-orchestrated strings. Not that that's a bad thing--it's functional and it works, but it's nowhere near the level of quality of the original scores.
That said, it is growing on me (
Stockholm syndrome?!), especially HGW's contributions. The electronic aspects are going to date quickly, though.
