My favorite film composers
by emwolf | created - 06 Dec 2013 | updated - 06 Dec 2013 | PublicMy first record purchases as a kid were soundtracks. And not pop song soundtracks like most movies have today, but orchestral scores. A few of them stand alone as brilliant original compositions that can stand on their own.
1. Bernard Herrmann
Composer | North by Northwest
The man behind the low woodwinds that open Citizen Kane (1941), the shrieking violins of Psycho (1960), and the plaintive saxophone of Taxi Driver (1976) was one of the most original and distinctive composers ever to work in film. He started early, winning a composition prize at the age of 13 and ...
Psycho, not the original soundtrack, but a Hermann conducted recording, was an early purchase for me.
2. Miklós Rózsa
Composer | Ben-Hur
A child prodigy, Miklos Rózsa learned to play the violin at the age of five and read music before he was able to read words. In 1926, he began studying at the Leipzig Conservatory where he was considered a brilliant student. He obtained his doctorate in music in 1930. Moving to Paris the following ...
I think I have a total of 4 vinyl platters of differing recordings of Ben-Hur, a great soundtrack. Rozsa was also very accomplished in the film noir soundtracks.
3. Jerry Goldsmith
Composer | L.A. Confidential
Born on February 10, 1929, Jerry Goldsmith studied piano with Jakob Gimpel and composition, theory, and counterpoint with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He also attended classes in film composition given by Miklós Rózsa at the Univeristy of Southern California. In 1950, he was employed as a clerk ...
My very first soundtrack purchase was Planet of the Apes, a score that changed how I listened to music.
4. Elmer Bernstein
Composer | Far from Heaven
Elmer Bernstein was educated at the Walden School and New York University. He served in the US Army Air Corps in World War II, writing scores for the service radio unit. He also wrote and arranged musical numbers for Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band. A prolific and respected film music composer, ...
Ten Commandments, Great Escape, Magnificent 7, The Cowboys, Stripes...the list goes one. This guy can do any genre well.
5. Max Steiner
Composer | Casablanca
Austrian composer Max Steiner achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. He was born Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner in Vienna, Austria, the son of Marie Mizzi (Hasiba) and Gabor Steiner, an impresario, and the grandson of actor and theater director and ...
King Kong is one off my all time favorite scores.
6. Franz Waxman
Composer | Sunset Blvd.
Franz Waxman (Wachsmann) pursued his dream of a career in music despite his family's misgivings. He worked for several years as a bank teller and paid for piano, harmony and composition lessons with his salary. He later moved to Berlin, where he continued his study and progress as a musician. He ...
The score to Bride of Frankenstein is one of the finest horror movie soundtracks ever. I like the Waxman style, where there is almost constant music throughout the movie.
7. Ernest Gold
Music_department | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Ernest Gold was born on July 13, 1921 in Vienna, Austria. He was a composer, known for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), Exodus (1960) and On the Beach (1959). He was married to Jeanette (Jan) Keller, Marni Nixon and Ruth Andree Golbin. He died on March 17, 1999 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
Our junior high school band played the theme from Exodus. I liked the tune and purchased the soundtrack album without ever seeing the movie. I've seen the movie since, but this was one of the few purchases based on music alone.
8. Danny Elfman
Music_department | The Nightmare Before Christmas
As Danny Elfman was growing up in the Los Angeles area, he was largely unaware of his talent for composing. It wasn't until the early 1970s that Danny and his older brother Richard Elfman started a musical troupe while in Paris; the group "Mystic Knights of Oingo-Boingo" was created for Richard's ...
Elfman re-wrote how super hero music should sound with Tim Burton's Batman.
9. Nino Rota
Composer | The Godfather
Born in Milan in 1911 into a family of musicians, Nino Rota was first a student of Orefice and Pizzetti. Then, still a child, he moved to Rome where he completed his studies at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in 1929 with Alfredo Casella. In the meantime, he had become an 'enfant prodige', famous...
La Strada is one of my favorites as a movie and a stand alone score. However the movie becomes a character in the movie.
10. Ennio Morricone
Composer | The Hateful Eight
A classmate of director Sergio Leone with whom he would form one of the great director/composer partnerships (right up there with Eisenstein & Prokofiev, Hitchcock & Herrmann, Fellini & Rota), Ennio Morricone studied at Rome's Santa Cecilia Conservatory, where he specialized in trumpet. His first ...
Where would Clint Eastwood be without him?
11. Maurice Jarre
Composer | Lawrence of Arabia
Unlike many musicians who started to learn music while still in their childhood, Maurice Jarre was already late in his teens when he discovered music and decided to make a career in that field. Against his father's will, he enrolled at Conservatoire de Paris where he studied percussions, ...
No one composes an adventurous score like Jarre. The Man Who Would Be King is almost perfect.
12. Michel Legrand
Composer | The Thomas Crown Affair
Michel Legrand is a three-time Academy Award-winning French composer, conductor and pianist who composed over 200 film and television scores as well as recorded over a hundred albums of jazz, popular and classical music.
He was born on February 24, 1932, in Becon-les-Bruyeres, in the Paris suburbs, ...
If all he ever composed was the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, he'd still be one of the greats.
13. John Barry
Soundtrack | Out of Africa
John Barry was born in York, England in 1933, and was the youngest of three children. His father, Jack, owned several local cinemas and by the age of fourteen, Barry was capable of running the projection box on his own - in particular, The Rialto in York. As he was brought up in a cinematic ...
Barry, John Barry.
14. Thomas Newman
Music_department | Skyfall
Thomas Newman is an American film score composer. He was born in Los Angeles. His father was notable film score composer Alfred Newman (1900-1970). The Newman family is of Russian-Jewish descent, and includes several other well-known musicians. Thomas' mother Martha Louis Montgomery (1920-2005) ...
One of my favorite of the newer crop of real composers.
15. Hans Zimmer
Composer | Gladiator
German-born composer Hans Zimmer is recognized as one of Hollywood's most innovative musical talents. He featured in the music video for The Buggles' single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which became a worldwide hit and helped usher in a new era of global entertainment as the first music video to ...
This guy is everywhere and seems capable of any genre.
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