20 Favorite Film Composers
by ogniro | created - 19 Oct 2012 | updated - 10 May 2022 | Public
1. 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 ...
2. Lalo Schifrin
Music_department | Rush Hour
Immensely talented, Argentinian born pianist, conductor and composer who has written over 100 scores for both television & the cinema including the memorable themes to Mission: Impossible (1966), Mannix (1967), Starsky and Hutch (1975), Cool Hand Luke (1967), and Bullitt (1968). Schifrin has ...
3. 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...
4. Henry Mancini
Soundtrack | Breakfast at Tiffany's
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, but brought up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute in a local band, as a youth, before sending some arrangements to Benny Goodman. Goodman offered him a job and, after serving in WWII, he joined the rearranged Glenn Miller band. In 1952, he was given a two-week ...
5. 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, ...
6. Evgeniy Doga
Composer | Ryabinovyy vals
Evgeniy Doga was born on March 1, 1937 in Mokra, Rybnitsa raion, Moldavian ASSR, Ukrainian SSR, USSR [now Mocra, Rabnitsa District, Moldova or the unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Transnistria)]. He is a composer, known for Ryabinovyy vals (2010), The Road Within (2014) and Lautarii ...
7. 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 ...
8. 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, ...
9. 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 ...
10. Dimitri Tiomkin
Soundtrack | High Noon
Dimitri Tiomkin was a Russian Jewish composer who emigrated to America and became one of the most distinguished and best-loved music writers of Hollywood. He won a hallowed place in the pantheon of the most successful and productive composers in American film history, earning himself four Oscars ...
11. Mikis Theodorakis
Composer | Z
Mikis Theodorakis was born in the Greek island of Chios, in 1925. It was the same year that the other great composer of Greece was born in Xanthi, Manos Hatzidakis. He fought during the 2nd World War, and was captured at the city of Tripoli. He was tortured, but when he was set free, he joined the ...
12. Miles Davis
Soundtrack | Adrift
Miles Davis, famous jazz trumpeter, composer and bandleader, was born 26 May 1926 in Alton, Illinois. He moved to New York in 1944 and studied at Juilliard. He left school and entered the jazz society of New York, meeting such famous musicians as Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus. ...
13. 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 ...
14. Angelo Badalamenti
Composer | Mulholland Dr.
Angelo Badalamenti was born on March 22, 1937 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for Mulholland Drive (2001), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) and Lost Highway (1997). He was married to Lonny Irgens. He died on December 11, 2022 in Lincoln Park, New ...
15. John Williams
Composer | Jurassic Park
As one of the best known, awarded, and financially successful composers in US history, John Williams is as easy to recall as John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein, illustrating why he is "America's composer" time and again. With a massive list of awards that includes over 52 Oscar ...
16. Philip Glass
Soundtrack | The Truman Show
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Glass worked in his father's radio store and discovered music listening to the offbeat Western classical records customers didn't seem to want. He studied the violin and flute, and obtained early admission to the University of Chicago. After graduating in mathematics ...
17. Vangelis
Composer | Blade Runner
Vangelis was a composer and performer who worked almost exclusively with electronic instruments. With Jean-Michel Jarre and Mike Oldfield in the 1970s, Vangelis was a pioneer in the instrumental music and a main influence in the creation of the musical genre "new age," a style related to spiritual,...
18. Giorgio Moroder
Soundtrack | Top Gun
Giorgio Moroder was born on April 26, 1940 in Urtijëi, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy. He is a composer and actor, known for Top Gun (1986), Over the Top (1987) and Flashdance (1983).
19. Eduard Artemyev
Composer | 12
Eduard Artemyev is a Soviet and Russian composer. He is widely known as the author of music for films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrey Konchalovskiy and Nikita Mikhalkov.
Artemyev was born in Novosibirsk. He received his primary musical education at the Moscow Choir School. Later in 1960 he graduated ...
20. Diana Ringo
Composer | 1984
Diana Ringo is a film director and composer.
She was born on 8 of March 1992. Diana grew up in Finland and has been interested in music from early childhood.
She is a classically educated pianist and has studied piano with famous pianists such as Janne Mertanen, prize winner of the Chopin competition...
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