Greatest Film Composers of all time
by cinemabon | created - 22 Oct 2016 | updated - 10 Oct 2018 | PublicMotion Picture composers
1. 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 ...
Williams work is so monumental to the history of movies, his work transformed the industry in the 1970's into one of greatness through his compositions. No other composer in the history of film has been so honored. Where does one begin with his list... certainly before Star Wars he had written great music including Jaws. Don't forget the same year he also scored CE3K! The Fury's "suite" is my favorite along with Accidental Tourist. The Spielberg's have a special place in just about everyone's heart, a treasure shared with the world - the greatest collaboration in the history of film.
2. Alfred Newman
Music_department | The King and I
Alfred Newman is an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music.
From his start as a music prodigy, he came to be regarded as a respected figure in the history of film music. He won nine Academy Awards and was nominated 45 times, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated ...
Along with Max Steiner, Alfred Newman lay the foundation for what would be the most vital contribution to the art of cinema, its music. He gaves us the Cinemascope extension, the greatest corporate jingle ever written as well as the best opening EVER for a western and a vision of Mary that brings you to tears. He and Herrmann were mentors to Williams and passed the baton to him.
3. 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 ...
Starting with Citizen Kane and ending with Taxi Driver, Herrmann would alter the film landscape with his dynamic film scores appreciated as stand alone works. Vertigo with its operatic tones versus Psycho's driving strings, to the frightening weird vision of Rosebud; or to the spectacular sunrise inside a volcano. Herrmann's compositions are nothing less than the most brilliant creational guide to film music ever put before an orchestra.
4. 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 ...
The grand-daddy of film composition, Steiner virtually created the post and made it one of the most important aspects of cinema creation.
5. 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 ...
His work for Ben Hur is considered by many to be one of the greatest film scores of all time. The work is of such gigantic proportions, it overwhelms the listener. My personal favorite is The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. One of the few composers to receive two nominations in the same year for two different film scores.
6. 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 ...
One of the most prolific film composers of all time, Goldsmith's frightening score for The Omen gave him his only win. However, his music in Patton and Star Trek TMP stand out to me; with those ghostly horns at the beginning of Patton and Star Trek with its rare overture - 18 Oscar nominations.
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 ...
Where would James Bond be without John Barry? While he wrote scores for countless films, most of them famous, his Oscar-winning theme for Out of Africa is one of the most beautiful ever written for a romance film. He took home the gold in five out of his seven nominations. Yes, Bond, but oh the other scores - Midnight Cowboy, Lion in Winter, Body Heat, and Born Free among many others.
8. 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, ...
His work on The Magnificent Seven turned what could have been just another star-overloaded movie into a screen classic. The opening music grabs you right out of your seat and carries you to the end.
9. Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Composer | The Adventures of Robin Hood
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was the son of a well-known music critic. A child prodigy, he accompanied his father in playing four-handed piano arrangements by the age of five. By the age of eleven he drew his first plaudits from enthusiastic Viennese audiences (including the emperor Franz Josef) with ...
Korngold's score for Adventures in Robin Hood is still considered today one of the greatest adventure scores ever written and certainly paved the way for later uses of the same technique in movies such as Star Wars.
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 ...
Wrote some of films greatest compositions including Guns of Navarone.
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, ...
His score for Lawrence of Arabia is one of movie's most memorable.
12. 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 ...
Like Herrmann, Waxman's scores brought unique dynamics to movies including his score for Sunset Boulevard.
13. Victor Young
Composer | Around the World in Eighty Days
Violinist and conductor Victor Young was a prolific composer and arranger, who worked on more than 300 film scores over a period of twenty years. He came from an impoverished, but musical background and was trained on the violin at the Warsaw Imperial Conservatory, later studying piano in Paris ...
Pivotal to early film making, Young understood the purpose of music queues.
14. Howard Shore
Music_department | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Howard Shore is a Canadian composer, born in Toronto. He was born in a Jewish family. He started studying music when 8-years-old, and played as a member of bands by the time he was 13-years-old. He was interested in a professional career in music as a teenager. He studied music at the Berklee ...
From the start, the film's sound had the same epic feel as other great films out of the past. The size and scope of his work for Lords of the Rings was only matched by that of Rosza. I should say surpassed as Shore's scoring spans six films and several hours of music.
15. 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's work for Tim Burton brought his films to life with incredible gothic sound, especially his first, Batman - for which, ashamedly, was not nominated.
16. James Horner
Music_department | Titanic
James Horner began studying piano at the age of five, and trained at the Royal College of Music in London, England, before moving to California in the 1970s. After receiving a bachelor's degree in music at USC, he would go on to earn his master's degree at UCLA and teach music theory there. He ...
Horner's music brought mystery and striking dynamics to the screen, especially his score for Star Trek II - the Wrath of Khan. But it was his score for Titanic that won him the Academy Award.
17. Bruce Broughton
Music_department | Lost in Space
Bruce Broughton composes in almost every medium, from theatrical motion pictures and television to computer games, in styles ranging from large symphonic settings ("Silverado") to contemporary electronic scores (the recently Emmy-nominated "The Dive from Clausen's Pier"). Broughton has written the ...
His score for Silverado is one of the greatest western scores of all time matched only by Newman's How the West was Won.
18. Morris Stoloff
Music_department | From Here to Eternity
Morris Stoloff was born on August 1, 1898 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for From Here to Eternity (1953), In a Lonely Place (1950) and Gilda (1946). He died on April 16, 1980 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Nominated 16 times for an Academy Award, Stoloff made great contributions to the art of filmmaking.
19. Hugo Friedhofer
Composer | The Best Years of Our Lives
Hugo Friedhofer -- how many times have you seen that name in the credits of 1930s and '40s movies for "orchestration" or "musical arranger" and thought -- Gee, what a busy guy! He was, and, ironically, much of that work went uncredited. He is not usually mentioned with the great film composers of ...
While he wrote many memorable scores, including An Affair to Remember, his score for Best Years of Our Lives gave Friedhofer his only win. The final dramatic scene with Dana Andrews as bombardier is told with nothing but picture and his music.
20. Ray Heindorf
Music_department | The Music Man
Raymond John Heindorf was born August 25, 1908. in Haverstraw, New York. He grew up in Mechanicville, New York, where he moved to when he was about 10 years old. In 1926 he graduated from Mechanicville High School. He was interested in cars and machinery; he loved to play pool with his father, the ...
Heindorf scored movies for close to three decades and won three Oscars for his incredible efforts.
21. Johnny Green
Music_department | West Side Story
Composer-pianist-arranger Johnny Green was born in Far Rockaway, New York. The son of musical parents, Green was accepted by Harvard at the age of 15, and entered the University in 1924. Between semesters, bandleader Guy Lombardo heard his Harvard Gold Coast Orchestra and hired him to create dance ...
Green scored movies for over three decades and won five Academy Awards. Unable to find a proper boy's voice, Green used his daughter's voice as Oliver in the movie of the same name. Like Newman, not just a great composer but a great conductor, too.
22. 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 ...
Morricone has given us The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as well as taken us to soaring heights in The Untouchables. Finally he won in 2015 with - of all things, of all movies - The Hateful Eight; it might as well be called Slaughterhouse West. In other words, a token Oscar after a lifetime of unrecognized great work. Sometimes the Academy FINALLY gets it right and corrects a wrong. Do you hear me Kurosawa?
23. Jerome Moross
Composer | The Big Country
Brooklyn-born composer and orchestrator, who graduated from New York University at the age of eighteen. A child prodigy, he was already an accomplished pianist at the age of five and began composing music three years later. His first serious work ('Paeans') was performed in public when he was ...
While principally an orchestrator, he composed one of the most memorable scores in cinema history with William Wyler's The Big Country.
24. 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...
Who else could score the greatest American movie of all time but a man with a keen ear for blending emotion with orchestration? Intimate from the start with Fellini, Rota came to Hollywood and scored some very interesting films, but none as impressive as The Godfather.
25. Georges Delerue
Composer | Platoon
Georges Delerue was born on March 12, 1925 in Roubaix, Nord, France. He was a composer and actor, known for Platoon (1986), Twins (1988) and The Day of the Dolphin (1973). He was married to Micheline Gautron. He died on March 20, 1992 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Composer extraordinaire; Georges blended his talent with some of the greatest European movies ever made. He easily made a transition to America adding numerous titles to his honorary list - over 350 films.
26. Pino Donaggio
Composer | Dressed to Kill
Born in Burano (Venice) in 1941, Pino Donaggio studied violin at the Conservatory of Venice and Milan.
After a period of adolescent performer of classical music with the Solisti Veneti and the Soloists of Milan, in 1959 he began to devote himself to the pop music that soon led to international ...
While he composed for over 200 movies (and was never nominated for an Oscar); his scores for Carrie and other Brian DePalma films impressed me with the timing of their cues to on screen action. They're brilliant. F'ing brilliant.
27. Bill Conti
Soundtrack | Rocky
Bill Conti was born on April 13, 1942 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for Rocky (1976), For Your Eyes Only (1981) and The Karate Kid Part II (1986). He is married to Shelby Cox. They have two children.
Gave us one of the all time rousing music queues - Rocky!
28. Michael Brook
Composer | Into the Wild
Michael Brook was born in 1952 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a composer and actor, known for Into the Wild (2007), The Fighter (2010) and Brooklyn (2015).
Brook has brought a distinct sound to modern cinema; especially his soundtrack to Brooklyn, which helped the film tremendously and catapulted it to Best Picture nom.
29. Harry Gregson-Williams
Composer | Shrek
Harry Gregson-Williams is one of Hollywood's most sought-after and prolific composers whose long list of film and television credits underscore the diverse range of his talents. He most recently wrote the music for "The Last Duel" and "House of Gucci" both directed by Ridley Scott. In addition, he ...
Gave a green monster and Mars a landscape; a composer for the 21st Century.
30. Alexandre Desplat
Composer | The King's Speech
Composer and conductor Alexandre Desplat, Oscar winner and seven-time Academy Award nominated, for his prolific filmography and his collaborations with Stephen Frears, Terrence Malick, Ang Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, Jacques Audiard, Wes Anderson, Roman Polanski, George Clooney or Matteo Garrone is one ...
Nominated nine times for an Oscar (almost every one a Best Pix nom) he won for Grand Budapest; I found his Imitation Game score the most intriguing to date.
31. Steven Price
Composer | Gravity
Steven Price is an Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning composer. In 2014 his groundbreaking score for Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity won him not only the Academy Award but also the BAFTA, the Critics' Choice Award, the Satellite Award, and ASCAP's first-ever Film Composer of The Year Award. He has since...
It's always remarkable when someone knocks a grand slam into the outfield their first time up to bat. Although, he'd worked in the music department, his first feature - Gravity - proven Steven up to the task.
32. Herbert Stothart
Music_department | The Wizard of Oz
Of Scottish and German ancestry, Herbert Stothart was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1885. At first, he was slated for a career as a teacher of history. However, he became enamored with music while singing in a school choir, and again, later, while attending the University of Wisconsin. There, he...
Nominated 12 times in just over a decade of work, he won for his original music in The Wizard of Oz; he took us over a rainbow (thanks to songwriter Harold Arlen) and let us land safely back in Kansas - his career cut short by a heart attack. Stothart stole the GWTW Oscar from Max Steiner that year; or so they say.
33. 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 ...
The man who gave life to the Pink Panther and took us down the Moon River composed for hundreds of film and TV shows which garnered 18 Oscar nods and four wins.
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