! Film composers I like
by Mr. OpEd | created - 08 Jul 2017 | updated - 07 Feb 2018 | Public
1. Aaron Copland
Soundtrack | He Got Game
Aaron Copland is an Academy Award-winning composer (The Heiress (1949)), author, conductor, lecturer and educator. He was educated at public schools and was a music student of his sister and later Leopold Wolfson, Victor Wittgenstein, Clarence Adler, Rubin Goldmark and Nadia Boulanger. In 1925, he ...
2. Alex North
Music_department | Spartacus
Alex North studied music at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, then won a scholarship to Juilliard in New York (1929) and the Moscow Conservatoire (1933), making him the first-ever American to become a member of the Union of Soviet Composers. In Europe, he worked as music director for the ...
3. 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 ...
4. Arnold Bax
Composer | Oliver Twist
Arnold Bax was born on November 8, 1883 in London, England, UK. He was a composer, known for Oliver Twist (1948), Malta G.C. (1942) and Journey Into History (1951). He was married to Elsa Luisa Sobrino. He died on October 3, 1953 in Cork, Ireland.
5. Arthur Lange
Composer | The Woman in the Window
Composer, songwriter, author, arranger and conductor Arthur Lange was educated in private music study and later became an arranger for Broadway musicals and dance orchestras. In 1929, he became the head of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer music department, and assumed similar duties at other film studios. ...
6. Basil Poledouris
Composer | RoboCop
Basil Poledouris was born on August 21, 1945 in Kansas City. He started taking piano lessons when he was 7 years old. Eventually, he went on to become a student at USC, where he studied the arts of directing, cinematography, editing, sound and, of course, music. It was also at USC he met John Milius...
7. Benjamin Frankel
Composer | Battle of the Bulge
Composer, conductor, arranger and music director. Trained Cologne, Berlin and London (at the Guildhall school of Music and Drama). From the age of seventeen, earned a living as a jazz fiddler, pianist and arranger in, among others, Carroll Gibbons' Savoy Orpheans and Henry Hall's BBC Dance ...
8. 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 ...
9. Bronislau Kaper
Composer | Mutiny on the Bounty
Born: February 5, 1902 in Warsaw, Poland Died: April 25, 1983 in Los Angeles, California, USA Kaper displayed musical talent as early as the age of seven when his family acquired a piano. His inclination to music led him to study both piano and composition, while also taking courses in law to ...
10. Darrell Calker
Soundtrack | Mercury Rising
Prominent film composer, conductor and arranger, educated at Maryland University (with a Bachelor of Science degree) and the Curtis Institute. He studied music under Edgar Priest and David Pell, joined ASCAP in 1953, and composed musical scores for ballet companies including the Ballet Russe de ...
11. Dave Grusin
Music_department | The Fabulous Baker Boys
Dave Grusin was born on June 26, 1934 in Littleton, Colorado, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), The Firm (1993) and The Graduate (1967). He was previously married to Edith Ruth Price, Sara Jane Tallman and Barbara Jo Davidson.
12. David Shire
Music_department | Zodiac
David Shire was born on July 3, 1937 in Buffalo, New York, USA. He is a composer and writer, known for Zodiac (2007), Short Circuit (1986) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). He has been married to Didi Conn since February 11, 1984. They have one child. He was previously married to Talia...
13. Dmitri Shostakovich
Soundtrack | Children of Men
Dmitri Shostakovich, one of Russian culture's most acclaimed intellectuals who was censored under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, was an internationally recognized composer whose music was in over 100 films.
He was born Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich on September 25, 1906, in St. Petersburg, ...
14. 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 ...
15. Earle Hagen
Composer | I Spy
Earle Hagen was born on July 9, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for I Spy (1965), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Tango & Cash (1989). He was married to Laura Roberts (Gunn) and Lou Sidwell. He died on May 26, 2008 in Rancho Mirage, California, USA.
16. 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 ...
17. 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, ...
18. Frank De Vol
Soundtrack | Meng long guo jiang
Frank DeVol was born to Herman Frank DeVol and Minnie Emma (Humphreys) DeVol in Moundsville, West Virginia, on September 20, 1911 and grew up in Canton, Ohio. His father had a "pit" orchestra at the local movie house, and his mother had a sewing shop in Canton. His father was also an accountant. ...
19. 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 ...
20. 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 ...
21. Fred Karlin
Composer | Westworld
Fred Karlin was born on June 16, 1936 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Fred was a composer and editor, known for Westworld (1973), Licorice Pizza (2021) and Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). Fred was married to Megan Wells-Stagg. Fred died on March 26, 2004 in Culver City, California, USA.
22. 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 ...
23. David Raksin
Soundtrack | Captain America: The First Avenger
David Raksin's father Isidore, who both conducted and owned a music store, taught his son to play piano as well as woodwind instruments at an early age. He eventually studied music with Arnold Schönberg, but became by-and-large a self-taught multi-instrumentalist (organ and percussion), as well as ...
24. Frank Skinner
Composer | Saboteur
The author of the textbook "F.Skinner's Simplified Method for Modern Arranging" (published 1934) began his musical career as a pianist in vaudeville alongside his brother Carl. He then became a noted arranger for New York dance orchestras in the 1930's and was briefly active in the field of music ...
25. Gil Mellé
Composer | The Andromeda Strain
A recording artist, song writer, jazz musician and composer, Gil Melle launched his career in the sixties. He first displayed his talent for art work and was also a regular jazz performer in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1969, Gil Melle displayed his musical ...
26. Graeme Revell
Composer | The Crow
Graeme Revell was born in New Zealand in 1955. He was graduated from The University of Auckland with degrees in economics and politics. He is a classically trained pianist and French horn player. Revell worked for as a regional planner in Australia and Indonesia and as an orderly in an Australian ...
27. Hans J. Salter
Soundtrack | Happy Death Day 2 U
Hans J. Salter was born on January 14, 1896 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. He was a composer, known for Happy Death Day 2U (2019), Hubie Halloween (2020) and Detroit Rock City (1999). He was married to Gutzman. He died on July 23, 1994 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
28. 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 ...
29. 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 ...
30. Hans J. Salter
Soundtrack | Happy Death Day 2 U
Hans J. Salter was born on January 14, 1896 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. He was a composer, known for Happy Death Day 2U (2019), Hubie Halloween (2020) and Detroit Rock City (1999). He was married to Gutzman. He died on July 23, 1994 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
31. 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 ...
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...
33. 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 ...
34. James Bernard
Composer | Dracula
Bernard was born in India, the son of a British army officer, but was moved to England as a small child for his health. He was educated at Wellington College, where the future actor Christopher Lee was a classmate. Fortuitously, because Lee was to star in scores of horror films for Hammer Studios, ...
35. 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 ...
36. John Addison
Music_department | A Bridge Too Far
British composer, primarily of film scores. From a military family and the son of a Royal Field Artillery colonel, John Mervyn Addison was born March 16, 1920, in Chobham, Surrey, and attended Wellington College, Berkshire, with plans for a military career. His interest and talent for music ...
37. John Morris
Music_department | Blazing Saddles
John Morris was born on October 18, 1926 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA. He was a composer, known for Blazing Saddles (1974), The Elephant Man (1980) and Coach (1989). He was married to Francesca Bosetti. He died on January 25, 2018 in Red Hook, New York, USA.
38. John Powell
Composer | How to Train Your Dragon 2
John Powell was born on September 18, 1963 in London, England, UK. He is a composer, known for How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), Happy Feet (2006) and Shrek (2001). He was previously married to Melinda Lerner.
39. John Ottman
Editor | Bohemian Rhapsody
John Ottman holds dual distinctions as a leading film composer and an award winning film editor. Ottman has often completed both monumental tasks on the same films. Such remarkable double duties have included The Usual Suspects, X-Men 2, Superman Returns, Valkyrie, and Jack the Giant Killer. He has...
40. 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 ...
41. 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 ...
42. Les Baxter
Soundtrack | Wild at Heart
Born March 14, 1922, at Mexia, Texas. He learned to play the piano at five years of age and studied at the Detroit Conservatory and at Pepperdine College in Los Angeles, California (his uncle was the college's first president). He began his career as a concert pianist but later joined Mel Tormé's "...
43. Malcolm Arnold
Composer | The Bridge on the River Kwai
Born in Northampton on 21st October 1921, Malcolm Arnold studied composition with Gordon Jacob and trumpet with Ernest Hall at the Royal College of Music. In 1941 he joined the trumpet section of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, becoming principal by 1943. After two years of war service and one ...
44. Mario Nascimbene
Soundtrack | The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun
Mario Nascimbene was born on November 28, 1913 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. He was a composer and actor, known for The French Dispatch (2021), Matchstick Men (2003) and Violent Summer (1959). He was married to Mara Caterina Ripari and Tamara Adrian. He died on January 6, 2002 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.
45. 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, ...
46. 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 ...
47. Michael Giacchino
Composer | Star Trek
Michael Giacchino is an American composer of music for films, television and video games.
Giacchino composed the scores to the television series Lost, Alias and Fringe, the video game series Medal of Honor and Call of Duty and many films such as The Incredibles (2004), Star Trek (2009), Up (2009), ...
48. Michael Kamen
Soundtrack | Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Michael Kamen was born on April 15, 1948 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Don Juan DeMarco (1994) and X-Men (2000). He was married to Sandra Keenan. He died on November 18, 2003 in London, England, UK.
49. 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, ...
50. 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 ...
51. Neal Hefti
Soundtrack | The Lego Batman Movie
Composer ("'Batman' Theme), conductor, arrager and trumpeter, educated in high school and through private music study. He was a trumpeter and arranger with dance orchestras including those of Harry James, Woody Herman, and Charlie Spivak between 1941 and 1951. He was a staff arranger and arranger ...
52. 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...
53. Quincy Jones
Producer | The Color Purple
Considered to be one of the greatest minds in music and television history, Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. was born on March 14, 1933 in Chicago, Illinois. He is the son of Sarah Frances (Wells), a bank executive, and Quincy Delight Jones, Sr., a carpenter.
Jones found his love for music while he was ...
54. Piero Piccioni
Soundtrack | The Big Lebowski
Piero Piccioni was born in Turin (Italy) on the 6th December 1921. Son of a pure Turinese mother (her maiden name was Marengo), and from here the pseudonym Piero Morgan, which he adopted until 1957. He had played on the radio with his historic Big Band "013" in 1938, to then return, after the ...
55. Ralph Vaughan Williams
Soundtrack | Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Dr. Ralph Vaughan Williams was perhaps the most important English composer of the 20th Century. His influence on the development of 20th Century music was immense. Benjamin Britten and numerous film composers (Jerry Goldsmith, etc.) owe a lot to him. He created a truly contemporary idiom whose ...
56. Randy Edelman
Music_department | The Last of the Mohicans
Randy Edelman was born on June 10, 1947 in Paterson, New Jersey, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for The Last of the Mohicans (1992), xXx (2002) and Anaconda (1997). He has been married to Jackie DeShannon since June 3, 1976. They have one child.
57. Richard Addinsell
Soundtrack | My Week with Marilyn
English composer Richard Addinsell was born in 1904. After finishing his law studies at Oxford, he took a short course in music at the Royal College of Music in London and studied from 1929 to 1932 in Berlin and Vienna. From 1933 to 1935 he lived in the USA writing scores for the Hollywood studios.
58. Ron Goodwin
Music_department | Frenzy
Ron Goodwin was born on 17th February 1925 in Plymouth. He was the son of a London policeman who was detached to the harbour-town. His mother felt that piano lessons would be a good pastime, so in his fifth year, the little Ron was hoisted onto a piano-stool and his education on this instrument ...
59. Ron Grainer
Composer | The Omega Man
Ron Grainer was one of the outstanding composers of music for British television. He was born in a small mining town called Atherton, Queensland, Australia on 11th August 1922, where his father owned the local milk bar. His mother played piano and Ron was on the keyboard from the age of two and ...
60. Sergei Prokofiev
Soundtrack | Children of Men
Prokofiev was a multi-talented man and an innovative composer. He learned piano from his mother and chess from his father. He always had a chess set on his piano, and was able to play against the chess champions of his time. He studied music with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, graduated with highest ...
61. Trevor Rabin
Composer | Deep Blue Sea
Trevor Rabin was born in South Africa in 1954. He began playing guitar at the age of 12 after having had piano lessons since he was a toddler. In 1972 he formed the band Rabbit becoming the most successful rock act ever to emerge from South Africa. Rabin left Rabbit to pursue a solo career in ...
62. Vic Mizzy
Composer | The Addams Family
Vic Mizzy was born on January 9, 1916 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for The Addams Family (1964), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and Deliver Us from Evil (2014). He died on October 17, 2009 in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, California, USA.
63. 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 ...
64. William Alwyn
Music_department | Back to the Present!
Virtuoso flautist and composer who taught at London's Royal Academy of Music as a professor from 1926 to 1955. During the war years, he was employed by the Ministry of Information, where he came to the fore as a composer of scores for documentary films which were used for morale building, the ...
65. William Walton
Soundtrack | Last Action Hero
William Walton came from a musical family. He entered Christ Church, Oxford at the early age of sixteen but left without a degree in 1920. A fine musician, he was essentially self-taught as a composer, except some instruction from Hugh Allen, the cathedral organist. Through literary friends and ...
66. Terence Blanchard
Composer | BlacKkKlansman
A world renowned trumpeter/composer/band leader and Blue Note recording artist, Terence Blanchard is the most prolific jazz musician to ever compose for motion pictures. Blanchard was born and raised in New Orleans where he studied with the Marsalis brothers at the famed New Orleans Center for the ...
67. Shirley Walker
Music_department | True Lies
Shirley Walker was born in Napa, California in 1945. She was educated at Pleasant Hill High School; attended San Francisco State College on piano scholarship; studied composition with Dr. Roger Nixon; and piano with Harald Logan of Berkeley, California. She was soloist with San Francisco Symphony ...
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