Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Beyond John Williams and Bernard Hermann: Film Composers to Know

Film scores have such great power because it can make or break a scene (or movie).  There are, of course, well known composers of great film score, the most famous is probably John Williams.  John Williams has scored most of Steven Spielberg's (and George Lucas) films. And of course no conversation about film composers can leave out Bernard Hermann, who composed the scores for lots of Hitchcock's films, most famously Psycho.   But there are several other really great composers to know (I'll cover both classic and modern film composers):

Elmer Bernstien:
Most Famous Scores: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Magnificent Seven, and The Great Escape
With a catalog that contained over 200 scores,  I love the variety of his music, you would never guess that the same composer wrote both To Kill A Mockingbird and The Magnifiecent Seven (though I can hear the influence of his mentor, Aaron Copeland).




Ennio Morricone
Most Famous Scores: The Untouchables, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (also, awesomely, he scored La Cage aux Folles)
Obviously you know this:


But this is one of my favorite pieces of music ever:


Also, I present music to use in case they send one of yours to the hospital (and you need to send one of theirs to the morgue; the score made me like The Untouchables way more that I thought I would):



Miklos Rozsa
Most Famous Scores: Ben Hur, Spellbound, The Lost Weekend, The Killers, The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers, El Cid, Double Indemnity, The Naked City, Adam's Rib, The Asphalt Jungle, The Thief of Baghdad



Dimitri Tiomkin:
Most Famous Scores: Dial M for Murder, Giant, Strangers on a Train, The Guns of Navarone, High Noon, Thing from Another World, It's A Wonderful Life



Alexandre Desplat:
Most Famous Scores: The King's Speech, The Artist, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Argo, Moonrise Kingdom, Rise of the Guardians, The Monuments Men



Michael Giacchino
Most Famous Scores: The Incredibles, Alias (TV Series), Lost (TV Series), Ratatouille, Fringe (TV Series with a really great theme!), Super 8, Star Trek (2009 reboot), Star Trek: Into Darkness, Up



Shoutouts to Howard Shore (The Lord of the Ring Trilogy),  Hans Zimmer, and James Horner.

And just because:


Now excuse me while I watch Raiders of the Lost Ark (or Jaws, or Jurassic Park, or Star Wars)


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