Top 15 Greatest Film Score Composers Of All Time

A FILM SCORE is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score forms part of the film's soundtrack, which also, usually includes pre-existing music, dialogue and sound effects, and comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to enhance the dramatic narrative and the emotional impact of the scene in question. Scores are written by one or more composers, under the guidance of, or in collaboration with, the film's director or producer and are then usually performed by an ensemble of musicians - most often comprising an orchestra or band, instrumental soloists, and choir or vocalists - known as playback singers and recorded by a sound engineer.

Film scores encompass an enormous variety of styles of music, depending on the nature of the films they accompany. The majority of scores are orchestral works rooted in Western classical music, but many scores are also influenced by jazz, rock, pop, blues, new-age and ambient music, and a wide range of ethnic and world music styles. Since the 1950s, a growing number of scores have also included electronic elements as part of the score, and many scores written today feature a hybrid of orchestral and electronic instruments.

Film Score Composer News, Reviews & Resources

• COMPOSER - Wikipedia.
• Ennio Morricone: 10 of his greatest compositions - "From idiosyncratic Italian pop to experimental funk and moments from his classic westerns, here are some of the maestro’s most striking moments."
• Ennio Morricone’s life in pictures - "Italian composer Ennio Morricone died in hospital in Rome at the age of 91. Known for putting the music to 'spaghetti' Westerns that made Clint Eastwood a star, Morricone scored over 500 films in seven decades."
• FILM SCORE - Wikipedia.

Top 15 Film Score Composers

• ANTON KARAS - Viennese zither player, best known for his soundtrack to CAROL REED's 1949 adaptation of The Third Man.
• Bernard Herrmann - was an American composer and conductor[1] best known for his work in composing for films. An Academy Award-winner for The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), Herrmann is known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, notably The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (where he makes a cameo as the conductor at Royal Albert Hall), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963) (as "sound consultant") and Marnie (1964). He worked in radio drama, composing for Orson Welles's The Mercury Theater on the Air, and his first film score was for Welles's film debut, Citizen Kane (1941). His other credits include Jane Eyre (1943), Anna and the King of Siam (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Cape Fear (1962), Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and Twisted Nerve (1968). Herrmann scored films that were inspired by Hitchcock.
• CARMINE COPPOLA - American composer, flautist, editor, musical director, and songwriter, at the Internet Movie Database.
• CRAIG ARMSTRONG - Scottish composer of modern orchestral music, electronica and film scores, at the Internet Movie Database.
• ELMER BERNSTEIN - American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores, at the Internet Movie Database.
• ENNIO MORRICONE - SERGIO LEONE's favorite composer, at the Internet Movie Database.
• Francis Lai - French accordionist and composer, noted for his film scores. In 1965 he met filmmaker Claude Lelouch and was hired to help write the score for the film A Man and a Woman. Released in 1966, the film was a major international success, earning a number of Academy Awards. The young Lai received a Golden Globe Award nomination for "Best Original Score". In 1970 Lai won the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Score and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for the film Love Story.
• HANS ZIMMER - German composer and music producer, at the Internet Movie Database.
• James Horner - (1953-2015). Was an American composer, conductor and orchestrator of film scores. He was known for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for his frequent use of motifs associated with Celtic music. Horner's score for Titanic is the best selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time while Titanic and Avatar, both directed by James Cameron, are the two highest-grossing films of all time. At the Internet Movie Database.
• JOHN BARRY - English film score composer, at the Internet Movie Database. Best known for composing 11 James Bond soundtracks and was hugely influential on the 007 series' distinctive style.
• JOHN MAUCERI - American conductor, producer and composer for theatre, opera and television, at the Internet Movie Database.
• JOHN WILLIAMS - American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, at the Internet Movie Database. He has had a long association with director Steven Spielberg, composing the music for all but two (Duel and The Color Purple) of Spielberg's major feature films.
• LALO SCHIFRIN - Argentine composer, pianist and conductor. He is best known for his film and TV scores, such as the Mission: Impossible theme, at the Internet Movie Database.
• MAURICE JARRE - French composer and conductor best known for his film scores, at the Internet Movie Database.
• Max Steiner - (1888-1971). Austrian-born American composer of music for theatre and films. He worked in England, then Broadway, and moved to Hollywood in 1929 where he became one of the first composers to write music scores for films. Steiner is referred to as "the father of film music" and is considered one of the greatest film score composers in the history of cinema. Along with such composers as Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman and Miklós Rózsa, Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films. Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO and Warner Brothers, and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942), and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women (1933), Jezebel (1938), Casablanca (1942), and the film score for which he is possibly best known, Gone with the Wind (1939). At the Internet Movie Database.
• MICHEL LEGRAND - Franco-Armenian musical composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist, at the Internet Movie Database.
• NINO ROTA - world-renowned Italian composer and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films, and for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy. At the Internet Movie Database.
• Vangelis - Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock and orchestral music, under the artist name Vangelis. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning score for the film Chariots of Fire, composing scores for the films Blade Runner, 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Alexander, and the use of his music in the PBS documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan. At the Internet Movie Database.