The Top Ten Best Movie Composers

Many would argue about the most important qualities of a movie. Some would say it’s the story, some the performances, some the technical competence, some the greater themes and meanings, and some an amalgamation of all. It’s all part of the subjective nature of judging film of course, but for me, one of the most important qualities of a movie has always been its score. I wouldn’t say it makes or breaks a movie by any means, but a good score can really bring a lot to an otherwise bad or mediocre film while a weak score can be a slight disappointment on a good one. The brilliant composer Igor Stravinsky said “film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.” It should be a natural part of the film experience, and some of the greatest moments in all of cinema wouldn’t be as special without the power of their musical accompaniment. Music after all is fully capable of moving and challenging us on its own as well.

Movie music has also allowed composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to find work and exposure. Thanks to the efforts of early movie musicians like Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, film music has arguably become an art unto itself, with various composers emphasizing their versatility, adaptability, and talent. And they’ve produced fantastic bodies of work. So these are my Top Ten Movie Composers. Like every other facet of filmmaking, film music has largely been male-dominated and thus few women composers have been given the opportunity to stand out. In lieu of that I want to highlight Rachel Portman (Emma, The Cider House Rules, Nicholas Nickleby, Chocolat), Anne Dudley (The Crying Game, The Full Monty, Bright Young Things, Elle), and Wendy Carlos (A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Tron).

Honourable Mentions: James Horner, Nino Rota, Carter Burwell, Alan Silvestri, Jerry Goldsmith, James Newton Howard, Michael Giacchino, and Alexandre Desplat.

10. Howard Shore

You could make valid arguments for why this Canadian composer should be higher or lower on this list. A lot of his work has been for David Cronenberg and other horror directors, and in this capacity his only score to truly stand out has been The Silence of the Lambs. But when Peter Jackson picked him to create the music for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, it was a bizarre choice, but also a stroke of genius. His work on those films is utterly breathtaking. I’ve listened to all three soundtracks numerous times, and each time he captures the epic, adventurous, and mythical scale of Tolkiens’ master work as well as the pastoral serenity and endearing timelessness of a world that continues to captivate. Since then he’s done music for a number of Martin Scorsese movies like Gangs of New York and Shutter Island, culminating in a magical score for Hugo; and has even given us some really good tracks for Jacksons’ lesser received Hobbit movies.

9. Elmer Bernstein

Though he’d been an established composer for a few years, it was The Ten Commandments in 1956 that really marked the entrance of Elmer Bernstein into the catalogue of great movie musicians. Though he’s best known for his iconic themes to The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, and To Kill a Mockingbird, one of my favourites of his is from Airplane!, which for a zany spoof comedy has some really nice music. But you wouldn’t expect much less from Bernstein, who had a knack for both sweet melodies and uproarious, triumphant motifs. Some other notably good scores of his include Buccaneer, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Hallelujah Trail, as well as an exemplary re-working of Bernard Herrmann’s Cape Fear theme for Martin Scorsese’s 1992 remake. With this terrific body of work it’s astonishing he only won a single Oscar; what’s even more astonishing is that it was for one of his most mediocre efforts, Thoroughly Modern Millie.

8. Thomas Newman

Even among movie composers, Thomas Newman is one of the lesser known names. But his often mellow, calming music has a real way of sticking with you. The best example of this is his slow but powerful and inspirational score to The Shawshank Redemption. He scored The Green Mile as well, and has worked frequently with Sam Mendes, composing the music for American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, Skyfall, and, the best of the bunch, Road to Perdition. The emotional music from Pixar’s Finding Nemo and WALL-E came from him, as did the surprisingly great moody theme to the terrible Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Other commendable scores of his include Little Women, The Horse Whisperer, Angels in America, Cinderella Man, The Good German, Saving Mr. Banks, and Bridge of Spies. He’s never won an Academy Award though he’s been nominated over twenty times. But his terrific work certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed by this appreciator of his craft.

7. Joe Hisaishi

Listening to a piece of music by Joe Hisaishi is like being transported to another world. Which is no wonder considering for three decades his music deftly illustrated the magical worlds and states of being expressed in the astounding films of Hayao Miyazaki. From the mythical rhythms of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind to the impressionist musings of Howl’s Moving Castle, the adventurous spirit of Castle in the Sky to the mature reflective tones of The Wind Rises, he’s been the unsung hero of many a fantastic Miyazaki anime. His score for Spirited Away is still the best soundtrack to an animated film, being full of creativity, versatility, thoughtfulness, and raw emotion, both whimsical and sombre. My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Ponyo, and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya are all superb of course; I’d like to draw special attention to his beautiful melancholy 1920s tribute of Porco Rosso and his grand classical motifs of Princess Mononoke. He’s also done some good live-action movie scores for films such as Departures, Hana-bi, Sonatine, Kikujiro, A Scene at the Sea, Kids Return, and Welcome to DongMakGol, as well as plenty of independent compositions; so check them out in addition to his Ghibli classics.

6. Ennio Morricone

Everybody knows “The Ecstasy of Gold”, the intense and stylish theme from Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Ennio Morricone is the man behind that infamous tune as well as the scores for both its predecessors, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. An incredibly experimental Italian composer, Morricone has created some of the greatest film scores in both Hollywood and world cinema. He scored other grand Leone films such as Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America -both fantastic. He’s worked with Brian De Palma, Franco Zeffirelli, Barry Levinson, Wolfgang Peterson, and most frequently Giuseppe Tornatore, building up a formidable resume that includes The Mission, Bugsy, Casualties of War, The Untouchables, Mission to Mars, Metello, The Professional, The Thing, Days of Heaven, and The Legend of 1900. He finally won an Oscar in 2016 for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, long overdue. In a career spanning six decades, few other movie musicians have left such a widespread impact as this unimposing but brilliant maestro.

5. Hans Zimmer

By far, one of the most renowned movie composers is Hans Zimmer. And although his recent work has often been uninspired and repetitive, it shouldn’t be forgotten the massive amount of credentials he has to his name. Beginning his career as a member of the Buggles (the “Video Killed the Radio Star” group), he first hit it big with Rain Man before composing a series of famous scores for Thelma & Louise, The Lion King, Gladiator, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and the Dark Knight trilogy, all of which are stupendous and instantly memorable. Though not as versatile, his music for Black Rain, Backdraft, Crimson Tide, Pearl Harbor, Inception, Sherlock Holmes, and 12 Years a Slave are also quite good. Especial focus I’d give to his theme for Cool Runnings, and the highly underrated wondrous soundtrack to The Prince of Egypt; and for that matter, his other work on DreamWorks movies like The Road to El Dorado, Spirit, and his collaborations with John Powell on the Kung Fu Panda series. It’s true many of his scores as of late have felt like filler music, but he’s still got the brilliant touch. For proof, just listen to some of the music from Blade Runner 2049.

4. Maurice Jarre

Chances are you’ve heard the music of Maurice Jarre if you’ve never heard of him. The talented orchestrator from Lyon was perhaps best known for his iconic musical themes of David Lean movies such as Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India, all of which were strongly atmospheric, romantic, captivating, and as grand and impressionable as the movies themselves. And while that type of epic may have been his bread and butter, having also scored Ryan’s Daughter for Lean and John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King, he tried his hand at various types of film music; moving from the supernatural subtleties of Ghost to big sci-fi of Enemy Mine to chaos incarnate in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Dead Poets Society and Gorillas in the Mist are other remarkable gems of his, both of which used plenty of synthesized music, demonstrating Jarre’s ability to adapt to changing musical landscapes. The Message, Sundays and Cybele, Witness, Jacob’s Ladder, and Fatal Attraction also deserve recognition. Alfred Hitchcock complemented Jarre on his score for Topaz, calling it better than the film itself. And in the business of film music there’s no higher praise an artist can get.

3. Miklós Rózsa

Always a concert musician first, and a film composer second, Miklós Rózsa nonetheless left a huge legacy on movie music. Extremely versatile and innovative, he made great strides in the industry. He introduced the theramin to film in his hauntingly beautiful score of Hitchock’s Spellbound and eerily disorienting theme to Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, revolutionizing tonal underscoring in the process. He also created the great scores of A Double Life and Ivanhoe, but Rózsa, like Jarre, eventually found a niche in epic music. His work on Ben-Hur is his greatest achievement in this, as to this day it’s one of the greatest of all movie scores, full of operatic scale, elaborate bombast, drama, soul, and pathos -it’s just a magnificent treat to listen to. His other epic scores have this same effect; I haven’t seen Quo Vadis, but after listening to its music, I want to! The Thief of Bagdad, Julius Caesar, Moonfleet, and The Killers are some of his other great showcases. He won an award for Time After Time, one of his last movies, declaring it the score he’d worked the hardest on -which is quite a surprise. He certainly never made it look easy.

2. Bernard Herrmann

A score by Bernard Herrmann almost never fails to suck you into a movie. His mastery of suspenseful music almost equalled his consistent collaborator Alfred Hitchcock, but his range was exemplary as well. His best known scores are the classic Hitchcock themes: Vertigo, North by Northwest, The Birds, Marnie, and of course his revolutionary Psycho, all of which are astounding. He debuted alongside Orson Welles fantastically with Citizen Kane, and composed some really great music for early science-fiction and fantasy movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still (ever since, the go-to music for alien encounters), Journey to the Center of the Earth, Mysterious Island, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason and the Argonauts. Fahrenheit 451 is another highlight, as is the creepy Cape Feare and Hangover Square. But he won his Oscar for The Devil and Daniel Webster, proving he could do great gentler music for films too like The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and Jane Eyre. A true artist, Herrmann demanded absolute creative control on each of his scores, not trusting directors to fully understand music. Unconventional though this was, it worked in his favour. Brian De Palma’s Sisters and Obsession are other really good marks on his filmography, and his final movie may also have been his biggest departure; but the moody jazz of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver is just as genius as the works he was composing twenty years earlier.

1. John Williams

Don’t act surprised, who else was it going to be? John Williams is the most famous movie composer for good reason. His body of work is far and away the most memorable and no two scores of his are quite alike. He’s simply the best in the industry. Everyone knows his classics: the Star Wars movies (even the prequels -the music of which was the one thing that just about matched the originals in quality), Superman, E.T., Jurassic Park, Jaws, the Indiana Jones movies, Close Encounters of the Third Kind; all of which are iconic, bombastic, and incredibly memorable. His partnership with Steven Spielberg led to him producing other less memorable, but no less amazing scores for Hook, Schindler’s List, and Saving Private Ryan (additional notable works for Spielberg are Amistad, Minority Report, and Munich). But John Williams has worked terrifically for other directors too, from the saturated whimsy of Home Alone to the Jarre-esque romance of Seven Years in Tibet; the sharp melancholy of Angela’s Ashes to the oriental flurry of Memoirs of a Geisha. His most underrated score has to be either his poetically soulful Empire of the Sun or his eclectically medieval Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, a step up from his already magical scores for the first two Harry Potter films. Like Hans Zimmer, his most recent work hasn’t been quite as impressive, but I think we may also be judging it to an impossible standard. He still turns out really good soundtracks for films like War Horse, The Book Thief, and The Last Jedi; and even his mediocre music on one movie might be equivalent to the best from another composer. Bernard Herrmann believed that the goal of film music should be to stand alone, the film notwithstanding. To that I partly agree. But I believe it’s more important for music composed for a film to enhance the film itself; to give added beauty and resonance to a movies’ characters and ideas and make the experience more fulfilling. And that is John Williams’ legacy. The most famous movies he worked on wouldn’t be as remembered or revered if not for the crucial role his music played. When critics talk of music being a “character” in a particular film, it’s thanks to John Williams. He’s one of my favourite musicians, and absolutely the greatest of many a great movie composer.

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