Favourite subject!!! :hotjump:
Well, as Existenz said my most favourite composer for film music is (no surprise to all who know me) John Williams (by far).
Top album will have to be The Empire Strikes Back with most favourite tracks 'In to the asteroid field' and ' The Battle in the snow' even though they are all awesome.
Closely followed by Dracula (1979)
and ET (hey I was a kid when I first heard it
)
Then the quality of his music varies from 'absolutely awesome' to 'fantastic'. So I won't bother with naming scores as we will be here all day. There are about two from the 100+ albums I own I didn't like : Earthquake and The Missouri Breaks.
My second most favourite film music composer of all time is Gerry Goldsmith
Sadly he died a few months ago but I managed to see him conducting the LSO twice. He is best remembered for his scores of the Star Trek film series
, The Omen and many more. The man had an endless list of scores!! I could never keep up. Most favourite scores:
The Omen Trilogy, Star Trek I, The Legend (released in America without his music but with some weird German pop band
)Alien, First Night, The Mummy, Total Recall.
Number 3 will have to be James Horner. I have lost interest in him after I kept hearing the same writing over and over again but, Willow, Star Trek II and Krull remain some of my most favourite scores of all time.
Numero 4 is Elliot Goldenthal, again he repeats him self to death but it's very difficult not to admit that Interview with the Vampire, Batman Forever and Alien 3 were awesome scores!! I also like Pet Cemetery (one of his first). That guy is extremely innovative and came up with awesome (unusual) brass sounds. It was a breath of fresh air when he first appeared on the film scoring scene.
Fifth has to be Alan Silvestri: The Predator films, The Mummy Returns
Other than my top five there is a wealth of composers who I admire(in no particular order):
Cliff Eidelman, Star Trek- The Undiscovered Country (I think!!)
Robert Folk,
John Debney, most recently he scored The Passion of Christ
Max Steiner, King Kong (original!!!)
Basil Polydouris, Conan the barbarian, Starship Troopers
Danny Elfman, Edward Scissorhands (by far his best score)
Howard Shore, The Fly, Lord of the rings, Naked Lunch
Ryichi Sakamoto, Little Buddha, The Last Emperor
Christopher Young, Hellraiser I + II are awesome, the Fly 2 and The Dark Half are also great.
Henry Mancini (RIP), Lifeforce is my most favourite
Ennio Moricone, The Mission, The Thing
David Arnold, Stargate is his first score and still my favourite from his work
Marty Paich for orchestrating and adding music for Dune. Main themes and music initially composed by Toto.
I am sure I left one or two out (no, Vangelis was left out on purpose
) but that's pretty much it with my favourite composers for film music.
Classical composers I like: Stravinsky, Tschaikovsky, Holst, Debussy but Stravinsky is at the top of the list!!!
