Film score
Encyclopedia
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack
, which also usually includes dialogue
and sound effects. The score 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.
Songs are usually not considered part of the film's score, although songs do also form part of the film's soundtrack. Although some songs, especially in musicals
, are based on thematic ideas from the score (or vice-versa), scores usually do not have lyrics, except for when sung by choirs or soloists as part of a cue. Similarly, pop songs which are "needle dropped" into a specific scene in film for added emphasis are not considered part of the score, although occasionally the score's composer will write an original pop song based on his themes, such as James Horner
's "My Heart Will Go On
" from Titanic
, written for Celine Dion
.
Scores are written by one or more composer
s, under the guidance of the film's director
and/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 - 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 a great number of scores also draw influence from jazz
, rock
, pop
, blues, New Age
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.
Since the invention of digital technology
and audio sampling
, many low budget films have been able to rely on digital samples to imitate the sound of live instruments, and many scores are created and performed wholly by the composers themselves, by programming sophisticated music composition software.
, although on some occasions the composer is on hand during the entire film shoot, especially when actors are required to perform with or be aware of original diegetic music. The composer is shown an unpolished "rough cut" of the film, before the editing is completed, and talks to the director or producer about what sort of music is required for the film in terms of style and tone. The director and composer will watch the entire film, taking note of which scenes require original music. During this process the composer will take precise timing notes so that he or she knows how long each cue needs to last, where it begins, where it ends, and of particular moments during a scene with which the music may need to coincide in a specific way. This process is known as "spotting".
Occasionally, a film maker will actually edit his film to fit the flow of music, rather than the other way around, which is the norm. Director Godfrey Reggio
edited his films Koyaanisqatsi
and Powaqqatsi
based on composer Philip Glass
's music. Similarly, the relationship between director Sergio Leone
and composer Ennio Morricone
was such that the finale of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
and the films Once Upon a Time in the West
and Once Upon a Time in America
were edited to Morricone's score as the composer had prepared it months before the film's production ended. Also, the finale of Steven Spielberg
's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
was edited to match the music of his long-time collaborator John Williams
: as recounted in a companion documentary on the DVD, Spielberg gave Williams complete freedom with the music and asked him to record the cue without picture; Spielberg then re-edited the scene later to match the music.
Less frequently, a composer will be asked to write music based on his or her impressions of the script or storyboards, without seeing the film itself, and is given more freedom to create music without the need to adhere to specific cue lengths or mirror the emotional arc of a particular scene. This approach is usually taken by a director who does not wish to have the music comment specifically on a particular scene or nuance of a film, and which can instead be inserted into the film at any point the director wishes during the post-production process. Composer Hans Zimmer
was asked to write music in this way in 2010 for director Christopher Nolan
's film Inception
; composer Gustavo Santaolalla
did the same thing when he wrote his Oscar-winning score for Brokeback Mountain
.
When syncing music to picture, generally a leeway of 3-4 frames late or early allows the composer to be extremely accurate. using a technique called Free Timing. when using this technique, a conductor will either use either (a) a stop watch or studio size stopclock, or (b) watch the film on a screen or video monitor while conducting the musicians to predetermined timings. There are represented visually by vertical lines (streamers) and bursts of light called punches. These are put on the film by the Music Editor at points specified by the composer. In both instances the timings on the clock or lines scribed on the film have corresponding timings which are also at specific points (beats) in the composer/conductor score.
Using a digital sequencer such as Digital Performer, Logic, or Cubase, composers are able to sync music to picture with extreme accuracy using SMPTE timecode. Outlined below is one method using Digital Performer:
You now will have synchronized an event in the film with a musical event, in time.
A written click track is a method of writing bars of music in consistent time values (i.e. 4 beats in :02⅔ seconds) to establish a constant tempo in lieu of a metronome value (i.e. 88 Bpm). A composer would use a written click if they planned to conduct live performers. When using other methods such as a metronome, the conductor has a perfectly spaced click playing in his ear which he conducts to. This can yield stiff and lifeless performances in slower more expressive cues. You can convert a standard BPM value to a written click where X represents the number of beats per bar, and W represents time in seconds, by using the following equation:
Written clicks are expressed using 1/3 second increments, so the next step is to round the decimal to either 0, 1/3, or 2/3 of a second. The following is an example for 88 BPM:
2.72 rounds to 2.66, so the written click is 4 beats in :02⅔ seconds.
Once the composer has identified the location in the film they wish to sync with musically, they must determine the musical beat this event occurs on. To find this, they use the following equation, where bpm is beats per minute, sp is the sync point in real-time (i.e. 33.7 seconds), and B is the beat number in 1/3 increments (i.e. 49⅔).
and performing works-in-progress for the director on a piano, while other composers write on computers using sophisticated music composition software such as Digital Performer
, Logic Pro
, Cubase or Protools. Working with software allows composers to create MIDI-based demos of cues, called MIDI mockup
s, for review by the filmmaker prior to the final orchestral recording.
The length of time a composer has to write the score varies from project to project; depending on the post-production schedule, a composer may have as little as two weeks, or as much as three months to write the score. In normal circumstances, the actual writing process usually lasts around six weeks from beginning to end.
The actual musical content of a film score is wholly dependent on the type of film being scored, and the emotions the director wishes the music to convey. A film score can encompass literally thousands of different combinations of instruments, ranging from full symphony orchestral ensembles to single solo instruments to rock bands to jazz combos, along with a multitude of ethnic and world music influences, soloists, vocalists, choirs and electronic textures. The style of the music being written also varies massively from project to project, and can be influenced by the time period in which the film is set, the geographic location of the film's action, and even the musical tastes of the characters. As part of their preparations for writing the score the composer will often research different musical techniques and genres as appropriate for that specific project; as such, it is not uncommon for established film composers to be proficient at writing music in dozens of different styles.
Some composers, notably Ennio Morricone
, orchestrate their own scores themselves, without using an additional orchestrator. Some composers provide intricate details in how they want this to be accomplished, and will provide the orchestrator with copious notes outlining which instruments are being asked to perform which notes, giving the orchestrator no personal creative input whatsoever beyond re-notating the music on different sheets of paper as appropriate. Other composers are less detailed, and will often ask orchestrators to "fill in the blanks", providing their own creative input into the makeup of the ensemble, ensuring that each instrument is capable of performing the music as written, and even allowing then to introduce performance techniques and flourishes to enhance the score.
Over the years several orchestrators have become linked to the work of one particular composer, often to the point where one will not work without the other. Examples of enduring composer-orchestrator relationships include Jerry Goldsmith
with Arthur Morton
, Alexander Courage
and Herbert W. Spencer
; Miklos Rozsa
with Eugene Zador; Alfred Newman
with Edward Powell, Ken Darby
and Hugo Friedhofer
; Danny Elfman
with Steve Bartek
; David Arnold
with Nicholas Dodd; Basil Poledouris
with Greig McRitchie; and Elliot Goldenthal
with Robert Elhai. Others have become orchestrators-for-hire, and work with many different composers over the course of their careers; examples of prominent film music orchestrators include Pete Anthony, Jeff Atmajian
, Brad Dechter, Bruce Fowler
, John Neufeld, Thomas Pasatieri
, Conrad Pope
, Nic Raine and J.A.C. Redford.
Once the orchestration process has been completed, the sheet music is physically printed onto paper by one or more music copyists, and is ready for performance.
, the orchestra or ensemble then performs it, often with the composer conducting. Musicians for these ensembles are often uncredited in the film or on the album and are contracted individually (and if so, the orchestra contractor is credited in the film or the soundtrack album). However, some films have recently begun crediting the contracted musicians on the albums under the name Hollywood Studio Symphony
after an agreement with the American Federation of Musicians
. Other performing ensembles that are often employed include the London Symphony Orchestra
(performing film music since 1935) the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
(an orchestra dedicated exclusively to recording), and the Northwest Sinfonia
.
The orchestra performs in front of a large screen depicting the movie, and sometimes to a series of clicks called a "click-track" that changes with meter
and tempo, assisting the conductor to synchronize the music with the film.
More rarely, the director will talk to the composer before shooting has started, so as to give more time to the composer or because the director needs to shoot scenes (namely song or dance scenes) according to the final score. Sometimes the director will have edited the film using "temp (temporary) music": already published pieces with a character that the director believes to fit specific scenes.
's 2001: A Space Odyssey
, where Kubrick opted for existing recordings of classical works, including pieces by composer György Ligeti
rather than the score by Alex North
, although Kubrick had also hired Frank Cordell to do a score. While North's 2001 is indeed a major example, it is not the sole case of well-known rejected scores. Others include Torn Curtain
(Bernard Herrmann), Troy
(Gabriel Yared), Peter Jackson's King Kong
(Howard Shore) and The Bourne Identity
(Carter Burwell).
's use of leitmotif
. These may be played in different variations depending on the situation they represent, scattered amongst incidental music. An example of this technique is John Williams
' score for the Star Wars saga, and the numerous themes associated with characters like Darth Vader
, Luke Skywalker
, and Princess Leia Organa
(see Star Wars music
for more details).
Other examples are Italian composers Stefano Lentini
and oscar's winner Ennio Morricone
. The Lord of the Rings trilogy
uses a similar technique, with recurring themes for many main characters and places. Others are less known by casual moviegoers, but well known among score enthusiasts, such as Jerry Goldsmith's underlying theme for the Borg
in Star Trek: First Contact
, or his Klingon theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture
which other composers carry over into their Klingon motifs, and he has brought back on numerous occasions as the theme for Worf
, Star Trek: The Next Generation's
most prominent Klingon. Michael Giacchino
employed character themes in the soundtrack for the 2009 animated film Up
, for which he received the Academy Award for Best Score. His orchestral soundtrack for the television series Lost
also depended heavily on character and situation-specific themes.
In 1983, a non-profit organization, the Society for the Preservation of Film Music
, was formed to preserve the "byproducts" of creating a film score: the music manuscripts (written music) and other documents and studio recordings generated in the process of composing and recording scores which, in some instances, have been discarded by the movie studio
s. The written music must be kept to perform the music on concert programs and to make new recordings of it. Sometimes only after decades has an archival recording of a film score been released on CD.
is a genre that has music only from sources within a film, such as from a radio or television. This is called "source music" (or a "source cue") because it comes from an on screen source that can actually be seen or that can be inferred (in academic film theory
such music is called "diegetic
" music, as it emanates from the "diegesis
" or "story world"). An example of "source music" is the use of the Frankie Valli
song "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" in Michael Cimino
's "The Deer Hunter
". Alfred Hitchcock's
1963 thriller The Birds
is an example of a Hollywood film with no non-diegetic music whatsoever.
as a guide. In 1914, The Oz Film Manufacturing Company
sent full-length scores by Louis F. Gottschalk
for their films. Other examples of this include Victor Herbert
's score in 1915 to The Fall of a Nation
(a sequel to The Birth of a Nation
) and Camille Saint-Saëns
' music for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise
in 1908. It was preceded by Nathaniel D. Mann
's score for The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays
by four months, but that was a mixture of interrelated stage and film performance in the tradition of old magic lantern
shows. Most accompaniments at this time, these examples notwithstanding, comprised pieces by famous composers, also including studies. These were often used to form catalogues of photoplay music
, which had different subsections broken down by 'mood' and/or genre: dark, sad, suspense, action, chase, etc.
German cinema, which was highly influential in the era of silent movies, provided some original scores such as Fritz Lang
's movies Die Nibelungen
(1924) and Metropolis
(1927) which were accompanied by original full scale orchestral and leitmotific scores written by Gottfried Huppertz
, who also wrote piano-versions of his music, for playing in smaller cinemas. Friedrich W. Murnau's movies Nosferatu (1922 - music by Hans Erdmann) and Faust – eine deutsche Volkssage (1926 - music by Werner Richard Heymann) also had original scores written for them. Other films like Murnau's Der letzte Mann contained a mixing of original compositions (in this case by Giuseppe Becce
) and library music / folk tunes, which were artistically included into the score by the composer. Nevertheless fully developed original scores were quite rare in the silent movie era. When sound came to movies, director Fritz Lang barely used musical scores in his movies anymore. Apart from Peter Lorre
whistling a short piece from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt
, Lang's movie M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder
was lacking musical accompaniment completely and Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse
only included one original piece written for the movie by Hans Erdmann played at the very beginning and end of the movie. One of the rare occasions on which music occurs in the movie is a song one of the characters sings, that Lang uses to put emphasis on the man's insanity, similar to the use of the whistling in M
.
Though "the scoring of narrative features during the 1940s lagged decades behind technical innovations in the field of concert music," the 1950s saw the rise of the modernist film score. Director Elia Kazan
was open to the idea of jazz influences and dissonant scoring and worked with Alex North, whose score for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) combined dissonance with elements of blues and jazz. Kazan also approached Leonard Bernstein
to score On the Waterfront
(1954) and the result was reminiscent of earlier works by Aaron Copland
and Igor Stravinsky
with its "jazz-based harmonies and exciting additive rhythms." A year later, Leonard Rosenman
, inspired by Arnold Schoenberg
, experimented with atonality in his scores for East of Eden (1955) and Rebel Without a Cause
(1955). In his ten-year collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock
, Bernard Herrmann
experimented with ideas in Vertigo
(1958), Psycho
(1960), and The Birds
(1963). The use of non-diegetic jazz was another modernist innovation, such as jazz star Duke Ellington
's score for Otto Preminger
's Anatomy of a Murder
(1959).
A full film score widely regarded as the first made by a popular artist came in 1973 with the film Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, by Bob Dylan
. However the album received very little critical acclaim. This had not been done before in popular film history as featured bands had films written around their music such as in the animation Yellow Submarine with music by The Beatles
.
in the Best Score category (which, over the years, had gone by a variety of names, included song scores and arrangements, and been split into awards for scoring in dramas and comedies). Winners of the Award appear in bold. Note: Composers whose only Oscar nominations came in the Best Original Song category are not listed, and Best Original Song wins are not counted in the wins tally.
Source: The Official Academy Awards Database http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/ampas_awards/BasicSearchInput.jsp
), but have never been nominated for an Oscar. Winners of an Award appear in bold.
Sources: HFPA Award Search http://www.goldenglobes.org/browse/categories, BAFTA Awards Database http://www.bafta.org/awards-database.html?sq=, Primetime Emmy Award Database http://www.emmys.com/award_history_search, Grammy Awards Archive http://www.grammy.com/nominees/search, IFMCA Awards Archive http://filmmusiccritics.org/awards-archive/
Source: Box Office Mojo – All-Time Domestic Box Office Grosses http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/domestic.htm, All-Time Domestic Box Office Grosses Adjusted for Inflation http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm, All-Time Worldwide Box Office Grosses http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/
basis. Production music is therefore a very convenient medium for media producers — they can be assured that they will be able to license any piece of music in the library at a reasonable rate.
Production music libraries will typically offer a broad range of musical styles and genres, enabling producers and editors to find much of what they need in the same library. Music libraries vary in size from a few hundred tracks up to many thousands. The first production music library was setup by De Wolfe in 1927 with the advent of sound in film, the company originally scored music for use in silent film. Another music library was set up by Ralph Hawkes of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers in the 1930s. APM, the largest US library, has over 250,000 tracks.
Film music review sites
Journals (online and print)
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
, which also usually includes dialogue
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....
and sound effects. The score 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.
Songs are usually not considered part of the film's score, although songs do also form part of the film's soundtrack. Although some songs, especially in musicals
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...
, are based on thematic ideas from the score (or vice-versa), scores usually do not have lyrics, except for when sung by choirs or soloists as part of a cue. Similarly, pop songs which are "needle dropped" into a specific scene in film for added emphasis are not considered part of the score, although occasionally the score's composer will write an original pop song based on his themes, such as James Horner
James Horner
James Roy Horner is an American composer, orchestrator and conductor of orchestral and film music. He is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for frequent use of Celtic musical elements...
's "My Heart Will Go On
My Heart Will Go On
"My Heart Will Go On" is the theme song/love theme of the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic. With music by James Horner, lyrics by Will Jennings, and production by Simon Franglen, James Horner and Walter Afanasieff ,, it was recorded by Céline Dion...
" from Titanic
Titanic (1997 film)
Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater and Billy Zane as Rose's fiancé, Cal...
, written for Celine Dion
Celine Dion
Céline Marie Claudette Dion, , , is a Canadian singer. Born to a large family from Charlemagne, Quebec, Dion emerged as a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record...
.
Scores are written by one or more composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
s, under the guidance of the film's director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and/or producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
, and are then usually performed by an ensemble of musicians - most often comprising an orchestra or band, instrumental soloists, and choir or vocalists - 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 a great number of scores also draw influence from jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
, blues, New Age
New Age music
New Age music is music of various styles intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or other environments, and is often...
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.
Since the invention of digital technology
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
and audio sampling
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
, many low budget films have been able to rely on digital samples to imitate the sound of live instruments, and many scores are created and performed wholly by the composers themselves, by programming sophisticated music composition software.
Spotting
The composer usually enters the creative process towards the end of filming, at around the same time as the film is being editedFilm editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
, although on some occasions the composer is on hand during the entire film shoot, especially when actors are required to perform with or be aware of original diegetic music. The composer is shown an unpolished "rough cut" of the film, before the editing is completed, and talks to the director or producer about what sort of music is required for the film in terms of style and tone. The director and composer will watch the entire film, taking note of which scenes require original music. During this process the composer will take precise timing notes so that he or she knows how long each cue needs to last, where it begins, where it ends, and of particular moments during a scene with which the music may need to coincide in a specific way. This process is known as "spotting".
Occasionally, a film maker will actually edit his film to fit the flow of music, rather than the other way around, which is the norm. Director Godfrey Reggio
Godfrey Reggio
Godfrey Reggio is an American director of experimental documentary films.-Life:Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community-organizing project in...
edited his films Koyaanisqatsi
Koyaanisqatsi
Koyaanisqatsi also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke....
and Powaqqatsi
Powaqqatsi
Powaqqatsi , or Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation, is the 1988 sequel to the experimental 1982 documentary film Koyaanisqatsi, by Godfrey Reggio. It is the second film in the Qatsi trilogy....
based on composer Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
's music. Similarly, the relationship between director Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots...
and composer Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
was such that the finale of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The screenplay was written by Age & Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Leone, based on a story by Vincenzoni and Leone...
and the films Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West is a 1968 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone for Paramount Pictures. It stars Henry Fonda cast against type as the villain, Charles Bronson as his nemesis, Jason Robards as a bandit, and Claudia Cardinale as a newly widowed homesteader with a...
and Once Upon a Time in America
Once Upon a Time in America
Once Upon a Time in America is a 1984 Italian epic crime film co-written and directed by Sergio Leone and starring Robert De Niro and James Woods. The story chronicles the lives of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in New York City's world of organized crime...
were edited to Morricone's score as the composer had prepared it months before the film's production ended. Also, the finale of Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Peter Coyote...
was edited to match the music of his long-time collaborator John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
: as recounted in a companion documentary on the DVD, Spielberg gave Williams complete freedom with the music and asked him to record the cue without picture; Spielberg then re-edited the scene later to match the music.
Less frequently, a composer will be asked to write music based on his or her impressions of the script or storyboards, without seeing the film itself, and is given more freedom to create music without the need to adhere to specific cue lengths or mirror the emotional arc of a particular scene. This approach is usually taken by a director who does not wish to have the music comment specifically on a particular scene or nuance of a film, and which can instead be inserted into the film at any point the director wishes during the post-production process. Composer Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmer is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including critically acclaimed film scores for The Lion King , Crimson Tide , The Thin Red Line , Gladiator , The Dark Knight and Inception .Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the...
was asked to write music in this way in 2010 for director Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan
Christopher Jonathan James Nolan is a British-American film director, screenwriter and producer.He received serious notice after his second feature Memento , which he wrote and directed based on a story idea by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan went to co-write later scripts with him,...
's film Inception
Inception
Inception: The Subconscious Jams 1994-1995 is a compilation of unreleased tracks by the band Download.-Track listing:# "Primitive Tekno Jam" – 3:23# "Bee Sting Sickness" – 8:04# "Weed Acid Techno" – 8:19...
; composer Gustavo Santaolalla
Gustavo Santaolalla
Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla is an Argentine musician, film composer and producer. He has won two Academy Awards for Best Original Score in two consecutive years, for Brokeback Mountain in 2005 and Babel in 2006.-Life and career:...
did the same thing when he wrote his Oscar-winning score for Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee. It is a film adaptation of the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx with the screenplay written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry...
.
Syncing
When writing music for film, one goal is to sync dramatic events happening on screen with musical events in the score. There are many different methods for syncing music to picture. These include using sequencing software to calculate timings, using mathematic formulas and free timing with reference timings. Composers work using SMPTE timecode for syncing purposes.When syncing music to picture, generally a leeway of 3-4 frames late or early allows the composer to be extremely accurate. using a technique called Free Timing. when using this technique, a conductor will either use either (a) a stop watch or studio size stopclock, or (b) watch the film on a screen or video monitor while conducting the musicians to predetermined timings. There are represented visually by vertical lines (streamers) and bursts of light called punches. These are put on the film by the Music Editor at points specified by the composer. In both instances the timings on the clock or lines scribed on the film have corresponding timings which are also at specific points (beats) in the composer/conductor score.
Digital Sequencer
Using a digital sequencer such as Digital Performer, Logic, or Cubase, composers are able to sync music to picture with extreme accuracy using SMPTE timecode. Outlined below is one method using Digital Performer:
- Import the video to score into Digital Performer
- Place a marker in the sequencer timeline where you wish to "hit" the event in the scene with music.
- Note the SMPTE timecode (i.e. 01:00:15:23)
- Note the start and end measure (bars+beats), and set it to an exact beat.
- If the "end time" (timecode) field is greyed out, click the options button to open it up.
- Enter the timecode where the downbeat will hit in the "end time" field.
You now will have synchronized an event in the film with a musical event, in time.
Written Click Track
A written click track is a method of writing bars of music in consistent time values (i.e. 4 beats in :02⅔ seconds) to establish a constant tempo in lieu of a metronome value (i.e. 88 Bpm). A composer would use a written click if they planned to conduct live performers. When using other methods such as a metronome, the conductor has a perfectly spaced click playing in his ear which he conducts to. This can yield stiff and lifeless performances in slower more expressive cues. You can convert a standard BPM value to a written click where X represents the number of beats per bar, and W represents time in seconds, by using the following equation:
Written clicks are expressed using 1/3 second increments, so the next step is to round the decimal to either 0, 1/3, or 2/3 of a second. The following is an example for 88 BPM:
2.72 rounds to 2.66, so the written click is 4 beats in :02⅔ seconds.
Once the composer has identified the location in the film they wish to sync with musically, they must determine the musical beat this event occurs on. To find this, they use the following equation, where bpm is beats per minute, sp is the sync point in real-time (i.e. 33.7 seconds), and B is the beat number in 1/3 increments (i.e. 49⅔).
Writing
Once the spotting session has been completed and the precise timings of each cue determined, the composer will then work on writing the score. The methods of writing the score vary from composer to composer; some composers prefer to work with a traditional pencil and paper, writing notes by hand on a staffStaff (music)
In standard Western musical notation, the staff, or stave, is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch—or, in the case of a percussion staff, different percussion instruments. Appropriate music symbols, depending upon the intended effect,...
and performing works-in-progress for the director on a piano, while other composers write on computers using sophisticated music composition software such as Digital Performer
Digital Performer
Digital Performer is a full-featured Digital Audio Workstation/Sequencer software package published by Mark of the Unicorn of Cambridge, Massachusetts for the Apple Macintosh platform.-Ancestry:...
, Logic Pro
Logic Pro
Logic Pro is a hybrid 32 / 64 bit digital audio workstation and MIDI sequencer software application for the Mac OS X platform. Originally created by German software developer Emagic, Logic Pro became an Apple product when Apple bought Emagic in 2002...
, Cubase or Protools. Working with software allows composers to create MIDI-based demos of cues, called MIDI mockup
Midi mockup
A MIDI mockup is an extensive demo of a recording project built using samplers to stand in for acoustic instruments.These extensive demos are frequently used in projects requiring large budgets to record, such as film scores...
s, for review by the filmmaker prior to the final orchestral recording.
The length of time a composer has to write the score varies from project to project; depending on the post-production schedule, a composer may have as little as two weeks, or as much as three months to write the score. In normal circumstances, the actual writing process usually lasts around six weeks from beginning to end.
The actual musical content of a film score is wholly dependent on the type of film being scored, and the emotions the director wishes the music to convey. A film score can encompass literally thousands of different combinations of instruments, ranging from full symphony orchestral ensembles to single solo instruments to rock bands to jazz combos, along with a multitude of ethnic and world music influences, soloists, vocalists, choirs and electronic textures. The style of the music being written also varies massively from project to project, and can be influenced by the time period in which the film is set, the geographic location of the film's action, and even the musical tastes of the characters. As part of their preparations for writing the score the composer will often research different musical techniques and genres as appropriate for that specific project; as such, it is not uncommon for established film composers to be proficient at writing music in dozens of different styles.
Orchestration
Once the music has been written, it must then be arranged or orchestrated in order for the ensemble to be able to perform it. The nature and level of orchestration varies from project to project and composer to composer, but in its basic form the orchestrator's job is to take the single-line music written by the composer and "flesh it out" in to instrument-specific sheet music for each member of the orchestra to perform.Some composers, notably Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
, orchestrate their own scores themselves, without using an additional orchestrator. Some composers provide intricate details in how they want this to be accomplished, and will provide the orchestrator with copious notes outlining which instruments are being asked to perform which notes, giving the orchestrator no personal creative input whatsoever beyond re-notating the music on different sheets of paper as appropriate. Other composers are less detailed, and will often ask orchestrators to "fill in the blanks", providing their own creative input into the makeup of the ensemble, ensuring that each instrument is capable of performing the music as written, and even allowing then to introduce performance techniques and flourishes to enhance the score.
Over the years several orchestrators have become linked to the work of one particular composer, often to the point where one will not work without the other. Examples of enduring composer-orchestrator relationships include Jerry Goldsmith
Jerry Goldsmith
Jerrald King Goldsmith was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring....
with Arthur Morton
Arthur Morton
Arthur Morton was a former professional footballer, who played in 2 FA Cup matches for Huddersfield Town.-References:*99 Years & Counting - Stats & Stories - Huddersfield Town History...
, Alexander Courage
Alexander Courage
Alexander "Sandy" Mair Courage Jr. was an American orchestrator, arranger, and composer of music, primarily for television and film.-Biography:...
and Herbert W. Spencer
Herbert W. Spencer
Herbert Winfield Spencer was a film and television composer and orchestrator.Spencer gained industry fame when he teamed up with fellow 20th Century Fox orchestrator Earle Hagen in 1953 to create the Spencer-Hagen Orchestra...
; Miklos Rozsa
Miklós Rózsa
Miklós Rózsa was a Hungarian-born composer trained in Germany , and active in France , England , and the United States , with extensive sojourns in Italy from 1953...
with Eugene Zador; Alfred Newman
Alfred Newman
Alfred Newman was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of music for films.In a career which spanned over forty years, Newman composed music for over two hundred films. He was one of the most respected film score composers of his time, and is today regarded as one of the greatest...
with Edward Powell, Ken Darby
Ken Darby
Kenneth Lorin Darby was an American composer, vocal arranger, lyricist, and conductor. His film scores were recognized with three Academy Awards and one Grammy Award.- Personal life :...
and Hugo Friedhofer
Hugo Friedhofer
Hugo Wilhelm Friedhofer was an American film music composer born in San Francisco. His father was a cellist trained in Dresden, Germany; his mother, Eva König, was born in Germany.Friedhofer began playing cello at the age of 13...
; Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman
Daniel Robert "Danny" Elfman is an American composer, best known for scoring music for television and film. Up until 1995, he was the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band Oingo Boingo, a group he formed in 1976...
with Steve Bartek
Steve Bartek
Steve Bartek, born in Garfield Heights, Ohio on January 30, 1952, is an American guitarist, film composer, conductor and orchestrator.-Early career:...
; David Arnold
David Arnold
David Arnold is an English film composer best known for scoring five James Bond films, the 1994 film Stargate, the 1996 film Independence Day, and the television series Little Britain.-Film and television career:...
with Nicholas Dodd; Basil Poledouris
Basil Poledouris
Vassilis Konstantinos "Basil" Poledouris was a Greek-American music composer who concentrated on the scores for films and television shows...
with Greig McRitchie; and Elliot Goldenthal
Elliot Goldenthal
Elliot Goldenthal is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, and is best known for his distinctive style and ability to blend various musical styles and techniques in original and inventive ways...
with Robert Elhai. Others have become orchestrators-for-hire, and work with many different composers over the course of their careers; examples of prominent film music orchestrators include Pete Anthony, Jeff Atmajian
Jeff Atmajian
Jeff Atmajian is an arranger and orchestrator for films. His steady clientele are composers such as James Newton Howard, Marc Shaiman, Rachel Portman and Gabriel Yared. In the past two years Jeff has been pursuing a more high profile composing career...
, Brad Dechter, Bruce Fowler
Bruce Fowler
Bruce Lambourne Fowler is a prominent American trombone player and composer. He notably played trombone on many Frank Zappa records, as well as with Captain Beefheart, and in the Fowler Brothers Band...
, John Neufeld, Thomas Pasatieri
Thomas Pasatieri
Thomas Pasatieri is an American opera composer.He began composing at age 10 and, as a teenager, studied with Nadia Boulanger...
, Conrad Pope
Conrad Pope
Conrad Pope is an American film composer and orchestrator. He has collaborated with acclaimed composers such as John Williams, James Newton Howard, Danny Elfman and Alexandre Desplat.-Background:...
, Nic Raine and J.A.C. Redford.
Once the orchestration process has been completed, the sheet music is physically printed onto paper by one or more music copyists, and is ready for performance.
Recording
When the music has been composed and orchestratedOrchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
, the orchestra or ensemble then performs it, often with the composer conducting. Musicians for these ensembles are often uncredited in the film or on the album and are contracted individually (and if so, the orchestra contractor is credited in the film or the soundtrack album). However, some films have recently begun crediting the contracted musicians on the albums under the name Hollywood Studio Symphony
Hollywood Studio Symphony
The Hollywood Studio Symphony is the credited name of the symphony orchestra behind many major soundtracks, including The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Sucker Punch, Jurassic Park 3, Last Samurai, Pirates of the Caribbean, We Are Marshall, Spider-Man 2, Lost and The...
after an agreement with the American Federation of Musicians
American Federation of Musicians
The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada is a labor union of professional musicians in the United States and Canada...
. Other performing ensembles that are often employed include the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...
(performing film music since 1935) the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra is a professional, philharmonic symphony orchestra, over 61 years old, predominantly it is composed of Czech and Slovak classical and jazz musicians...
(an orchestra dedicated exclusively to recording), and the Northwest Sinfonia
Northwest Sinfonia
The Northwest Sinfonia is a symphonic orchestra based in Seattle, mostly renowned for recording soundtracks to motion pictures and computer games. It was founded in 1995 and is credited with over 100 recordings....
.
The orchestra performs in front of a large screen depicting the movie, and sometimes to a series of clicks called a "click-track" that changes with meter
Meter (music)
Meter or metre is a term that music has inherited from the rhythmic element of poetry where it means the number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented...
and tempo, assisting the conductor to synchronize the music with the film.
More rarely, the director will talk to the composer before shooting has started, so as to give more time to the composer or because the director needs to shoot scenes (namely song or dance scenes) according to the final score. Sometimes the director will have edited the film using "temp (temporary) music": already published pieces with a character that the director believes to fit specific scenes.
Temp tracks
In some instances, film composers have been asked by the director to imitate a specific composer or style present in the temp track. On other occasions, directors have become so attached to the temp score that they decide to use it and reject the original score written by the film composer. One of the most famous cases is Stanley KubrickStanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
, where Kubrick opted for existing recordings of classical works, including pieces by composer György Ligeti
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
rather than the score by Alex North
Alex North
Alex North was an American composer who wrote the first jazz-based film score and one of the first modernist scores written in Hollywood ....
, although Kubrick had also hired Frank Cordell to do a score. While North's 2001 is indeed a major example, it is not the sole case of well-known rejected scores. Others include Torn Curtain
Torn Curtain
Torn Curtain is a 1966 American political thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews.-Plot:On a cruise ship en route to Copenhagen, Michael Armstrong , an esteemed American physicist and rocket scientist, is to attend a scientific conference...
(Bernard Herrmann), Troy
Troy (film)
Troy is a 2004 epic war film written by David Benioff and directed by Wolfgang Petersen based on the events of the Trojan War. Its cast includes Brad Pitt as Achilles, Eric Bana as Hector.It was nominated for the Academy Award for Costume Design.-Plot:...
(Gabriel Yared), Peter Jackson's King Kong
King Kong (2005 film)
King Kong is a 2005 fantasy adventure film directed by Peter Jackson. It is a remake of the 1933 film of the same name and stars Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody. Andy Serkis, through performance capture, portrays Kong....
(Howard Shore) and The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Identity (2002 film)
The Bourne Identity is a 2002 American spy film loosely based on Robert Ludlum's novel of the same name. It stars Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, an amnesiac attempting to discover his true identity amidst a clandestine conspiracy within the Central Intelligence Agency . The film also stars Franka...
(Carter Burwell).
Structure
Films often have different themes for important characters, events, ideas or objects, an idea often associated with WagnerRichard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's use of leitmotif
Leitmotif
A leitmotif , sometimes written leit-motif, is a musical term , referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe...
. These may be played in different variations depending on the situation they represent, scattered amongst incidental music. An example of this technique is John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
' score for the Star Wars saga, and the numerous themes associated with characters like Darth Vader
Darth Vader
Darth Vader is a central character in the Star Wars saga, appearing as one of the main antagonists in the original trilogy and as the main protagonist in the prequel trilogy....
, Luke Skywalker
Luke Skywalker
Luke Skywalker is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the original film trilogy of the Star Wars franchise, where he is portrayed by Mark Hamill. He is introduced in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, in which he is forced to leave home, and finds himself apprenticed to the Jedi master...
, and Princess Leia Organa
Princess Leia Organa
Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan is a fictional character in the Star Wars universe...
(see Star Wars music
Star Wars music
The music of Star Wars consists of the scores written for all six Star Wars films by composer John Williams from 1977 to 1983 for the Original Trilogy, and 1999 to 2005 for the Prequel Trilogy. It includes the Star Wars: The Clone Wars music written by Kevin Kiner...
for more details).
Other examples are Italian composers Stefano Lentini
Stefano Lentini
Stefano Lentini is an Italian composer and musician born in Rome, Italy. Lentini has released music and soundtracks of varying styles, from the electro-rock of Il sorteggio and the ethnic folk of Bakhita to the symphonic instrumentation of 84 Urne...
and oscar's winner Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
. The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Music of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy
The music of the The Lord of the Rings film trilogy was composed, orchestrated, conducted and produced by Howard Shore. Shore wrote many hours of music for The Lord of the Rings, 10 hours of which have been released in The Complete Recordings CD/DVD boxed sets...
uses a similar technique, with recurring themes for many main characters and places. Others are less known by casual moviegoers, but well known among score enthusiasts, such as Jerry Goldsmith's underlying theme for the Borg
Borg (Star Trek)
The Borg are a fictional pseudo-race of cybernetic organisms depicted in the Star Trek universe associated with Star Trek.Whereas cybernetics are used by other races in the science fiction world to repair bodily damage and birth defects, the Borg use enforced cybernetic enhancement as a means of...
in Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: First Contact is the eighth feature film in the Star Trek science fiction franchise, released in November 1996, by Paramount Pictures. First Contact is the first film in the franchise to feature no cast members from the original Star Trek television series of the 1960s...
, or his Klingon theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a 1979 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. It is the first film based on the Star Trek television series. The film is set in the twenty-third century, when a mysterious and immensely powerful alien cloud called V'Ger approaches the Earth,...
which other composers carry over into their Klingon motifs, and he has brought back on numerous occasions as the theme for Worf
Worf
Worf, played by Michael Dorn, is a main character in Star Trek: The Next Generation and in seasons four to seven of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He also appears in the films based on The Next Generation. Worf is the first Klingon main character to appear in Star Trek, and has appeared in more Star...
, Star Trek: The Next Generation's
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller served as executive producers at different times throughout the production...
most prominent Klingon. Michael Giacchino
Michael Giacchino
Michael Giacchino is an American composer who has composed scores for movies, television series and video games. Some of his most notable works include the scores to television series such as Lost, Alias and Fringe, games such as the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series, and films such as...
employed character themes in the soundtrack for the 2009 animated film Up
Up (2009 film)
Up is a 2009 American computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and presented in Disney Digital 3-D. The film premiered on May 29, 2009 in North America and opened the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first animated and 3D film...
, for which he received the Academy Award for Best Score. His orchestral soundtrack for the television series Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
also depended heavily on character and situation-specific themes.
In 1983, a non-profit organization, the Society for the Preservation of Film Music
The Film Music Society
The Film Music Society, Inc. is a non-profit educational organization based in Los Angeles. It was founded in 1983 by film historian-musicologist, William H...
, was formed to preserve the "byproducts" of creating a film score: the music manuscripts (written music) and other documents and studio recordings generated in the process of composing and recording scores which, in some instances, have been discarded by the movie studio
Movie studio
A movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
s. The written music must be kept to perform the music on concert programs and to make new recordings of it. Sometimes only after decades has an archival recording of a film score been released on CD.
Source music
Most films have between 40 and 120 minutes of music. However, some films have very little or no music; others may feature a score that plays almost continuously throughout. Dogme 95Dogme 95
Dogme 95 was an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vow of Chastity". These were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and...
is a genre that has music only from sources within a film, such as from a radio or television. This is called "source music" (or a "source cue") because it comes from an on screen source that can actually be seen or that can be inferred (in academic film theory
Film theory
Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large...
such music is called "diegetic
Diegesis
Diegesis is a style of representation in fiction and is:# the world in which the situations and events narrated occur; and# telling, recounting, as opposed to showing, enacting.In diegesis the narrator tells the story...
" music, as it emanates from the "diegesis
Diegesis
Diegesis is a style of representation in fiction and is:# the world in which the situations and events narrated occur; and# telling, recounting, as opposed to showing, enacting.In diegesis the narrator tells the story...
" or "story world"). An example of "source music" is the use of the Frankie Valli
Frankie Valli
Frankie Valli is an American musician, most famous as frontman of The Four Seasons. He is well-known for his unusually powerful falsetto singing voice...
song "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" in Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for writing and directing Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven's Gate. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject...
's "The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
". Alfred Hitchcock's
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
1963 thriller The Birds
The Birds (film)
The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...
is an example of a Hollywood film with no non-diegetic music whatsoever.
Historical notes
Before the age of recorded sound in motion pictures, efforts were taken to provide suitable music for films, usually through the services of an in-house pianist or organist, and, in some cases, entire orchestras, typically given cue sheetsSheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
as a guide. In 1914, The Oz Film Manufacturing Company
The Oz Film Manufacturing Company
The Oz Film Manufacturing Company was an independent film studio from 1914-1915. It was founded by L. Frank Baum , Louis F. Gottschalk , Harry Marston Haldeman , and Clarence R. Rundel as an offshoot of Haldeman's social group, The Uplifters, that met at the Los Angeles Athletic Club...
sent full-length scores by Louis F. Gottschalk
Louis F. Gottschalk
Louis Ferdinand Gottschalk was an American composer and conductor born in St. Louis, Missouri. The son of a Missouri governor, also named Louis, he studied music in Stuttgart, Germany, where his father, a judge, was American consul.He came to attention as conductor of the U.S. premiere of Franz...
for their films. Other examples of this include Victor Herbert
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...
's score in 1915 to The Fall of a Nation
The Fall of a Nation
The Fall of a Nation was a 1916 American silent drama film directed by Thomas Dixon, Jr. It is a sequel to the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, which Dixon, Jr. co-wrote, in attempt in cash in on the success of the controversial first film. The Fall of a Nation is...
(a sequel to The Birth of a Nation
The Birth of a Nation
The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Griffith also co-wrote the screenplay , and co-produced the film . It was released on February 8, 1915...
) and Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
' music for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise
The Assassination of the Duke of Guise
The Assassination of the Duke of Guise is a French historical film directed by Charles Le Bargy and André Calmettes, adapted by Henri Lavedan, and featuring actors of the Comédie Française and prominent set designers...
in 1908. It was preceded by Nathaniel D. Mann
Nathaniel D. Mann
Nathaniel D. Mann was an American composer best known for his work with L. Frank Baum. He composed at least two songs with Baum, "Different Ways of Making Love" and "It Happens Ev'ry Day," and another with John Slavin, "She Didn't Really Mind the Thing at All," for The Wizard of Oz stage musical...
's score for The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays
The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays
The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays was an early attempt to bring L. Frank Baum's Oz books to the motion picture screen. It was a mixture of live actors, hand-tinted magic lantern slides, and film. Baum himself would appear as if he were giving a lecture, while he interacted with the characters...
by four months, but that was a mixture of interrelated stage and film performance in the tradition of old magic lantern
Magic lantern
The magic lantern or Laterna Magica is an early type of image projector developed in the 17th century.-Operation:The magic lantern has a concave mirror in front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image scanned onto it. The light rays cross an aperture , and...
shows. Most accompaniments at this time, these examples notwithstanding, comprised pieces by famous composers, also including studies. These were often used to form catalogues of photoplay music
Photoplay music
Photoplay music is the term given to music written specifically for the accompaniment of silent films.-Early years:Early films merely relied on classical and popular repertory, mixed usually with improvisation by whatever accompanist was playing .Around 1910, folios of photoplay music began being...
, which had different subsections broken down by 'mood' and/or genre: dark, sad, suspense, action, chase, etc.
German cinema, which was highly influential in the era of silent movies, provided some original scores such as Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
's movies Die Nibelungen
Die Nibelungen
Die Nibelungen is a series of two silent fantasy films created by Austrian director Fritz Lang in 1924: Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge....
(1924) and Metropolis
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
(1927) which were accompanied by original full scale orchestral and leitmotific scores written by Gottfried Huppertz
Gottfried Huppertz
Gottfried Huppertz was a German composer who is perhaps most known for his scores to German expressionist silent films such as the science fiction epic Metropolis...
, who also wrote piano-versions of his music, for playing in smaller cinemas. Friedrich W. Murnau's movies Nosferatu (1922 - music by Hans Erdmann) and Faust – eine deutsche Volkssage (1926 - music by Werner Richard Heymann) also had original scores written for them. Other films like Murnau's Der letzte Mann contained a mixing of original compositions (in this case by Giuseppe Becce
Giuseppe Becce
Giuseppe Becce was an Italian-born film score composer who enriched the German cinema.- Biography :Becce was born in Lonigo/Vicenza, Italy. He showed his musical talents early and was named the director of the student musical orchestra at the Padua University when he studied geography...
) and library music / folk tunes, which were artistically included into the score by the composer. Nevertheless fully developed original scores were quite rare in the silent movie era. When sound came to movies, director Fritz Lang barely used musical scores in his movies anymore. Apart from Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
whistling a short piece from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...
, Lang's movie M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder
M (1931 film)
M is a 1931 German drama-thriller directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. It was Lang's first sound film, although he had directed more than a dozen films previously....
was lacking musical accompaniment completely and Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is a 1933 German crime film directed by Fritz Lang. The movie is a sequel to Lang's silent film Dr. Mabuse the Gambler and features many cast and crew members from Lang's previous films. The film features Rudolf Klein-Rogge as Dr. Mabuse who is in an insane asylum...
only included one original piece written for the movie by Hans Erdmann played at the very beginning and end of the movie. One of the rare occasions on which music occurs in the movie is a song one of the characters sings, that Lang uses to put emphasis on the man's insanity, similar to the use of the whistling in M
M (1931 film)
M is a 1931 German drama-thriller directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. It was Lang's first sound film, although he had directed more than a dozen films previously....
.
Though "the scoring of narrative features during the 1940s lagged decades behind technical innovations in the field of concert music," the 1950s saw the rise of the modernist film score. Director Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
was open to the idea of jazz influences and dissonant scoring and worked with Alex North, whose score for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) combined dissonance with elements of blues and jazz. Kazan also approached Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
to score On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Lee J. Cobb and Karl Malden. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard...
(1954) and the result was reminiscent of earlier works by Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
and Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
with its "jazz-based harmonies and exciting additive rhythms." A year later, Leonard Rosenman
Leonard Rosenman
Leonard Rosenman was an American film, television and concert composer.-Life and career:Leonard Rosenman was born in Brooklyn, New York. After service in the Pacific with the Army Air Forces in World War II, he earned a bachelor's degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley...
, inspired by Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, experimented with atonality in his scores for East of Eden (1955) and Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...
(1955). In his ten-year collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...
experimented with ideas in Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
(1958), Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...
(1960), and The Birds
The Birds (film)
The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...
(1963). The use of non-diegetic jazz was another modernist innovation, such as jazz star Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
's score for Otto Preminger
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...
's Anatomy of a Murder
Anatomy of a Murder
Anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 American courtroom crime drama film. It was directed by Otto Preminger and adapted by Wendell Mayes from the best-selling novel of the same name written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver...
(1959).
A full film score widely regarded as the first made by a popular artist came in 1973 with the film Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
. However the album received very little critical acclaim. This had not been done before in popular film history as featured bands had films written around their music such as in the animation Yellow Submarine with music by The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
.
Academy Award nominees and winners
The following list includes all composers who have been nominated for an Academy Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
in the Best Score category (which, over the years, had gone by a variety of names, included song scores and arrangements, and been split into awards for scoring in dramas and comedies). Winners of the Award appear in bold. Note: Composers whose only Oscar nominations came in the Best Original Song category are not listed, and Best Original Song wins are not counted in the wins tally.
- John AddisonJohn AddisonJohn Mervyn Addison was a British composer best known for his film scores.Addison was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire and at the age of sixteen entered the Royal College of Music. He studied composition with Gordon Jacob, oboe with Léon Goossens, and clarinet with Frederick Thurston. ...
(1 win) - Larry AdlerLarry AdlerLawrence "Larry" Cecil Adler was an American musician, widely acknowledged as one of the world's most skilled harmonica players. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin composed works for him...
- Peter Herman AdlerPeter Herman AdlerPeter Herman Adler was an American conductor born in Austria–Hungary in Gablonz an der Neiße, which is now in the Czech Republic....
- Lynn AhrensLynn AhrensLynn Ahrens is an American writer and lyricist for the musical theatre, television and film. She has collaborated with Stephen Flaherty for many years...
- Daniele AmfitheatrofDaniele Amfitheatrof-Early life:Amfitheatrof was born in St. Petersburg, into a family that was distinguished in various areas of the arts and culture. His father, Aleksander Amfiteatrov, was a noted writer. His mother Illaria , an accomplished singer and pianist, had studied privately with Rimsky-Korsakov.The...
- Louis ApplebaumLouis ApplebaumLouis Applebaum, was a Canadian composer, administrator, and conductor.He was born in Toronto, Ontario and studied at the Toronto Conservatory of Music with Leo Smith and the University of Toronto with Boris Berlin, Healey Willan and Ernest MacMillan...
- Robert ArmbrusterRobert ArmbrusterRobert Armbruster was a Philadelphia-born American composer, conductor, pianist and songwriter. After studying with Constantin von Sternberg he became a concert pianist, then branched out into conducting and a composing for radio, then television and film. He debuted as a pianist with the...
- Leo ArnaudLeo ArnaudLeo Arnaud or Léo Arnaud was a French-American composer of film scores, best known for Bugler's Dream, which is used as the theme by television networks presenting the Olympic Games in the United States....
- Malcolm ArnoldMalcolm ArnoldSir Malcolm Henry Arnold, CBE was an English composer and symphonist.Malcolm Arnold began his career playing trumpet professionally, but by age thirty his life was devoted to composition. He was ranked with Benjamin Britten as one of the most sought-after composers in Britain...
(1 win) - Kenny Ascher
- Gil Askey
- Luis Enríquez BacalovLuis Enríquez BacalovLuis Enríquez Bacalov is a prolific Argentine, naturalized Italian, composer of film scores. Early on in his career, he composed scores for Spaghetti Western films. In the early 1970s, he collaborated with Italian progressive rock bands. Bacalov has been nominated twice for the Academy Award...
(1 win) - Burt BacharachBurt BacharachBurt F. Bacharach is an American pianist, composer and music producer. He is known for his popular hit songs and compositions from the mid-1950s through the 1980s, with lyrics written by Hal David. Many of their hits were produced specifically for, and performed by, Dionne Warwick...
(1 win) - Constantin BakaleinikoffConstantin BakaleinikoffConstantin Romanovich Bakaleinikov, or Bakaleinikoff was a Russian-born composer.Bakaleinikoff was from a large musical family. His brothers were Nikolai Bakaleinikov , Vladimir Bakaleinikov , and Mikhail Bakaleinikoff . He studied at the Moscow Conservatory...
- Buddy BakerBuddy BakerElzie Wylie Baker, Jr. , nicknamed "Leadfoot" or more famously Buddy, is a former American NASCAR racecar driver.-Early life:...
- Victor BaravalleVictor BaravalleVictor Baravalle was an Italian born composer and conductor. He conducted the orchestra for the Broadway premiere production of Show Boat in 1927, as well as for the original stage productions of nine other Jerome Kern shows, among them The Cat and the Fiddle, Music in the Air, and Roberta...
- John BarryJohn Barry (composer)John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...
(4 wins) - Marco BeltramiMarco BeltramiMarco Beltrami is an American film composer.-Life and career:Beltrami was born in Long Island, New York of Italian and Greek descent...
- Richard Rodney BennettRichard Rodney BennettSir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE is an English composer renowned for his film scores and his jazz performance as much as for his challenging concert works...
- Robert Russell BennettRobert Russell BennettRobert Russell Bennett was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers. In 1957 and 2008, Bennett received Tony Awards...
(1 win) - Alan BergmanAlan BergmanAlan Bergman is an American lyricist and songwriter.-Life & career:Born in Brooklyn, New York, he studied at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UCLA. His involvement in the entertainment industry began in the early 1950s as a director of children's television shows...
(1 win) - Marilyn BergmanMarilyn BergmanMarilyn Bergman is a composer, songwriter and author.She was born Marilyn Keith in Brooklyn, New York and studied psychology and English at New York University...
(1 win) - Elmer BernsteinElmer BernsteinElmer Bernstein was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions...
(1 win) - Leonard BernsteinLeonard BernsteinLeonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
- Jay Blackton (1 win)
- Chris BoardmanChris BoardmanChristopher "Chris" Boardman MBE is a former English racing cyclist who won an individual pursuit gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics and broke the world hour record three times, as well as winning three stages and wearing the yellow jersey on three separate occasions at the Tour de France...
- Phil BouteljePhil BouteljePhil Boutelje was an American pianist, songwriter, composer, author and conductor.-Biography:...
- Leslie BricusseLeslie BricusseLeslie Bricusse is an English composer, lyricist, and playwright.Although best known for his partnership with Anthony Newley, Bricusse has worked with many other composers. He was educated at University College School in London and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge...
(1 win) - Bruce BroughtonBruce BroughtonBruce Broughton is a film, video game, and television soundtrack composer who has composed several highly acclaimed soundtracks over his extensive career, including American music classics such as "Homeward Bound," "Silverado", "Tombstone," and wonderfully lyric music for "Miracle on 34th...
- George BrunsGeorge BrunsGeorge Bruns was a composer of music for film and television who worked on many Disney films. He was nominated for four Academy Awards for his work.-Career:...
- Ralph BurnsRalph BurnsRalph Burns was an American songwriter, bandleader, composer, conductor, arranger and bebop pianist.-Early life:...
(2 wins) - Dale Butts
- David ByrneDavid ByrneDavid Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
(1 win) - Jorge CalandrelliJorge CalandrelliJorge Calandrelli is an Argentine composer, arranger and orchestrator.His truly ingenious arranging and composing techniques, especially his beautiful string writing, makes him very well recognized on many records of today's pop - jazz/ Jazz commercial record publications.Big record stars hired him...
- John CameronJohn Cameron (musician)John Cameron is a British composer, arranger, conductor and musician. He is well-known for his many film, TV and stage credits, and for his contributions to 'pop' recordings, notably those by Donovan, Cilla Black and the group Hot Chocolate...
- Gerard CarbonaraGerard CarbonaraGerard Carbonara was an American composer of concert and film music.Carbonara was born in New York City, USA....
- Charlie ChaplinCharlie ChaplinSir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
(1 win) - Saul ChaplinSaul ChaplinSaul Chaplin was an American composer and musical director.He was born Saul Kaplan in Brooklyn, New York.He had worked on stage, screen and television since the days of Tin Pan Alley...
(3 wins) - Frank ChurchillFrank ChurchillFrank Churchill was an American composer of popular music for films. He wrote most of the music for Disney's 1937 movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, including "Whistle While You Work" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come"...
(1 win) - Cy ColemanCy ColemanCy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...
- Anthony CollinsAnthony CollinsAnthony Collins , was an English philosopher, and a proponent of deism.-Life and Writings:...
- Alberto ColomboAlberto ColomboAlberto Colombo is a former racing driver from Italy. He unsuccessfully entered 3 Formula One Grands Prix in 1978 with ATS and Merzario...
- Bill ContiBill ContiWilliam "Bill" Conti is an American film music composer who is frequently the conductor at the Academy Awards ceremony.-Early life and career:...
(1 win) - Aaron CoplandAaron CoplandAaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
(1 win) - Carmine CoppolaCarmine CoppolaCarmine Coppola was an American composer, flautist, editor, musical director, and songwriter. Coppola was a composer and conductor who contributed to many of the musical scores in The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Godfather Part III, and Apocalypse Now directed by his son Francis Ford...
(1 win) - Frank Cordell
- John CoriglianoJohn CoriglianoJohn Corigliano is an American composer of classical music and a teacher of music. He is a distinguished professor of music at Lehman College in the City University of New York.-Biography:...
(1 win) - Alexander CourageAlexander CourageAlexander "Sandy" Mair Courage Jr. was an American orchestrator, arranger, and composer of music, primarily for television and film.-Biography:...
- Andrae CrouchAndrae CrouchAndraé Crouch is a seven-time Grammy Award-winning American gospel singer, songwriter, arranger, recording artist, record producer, and pastor.-Early years:Born Andraé Edward Crouch in San Francisco, California....
- Ken DarbyKen DarbyKenneth Lorin Darby was an American composer, vocal arranger, lyricist, and conductor. His film scores were recognized with three Academy Awards and one Grammy Award.- Personal life :...
(3 wins) - John DebneyJohn DebneyJohn C. Debney is an American film composer. He received an Academy Award nomination for his score for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ...
- Georges DelerueGeorges DelerueGeorges Delerue , was a French film composer who composed over 350 scores for cinema and television. He won numerous important awards including Rome Prize , Emmy Award , Genie Award , ACE Award and Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1979 for A...
(1 win) - Jacques DemyJacques DemyJacques Demy was one of the most approachable filmmakers to appear in the wake of the French New Wave. Uninterested in the formal experimentation of Alain Resnais, or the political agitation of Jean-Luc Godard, Demy instead created a self-contained fantasy world closer to that of François...
- Alexandre DesplatAlexandre DesplatAlexandre Michel Gérard Desplat is a French film composer. He has received four Academy Award nominations, five BAFTA nominations, five Golden Globe nominations, winning a Golden Globe for his work on The Painted Veil in 2006, and two Grammy nominations. In 2011, Desplat won his first British...
- Adolph DeutschAdolph DeutschAdolph Deutsch was a composer, conductor and arranger. He won Oscars for his background music for Oklahoma! , and for conducting the music for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Annie Get Your Gun...
(3 wins) - Frank DeVol
- Robert Emmett Dolan
- Patrick DoylePatrick DoylePatrick Doyle is a Scottish musician and film score composer. A longtime collaborator of actor/director Kenneth Branagh, Doyle is known for his work scoring such critically acclaimed films as Henry V , Sense and Sensibility , Hamlet , and Gosford Park , as well as noteworthy blockbusters as Harry...
- Carmen DragonCarmen DragonCarmen Dragon was an American conductor, composer, and arranger who in addition to live performances and recording, worked in radio, film, and television.Dragon was born in Antioch, California...
(1 win) - Anne DudleyAnne DudleyAnne Dudley is an English composer and pop musician, and was the first BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer in Association in 2001. She has worked in both the classical and pop genres. She is perhaps best known, however, as one of the core members of the synthpop band Art of Noise and also as a film...
(1 win) - Tan DunTan DunTan Dun is a Chinese contemporary classical composer, most widely known for his scores for the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero.-Early life in China:...
(1 win) - George DuningGeorge DuningGeorge Duning was an American musician and film composer. He was born in Richmond, Indiana and educated in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where his mentor was Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco....
- Brian EasdaleBrian EasdaleBrian Easdale was a British composer.Easdale was born in Manchester, England. He was educated at Westminster Abbey School and the Royal College of Music....
(1 win) - Roger EdensRoger EdensRoger Edens was a Hollywood composer, arranger and associate producer, and is considered one of the major creative figures in Arthur Freed's musical film production unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the "golden era of Hollywood".-Early career and work with Judy Garland:Edens was born in...
(3 wins) - Hanns EislerHanns EislerHanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...
- Danny ElfmanDanny ElfmanDaniel Robert "Danny" Elfman is an American composer, best known for scoring music for television and film. Up until 1995, he was the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band Oingo Boingo, a group he formed in 1976...
- Duke EllingtonDuke EllingtonEdward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
- Jack Elliott
- Leo Erdody
- Yuri Faier
- Percy FaithPercy FaithPercy Faith was a Canadian-born American bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of pop and Christmas standards. He is often credited with creating the "easy listening" or "mood music" format which became staples of American popular music in the 1950s and...
- George FentonGeorge FentonGeorge Fenton is a British composer best known for his work writing film scores and music for television, although he also writes music for the theatre. His real name is George Howe but he is better known by his pseudonym of George Fenton.-Selected film and television credits:Fenton has composed...
- Cy FeuerCy FeuerCy Feuer was an American theatre producer, director, composer, and musician.Born Seymour Arnold Feuerman in Brooklyn, New York,he studied trumpet privately with Max Schlossberg, he became a professional trumpeter at the age of fifteen, working at clubs on weekends to help support his family while...
- Jerry FieldingJerry FieldingJerry Fielding was an American radio, record, film and television composer, conductor, and musical director.-Childhood and education:...
- Stephen FlahertyStephen FlahertyStephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens...
- Lou Forbes
- Ian Fraser
- Gerald FriedGerald FriedGerald Fried is an American musician, well known for his compositions in film and television.Born and raised in the Bronx, New York City, Fried attended Juilliard School of Music...
- Hugo FriedhoferHugo FriedhoferHugo Wilhelm Friedhofer was an American film music composer born in San Francisco. His father was a cellist trained in Dresden, Germany; his mother, Eva König, was born in Germany.Friedhofer began playing cello at the age of 13...
(1 win) - Douglas GamleyDouglas GamleyDouglas Gamley was an Australian film composer, who worked on British and American films.He was particularly influenced by Modest Mussorgsky, creating a full orchestral version of his Pictures at an Exhibition, and adapting his Night on Bald Mountain for his score for Asylum...
- Joseph Gershenson
- Michael GiacchinoMichael GiacchinoMichael Giacchino is an American composer who has composed scores for movies, television series and video games. Some of his most notable works include the scores to television series such as Lost, Alias and Fringe, games such as the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series, and films such as...
(1 win) - Herschel Burke GilbertHerschel Burke GilbertHerschel Burke Gilbert was a prolific orchestrator, musical supervisor and composer of film scores as well as television scores and theme songs, including the themes for The Rifleman , Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater and The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor...
- Philip GlassPhilip GlassPhilip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
- Lud GluskinLud GluskinLudwig Elias Gluskin was a jazz bandleader.Gluskin drummed for bands in France in the 1920s, including at the Casino de Paris...
- Ernest Gold (1 win)
- Elliot GoldenthalElliot GoldenthalElliot Goldenthal is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, and is best known for his distinctive style and ability to blend various musical styles and techniques in original and inventive ways...
(1 win) - Jerry GoldsmithJerry GoldsmithJerrald King Goldsmith was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring....
(1 win) - Michael GoreMichael GoreMichael Gore is an American composer. He, along with lyricist Dean Pitchford, won the Oscar in 1980 for best original song for "Fame" from the film of the same title. He also won the award that year for best original score. Gore is the younger brother of singer/songwriter Lesley Gore.Gore wrote...
(1 win) - Johnny GreenJohnny GreenJohnny Green was an American songwriter, composer, musical arranger, and conductor. He was given the nickname "Beulah" by colleague Conrad Salinger. His most famous song was one of his earliest, "Body and Soul"...
(4 wins) - Walter GreeneWalter GreeneWalter Greene was a film and television composer who worked on numerous productions for over 30 years.-Career:...
- Peter Greenwell
- Ferde GrofeFerde GroféFerde Grofé was a prominent American composer, arranger and pianist. During the 1920s and 1930s, he went by the name Ferdie Grofé.-Early life:...
- Louis GruenbergLouis Gruenberg-Life and career:He was born near Brest-Litovsk , to Abe Gruenberg and Klara Kantarovitch. His family emigrated to the United States when he was a few months old. His father worked as a violinist in New York City...
- Dave GrusinDave GrusinDavid Grusin is an American composer, arranger and pianist. Grusin has composed many scores for feature films and television, and has won numerous awards for his soundtrack and record work, including an Academy award and 12 Grammys...
(1 win) - Vince GuaraldiVince GuaraldiVincent Anthony "Vince" Guaraldi was an Italian American jazz musician and pianist noted for his innovative compositions and arrangements and for composing music for animated adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip...
- Jonas GwangwaJonas GwangwaJonas Mosa Gwangwa has been an important figure in South African jazz for over 40 years. He first gained significance playing trombone with The Jazz Epistles...
- Earle H. Hagen
- Richard HagemanRichard HagemanRichard Hageman was a Dutch-born American conductor, pianist, composer, and actor.- Biography :...
(1 win) - Karl Hajos
- Al HamAl HamAlbert W. Ham was an American composer and jingle writer. He was notable as the composer of the Move Closer to Your World music package used since the 1970s on WPVI-TV's Action News broadcasts in Philadelphia, as well as many on many other newscasts in the United States throughout the 1970s and...
- Marvin HamlischMarvin HamlischMarvin Frederick Hamlisch is an American composer. He is one of only thirteen people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony . He is also one of only two people to EGOT and also win a Pulitzer Prize...
(2 win) - Herbie HancockHerbie HancockHerbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
(1 win) - Leigh HarlineLeigh HarlineLeigh Adrian Harline was a film composer.-Career:Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, he worked for various radio stations before joining the Walt Disney studios in 1932 as arranger and scorer...
(1 win) - W. Franke HarlingW. Franke HarlingW. Franke Harling was a composer of film scores, operas, and popular music.Born William Franke Harling in London, he was educated at the Grace Choir Church School in New York City...
(1 win) - George HarrisonGeorge HarrisonGeorge Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
(1 win) - Marvin HatleyMarvin HatleyThomas Marvin Hatley , professionally known simply as Marvin Hatley, was an American film composer and musical director, best known for his work for the Hal Roach studio from 1929 until 1940....
- Isaac HayesIsaac HayesIsaac Lee Hayes, Jr. was an American songwriter, musician, singer and actor. Hayes was one of the creative influences behind the southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwriter and as a record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter during the...
- Jack HayesJack HayesJack J. Hayes was an American composer and orchestrator.He was twice nominated for an Academy Award, for The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1964 and for The Color Purple in 1985....
- Lennie HaytonLennie HaytonLeonard George "Lennie" Hayton was an American Jewish composer, conductor and arranger. His trademark was the wearing of a captain’s hat, which he always wore at a rakish angle....
(1 win) - Ray HeindorfRay HeindorfRay Heindorf was an American songwriter, composer, conductor, and arranger.-Early life:Born in Haverstraw, New York, Heindorf worked as a pianist in a movie house in Mechanicville in his early teens. In 1928, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a musical arranger before heading to...
(3 wins) - Charles HendersonCharles HendersonCharles Henderson was the 35th Governor of Alabama from 1915 to 1919 and a member of the Democratic Party. Before serving as governor, Henderson was mayor of Troy, Alabama from 1886 to 1906 and played a key role in Troy’s business and civic development. After his term as governor, Henderson...
- Bernard HerrmannBernard HerrmannBernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...
(1 win) - Jerry HeyJerry HeyJerry Hey is an American trumpeter, flugelhornist, horn arranger, string arranger, orchestrator and session musician who has played on hundreds of commercial recordings, including Thriller and the distinctive flugelhorn solo on Dan Fogelberg's hit Longer....
- Werner Heymann
- David HirschfelderDavid HirschfelderDavid Hirschfelder is an Australian film score composer and performer.Hirschfelder was born and raised in Ballarat, Victoria....
- Joel HirschhornJoel HirschhornJoel Hirschhorn, , was an American songwriter. During a successful career, he won the Academy Award for Best Song on two occasions...
- Samuel HoffensteinSamuel HoffensteinSamuel "Sam" Hoffenstein was a screenwriter and a musical composer. Born in Russia, he immigrated to the United States and began a career in New York City as a newspaper writer and in the entertainment business. In 1931 he moved to Los Angeles where he lived for the rest of his life where he wrote...
- Frederick Hollander
- James HornerJames HornerJames Roy Horner is an American composer, orchestrator and conductor of orchestral and film music. He is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for frequent use of Celtic musical elements...
(1 win) - James Newton HowardJames Newton HowardJames Newton Howard is an American composer best known for his scores to motion pictures. He is one of the most popular and respected composers for cinema, and has scored over 100 films...
- Alberto IglesiasAlberto IglesiasAlberto Iglesias Fernández-Berridi is a Spanish composer. He wrote the music for several Spanish films, mostly from Pedro Almodóvar...
- Mark IshamMark IshamMark Isham is an American trumpeter, synthesist, and film composer. He works in a variety of genres, including jazz, electronic, and film.-Life and career:...
- Calvin JacksonCalvin JacksonCalvin Jackson was an American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader....
- Werner JanssenWerner JanssenHans-Werner Janssen was an American conductor of classical music, and composer of classical music and film scores.-Biography:...
- Maurice JarreMaurice JarreMaurice-Alexis Jarre was a French composer and conductor.Although he composed several concert works, he is best known for his film scores, and is particularly known for his collaborations with film director David Lean. Jarre composed the scores to all of Lean's films since Lawrence of Arabia...
(3 wins) - Quincy JonesQuincy JonesQuincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...
- Jan A.P. Kaczmarek (1 win)
- Gus KahnGus KahnGustav Gerson Kahn was a musician, songwriter and lyricist.-Biography:Kahn was born in Koblenz, Germany in 1886. The family emigrated from there to the United States and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1890...
(1 win) - Bronislau Kaper (1 win)
- Fred KarlinFred KarlinFred Karlin was an American composer of more than one hundred scores for feature films and television movies. He also was an accomplished trumpeter adept at playing jazz, blues, classical, rock, and medieval music....
- Marsha Karlin
- Al KashaAl KashaAl Kasha is a Brooklyn–born composer, songwriter and arranger, as well as businessman. He is most noted for his years of collaboration with songwriter Joel Hirschhorn...
- Edward KayEdward KayEdward Kay is a Toronto-based writer with a background in both live-action and animated television comedy, as well as print journalism.Kay spent four years as a writer and producer on the political satire, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, before becoming supervising producer of The Itch, a comedy series...
- Roger KellawayRoger KellawayRoger Kellaway is an American composer, arranger, and pianist.Born in Waban, Massachusetts, he is an alumnus of the New England Conservatory...
- Randy KerberRandy KerberRandy Kerber is a composer, orchestrator, keyboard player, born September 25, 1958 in Encino, California, who has had a prolific career in the world of cinema...
- Jerome KernJerome KernJerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A...
- Erich Wolfgang KorngoldErich Wolfgang KorngoldErich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austro-Hungarian film and romantic music composer. While his compositional style was considered well out of vogue at the time he died, his music has more recently undergone a reevaluation and a gradual reawakening of interest...
(2 wins) - Irwin KostalIrwin KostalIrwin Kostal was an American musical arranger of films and an orchestrator of Broadway musicals.Born in Chicago, Illinois, Kostal opted not to attend college, instead teaching himself musical arranging by studying the symphonic scores available at his local library...
(2 wins) - Kris KristoffersonKris KristoffersonKristoffer "Kris" Kristofferson is an American musician, actor, and writer. He is known for hits such as "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night"...
- Francis LaiFrancis LaiFrancis Lai is a French accordionist, and composer noted for his film scores.While in his twenties, Francis Lai left home and went to Paris where he became part of the lively Montmartre music scene...
(1 win) - Arthur LangeArthur LangeArthur Lange was a United States bandleader and Tin Pan Alley composer of popular music. He composed music for over 120 films, including Grand Canary and Woman on the Run. Lange shared an Oscar nomination with Hugo Friedhofer for the film The Woman in the Window...
- Michel LegrandMichel LegrandMichel Jean Legrand is a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist...
(2 wins) - John Leipold (1 win)
- John LennonJohn LennonJohn Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
(1 win) - Alan Jay LernerAlan Jay LernerAlan Jay Lerner was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film...
- Joseph J. Lilley
- Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
- Frederick Loewe
- Jeremy Lubbock
- Michel MagneMichel MagneMichel Magne born 20 March 1930, Lisieux, Calvados, France died 19 December 1984, Cergy-Pontoise, Val-d'Oise of suicide was a French film and experimental music composer. He was nominated in 1962 for an Academy Award and Golden Globe award for scoring the Jackie Gleason film Gigot...
- Henry ManciniHenry ManciniHenry Mancini was an American composer, conductor and arranger, best remembered for his film and television scores. He won a record number of Grammy Awards , plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1995...
(2 wins) - Dario MarianelliDario MarianelliDario Marianelli is a composer of piano, orchestral, and film music. He has composed the soundtracks for The Brothers Grimm , Pride & Prejudice , and Atonement , the last two for which he received Oscar nominations for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score...
(1 win) - George MartinGeorge MartinSir George Henry Martin CBE is an English record producer, arranger, composer and musician. He is sometimes referred to as "the Fifth Beatle"— a title that he often describes as "nonsense," but the fact remains that he served as producer on all but one of The Beatles' original albums...
- Muir MathiesonMuir MathiesonJames Muir Mathieson was a Scottish conductor and composer. Mathieson was almost always described as a "Musical Director" on a large number of British films.-Career:...
- Peter MatzPeter MatzPeter Matz was an award winning American musician, composer, arranger and conductor. His musical career in film, theater, television and studio recording spanned fifty years, and he worked with a number of prominent artists, including Marlene Dietrich, Noël Coward and Barbra Streisand...
- Peter Maxwell DaviesPeter Maxwell DaviesSir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE is an English composer and conductor and is currently Master of the Queen's Music.-Biography:...
- Toshiro MayuzumiToshiro MayuzumiToshiro Mayuzumi was a Japanese composer.-Biography:...
- Paul McCartneyPaul McCartneySir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
(1 win) - Rod McKuenRod McKuenRod McKuen is an American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks, and classical music...
- Bill MelendezBill MelendezJosé Cuauhtémoc "Bill" Meléndez was a Mexican-American character animator, film director, voice artist and producer, known for his cartoons for Warner Brothers, UPA and the Peanuts series...
- Alan MenkenAlan MenkenAlan Menken is an American musical theatre and film composer and pianist.Menken is best known for his numerous scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards...
(4 wins) - Gian-Carlo Menotti
- Johnny MercerJohnny MercerJohn Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...
- Mahlon Merrick
- Michel Michelet
- Cyril J. MockridgeCyril J. MockridgeCyril J. Mockridge was an English film and television composer who composed the scores for such films as Grand Canary, Danger - Love at Work, In the Meantime, Darling, Wake Up and Dream, Nightmare Alley, and Road House...
- Lucien Moraweck
- Angela MorleyAngela MorleyAngela Morley was an English composer and conductor. Morley was born in Leeds, Yorkshire in 1924, and played saxophone in a number of dance bands, and in 1944 became a member of Geraldo's band....
- Giorgio MoroderGiorgio MoroderHansjörg "Giorgio" Moroder is an Italian record producer, songwriter and performer based in Los Angeles. When in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records...
(1 win) - Jerome MorossJerome MorossJerome Moross was an American-born composer for the stage, and a composer, conductor and orchestrator for motion pictures.-Biography:...
- Ennio MorriconeEnnio MorriconeEnnio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
(Honorary Oscar) - John MorrisJohn Morris (composer)John Morris is an American film and television composer, best known for his work with filmmaker Mel Brooks.-Life and career:...
- Boris MorrosBoris MorrosBoris Morros was an American Communist Party member, Paramount Studios producer, Soviet agent, and FBI double agent.Morros was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and emigrated with his family to America in 1922...
- Jeff MossJeff MossJeffrey Arnold "Jeff" Moss was a composer, lyricist, playwright and television writer, best known for his award winning work on the children's television series Sesame Street.-Early life:...
- Javier NavarreteJavier Navarrete-Biography:His most famous score, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, was for Pan's Labyrinth . Navarrete also composed the scores for Whore, Tras el cristal, Dot the i, along with various other Spanish films...
- Anthony NewleyAnthony NewleyAnthony George Newley was an English actor, singer and songwriter. He enjoyed success as a performer in such diverse fields as rock and roll and stage and screen acting.-Early life:...
- Alfred NewmanAlfred NewmanAlfred Newman was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of music for films.In a career which spanned over forty years, Newman composed music for over two hundred films. He was one of the most respected film score composers of his time, and is today regarded as one of the greatest...
(9 wins) - David NewmanDavid Newman (composer)David Louis Newman is an American composer and conductor known particularly for his film scores. In a career spanning nearly forty years, he has composed music for nearly 100 feature films.-Life and career:...
- Emil NewmanEmil NewmanEmil Newman was an American composer and conductor who worked on over 200 films and TV shows. He was nominated for an Oscar for musical direction on the classic Sun Valley Serenade ....
- Lionel NewmanLionel NewmanLionel Newman was an American conductor, pianist, and film and television composer. He was the brother of Alfred Newman and Emil Newman, uncle of Randy Newman, David Newman and Thomas Newman, and grandfather of Joey Newman....
(1 win) - Randy NewmanRandy NewmanRandall Stuart "Randy" Newman is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist who is known for his mordant pop songs and for film scores....
- Thomas NewmanThomas NewmanThomas Montgomery Newman is an American composer and conductor, best known for his many film scores. He is one of the more respected and recognized composers for modern film and has scored over fifty feature films in a career which spans nearly three decades.Newman has received a total of ten...
- Jack NitzscheJack NitzscheBernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
- Alex NorthAlex NorthAlex North was an American composer who wrote the first jazz-based film score and one of the first modernist scores written in Hollywood ....
(Honorary Oscar) - Edward Paul
- Frank PerkinsFrank PerkinsFrank Perkins was a British engineer, businessman, creator of the Perkins Diesel Engine, and founder of Perkins Engines Company Limited.-Background and early life:...
- Nicola PiovaniNicola PiovaniNicola Piovani is a light-classical musician, theater and film score composer, and winner of the 1998 Best Original Dramatic Score Oscar for the score of the Roberto Benigni film La Vita è bella, better known to English-speaking audiences as Life Is Beautiful.After high school, Piovani enrolled at...
(1 win) - Edward H. PlumbEdward H. PlumbEdward Holcomb Plumb was a film composer best known for his work at Walt Disney Studios...
- Rachel PortmanRachel PortmanRachel Mary Berkeley Portman, OBE is a British composer, best known for her film work. She was the first female composer to win an Academy Award in the category of Best Original Score...
(1 win) - John PowellJohn PowellJohn Powell is a British composer, best known for his scores to motion pictures. He has been based in the United States since 1997 and has composed the scores to over fifty feature films. He rose to fame in the late 1990s and 2000s, scoring numerous animated films, and collaborating with...
- André PrevinAndré PrevinAndré George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...
(5 wins) - Charles PrevinCharles PrevinCharles Previn was an American film composer who was highly active at Universal in Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s...
- PrincePrince (musician)Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
(1 win) - A.R. Rahman (1 win)
- David RaksinDavid RaksinDavid Raksin was an American composer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With over 100 film scores and 300 television scores to his credit, he became known as the "Grandfather of Film Music." One of his earliest film assignments was as assistant to Charlie Chaplin in the composition of the score...
- Sid RaminSid RaminSidney Norton Ramin is an American orchestrator, arranger, and composer.- Personal life :The son of Ezra Ramin, a window trimmer, and Beatrice D. Ramin, he was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 22, with various sources indicating either a birth year of 1919 or 1924. Ramin married Gloria...
(1 win) - Raymond RaschRaymond RaschRay Rasch was a pianist and arranger on the Hollywood scene in 1950s and 1960s. Rasch won a posthumous Academy Award in 1972 for "Best Original Music Score" for Chaplin's 1952 film Limelight .-External links:...
(1 win) - Joe RenzettiJoe Renzetti-Early life and education:Joseph Renzetti - Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaJoe Renzetti studied composing and orchestrating under Nicholas Flagello, NYC, Manhattan School of Music...
(1 win) - Trent ReznorTrent ReznorMichael Trent Reznor is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is also a member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30,...
(1 win) - Frederic E. Rich
- Nelson RiddleNelson RiddleNelson Smock Riddle, Jr. was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s...
(1 win) - Hugo RiesenfeldHugo RiesenfeldHugo Riesenfeld was a Jewish Austrian-American composer. As a film director, he began to write his own orchestral compositions for silent films in 1917, and co-created modern production techniques where film scoring serves an integral part of the action...
- Richard Robbins
- Milan Roder
- Heinz Roemheld (1 win)
- Ann RonellAnn RonellAnn Rosenblatt, known as Ann Ronell was an American composer and lyricist best known for the jazz standard "Willow Weep for Me" .- Biography :...
- David RoseDavid RoseDavid Rose was a British-born American songwriter, composer, arranger, pianist, and orchestra leader. His most famous compositions were "The Stripper", "Holiday for Strings", and "Calypso Melody"...
- Joel RosenbaumJoel RosenbaumJoel Rosenbaum is a professor of cell biology at Yale University .Rosenbaum received his bachelor's degree from Syracuse University in 1955, and later his M.Sc. Ed. from St. Lawrence University in 1957. He returned later to Syracuse for his Masters in 1959 and Ph.D...
- Leonard RosenmanLeonard RosenmanLeonard Rosenman was an American film, television and concert composer.-Life and career:Leonard Rosenman was born in Brooklyn, New York. After service in the Pacific with the Army Air Forces in World War II, he earned a bachelor's degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley...
(2 wins) - Laurence RosenthalLaurence RosenthalLaurence Rosenthal is an American composer, arranger, and conductor for theater, television, and films.Born in Detroit, Michigan, Rosenthal attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he studied piano and composition...
- Atticus RossAtticus RossAtticus Ross is an English musician, composer and producer. Ross, along with Trent Reznor, won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Social Network in 2011.-Early career:...
(1 win) - Nino RotaNino RotaNino Rota was an Italian composer and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti...
(1 win) - Gennadi Rozhdestvensky
- Miklós RózsaMiklós RózsaMiklós Rózsa was a Hungarian-born composer trained in Germany , and active in France , England , and the United States , with extensive sojourns in Italy from 1953...
(3 wins) - Larry Russell (1 win)
- Ryuichi SakamotoRyuichi SakamotoAfter working as a session musician with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in 1977, the trio formed the internationally successful electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1978. Known for their seminal influence on electronic music, the group helped pioneer electronic genres such as...
(1 win) - Conrad SalingerConrad SalingerConrad Salinger was an American arranger, orchestrator and composer, who studied classical composition at the Paris Conservatoire. He is credited with orchestrating nine productions on Broadway from 1931 to 1938, and over seventy-five motion pictures from 1931 to 1962...
- Hans J. SalterHans J. SalterHans J. Salter was an American film composer.Hans J. Salter gained his education from the Vienna Academy Of Music, and studied composition with Alban Berg, Franz Schreker, and others. He was Music Director of the State Opera in Berlin before being hired to compose music at UFA studios...
- Buck Sanders
- Gustavo SantaolallaGustavo SantaolallaGustavo Alfredo Santaolalla is an Argentine musician, film composer and producer. He has won two Academy Awards for Best Original Score in two consecutive years, for Brokeback Mountain in 2005 and Babel in 2006.-Life and career:...
(2 wins) - Philippe SardePhilippe Sarde-Biography:Philippe Sarde was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France.He is the brother of Alain Sarde. He was a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988.-Selected filmography:...
- Walter ScharfWalter ScharfWalter Scharf was an American film composer.Born in New York, he was the son of Yiddish theatre comic Bessie Zwerling...
- Victor SchertzingerVictor SchertzingerVictor L. Schertzinger was an American composer, film director, film producer, and screenwriter. His films include Paramount on Parade , Something to Sing About with James Cagney, and the first two "Road" pictures Road to Singapore and Road to Zanzibar...
(1 win) - Lalo SchifrinLalo SchifrinLalo Schifrin is an Argentine composer, pianist and conductor. He is best known for his film and TV scores, such as the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has received four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations...
- Stephen SchwartzStephen Schwartz (composer)Stephen Lawrence Schwartz is an American musical theatre lyricist and composer. In a career spanning over four decades, Schwartz has written such hit musicals as Godspell , Pippin and Wicked...
(1 win) - Morton Scott
- Caiphus Semenya
- Marc ShaimanMarc ShaimanMarc Shaiman is an American composer, lyricist, arranger, and performer for films, television, and theatre. He is perhaps best known for writing the music and co-writing the lyrics for the Broadway musical version of the cult John Waters film Hairspray, for which Shaiman won Tony and Grammy...
- Ravi ShankarRavi ShankarRavi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
- Artie ShawArtie ShawArthur Jacob Arshawsky , better known as Artie Shaw, was an American jazz clarinetist, composer, and bandleader. He was also the author of both fiction and non-fiction writings....
- Al SheanAl SheanAl Shean was the stage name for comedian Abraham Elieser Adolph Schönberg, although other sources give his birth name variously as Adolf Schönberg, Albert Schönberg, or Alfred Schönberg. He is most remembered for being half of the vaudeville team Gallagher and Shean, and as the uncle of the Marx...
- Richard M. ShermanRichard M. ShermanRichard Morton Sherman is an American songwriter who specializes in musical film with his brother Robert Bernard Sherman....
(1 win) - Robert B. ShermanRobert B. ShermanRobert Bernard Sherman is an American songwriter who specializes in musical films with his brother Richard Morton Sherman...
(1 win) - Nathaniel ShilkretNathaniel ShilkretNathaniel Shilkret was an American composer, conductor, clarinetist, pianist, business executive, and music director born in New York City, New York to an Austrian immigrant family.-Early career:...
- Howard ShoreHoward ShoreHoward Leslie Shore is a Canadian composer, notable for his film scores. He has composed the scores for over 80 films, most notably the scores for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, for which he won three Academy Awards. He is also a consistent collaborator with director David Cronenberg,...
(2 wins) - Dimitri Shostakovich
- Leo ShukenLeo ShukenLeo Shuken was an American film music composer, arranger, and musical director....
(1 win) - Louis SilversLouis SilversLouis "Lou" Silvers was an American film score composer whose work has been used in more than 250 movies. In 1935, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Score for One Night of Love.-Early life and career:...
(1 win) - Alan SilvestriAlan SilvestriAlan Anthony Silvestri is an American film composer and conductor.-Career:Silvestri is best known for his collaborations with director Robert Zemeckis, having scored Romancing the Stone , the Back to the Future trilogy , Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Death Becomes Her , Forrest Gump , Contact ,...
- Marlin Skiles
- Frank SkinnerFrank SkinnerFrank Skinner is a British writer, comedian and actor. He is best known for his television presenting, often alongside David Baddiel, with whom he also collaborated for the football song "Three Lions."He is a radio presenter on the Saturday morning slot on Absolute Radio.-Youth and early career...
- Paul J. Smith (1 win)
- Herbert W. SpencerHerbert W. SpencerHerbert Winfield Spencer was a film and television composer and orchestrator.Spencer gained industry fame when he teamed up with fellow 20th Century Fox orchestrator Earle Hagen in 1953 to create the Spencer-Hagen Orchestra...
- Ringo StarrRingo StarrRichard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
(1 win) - Fred SteinerFred SteinerFred Steiner was an American composer, conductor, orchestrator, film historian and arranger for television, radio and film. Steiner wrote the theme music for The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Perry Mason and The Bullwinkle Show...
- Max SteinerMax SteinerMax Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
(3 wins) - Leith StevensLeith StevensLeith Stevens was an American composer for radio and film scores.Born in Mount Moriah, Missouri, he was a child prodigy who was an accompanist for Madame Schumann-Heink....
- Georgie StollGeorgie StollGeorgie Stoll was a musical director, conductor, composer and jazz violinist, associated with the Golden Age of MGM musicals and performers from the 1940s to 1960s. Born George Martin Stoll, he was also later credited as George E...
(1 win) - Morris StoloffMorris StoloffMorris Stoloff was a musical composer.Stoloff worked as a music director at Columbia Pictures from 1936 to 1962...
(3 wins) - Robert StolzRobert StolzRobert Elisabeth Stolz was an Austrian songwriter and conductor as well as a composer of operettas and film music.- Biography :...
- Gregory Stone
- Herbert StothartHerbert StothartHerbert Stothart was a song writer, arranger, conductor, and composer. He was also nominated for nine Oscars, winning Best Original Score for The Wizard of Oz.-Biography:...
(1 win) - Cong SuCong SuCong Su is a Chinese composer.He studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, then in Germany. He has lectured on music theory, music analysis, film music and ballet music at the Musikhochschule in Munich...
(1 win) - Harry Sukman (1 win)
- Alexander Tansman
- Rod TempertonRod TempertonRodney Lynn "Rod" Temperton is an English songwriter, record producer and musician most famous for writing a number of songs performed by Michael Jackson, including the title track of Jackson's Thriller, the biggest-selling album of all time.-Biography:As Temperton remembers music was in his bones...
- Max Terr
- Ken ThorneKen ThorneKenneth Thorne is a British-American television and film score composer.- Early life :Thorne was born in East Dereham, a town in the English county of Norfolk. Thorne began his musical career as a pianist with the big bands of England during the 1940s, playing at night clubs and the dance halls...
(1 win) - Dimitri TiomkinDimitri TiomkinDimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin was a Russian-born Hollywood film score composer and conductor. He is considered "one of the giants of Hollywood movie music." Musically trained in Russia, he is best known for his westerns, "where his expansive, muscular style had its greatest impact." Tiomkin...
(3 wins) - Ernst TochErnst TochErnst Toch was a composer of classical music and film scores.- Biography :Toch, born in Leopoldstadt, Vienna, into the family of a humble Jewish leather dealer when the city was at its 19th-century cultural zenith, sought throughout his life to introduce new approaches to music...
- Peter Townshend
- John Scott Trotter
- Jonathan TunickJonathan TunickJonathan Tunick is an American orchestrator, musical director, and composer, one of twelve people to have won all four major American show business awards: the Tony, Oscar, Emmy and Grammy. He has also worked with all of the other eleven people. His principal instrument is the clarinet...
(1 win) - VangelisVangelisEvangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou is a Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock and orchestral music, under the artist name Vangelis...
(1 win) - Tom WaitsTom WaitsThomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
- Don Walker
- Oliver WallaceOliver WallaceOliver George Wallace was a British composer and conductor. He was especially known for his film music compositions, which were written for many animation, documentary, and feature films from Walt Disney Studios....
(1 win) - William WaltonWilliam WaltonSir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
- Stephen WarbeckStephen WarbeckStephen Warbeck is an English composer, best known for his film and television scores.Warbeck was born in Southampton. He first became known for the music for Prime Suspect and won an Academy Award for his score for Shakespeare in Love...
(1 win) - Edward WardEdward Ward (composer)Edward Ward was a film composer and music director who was nominated for seven Academy Awards during a career that spanned thirty-seven years and included more than 150 projects.-Academy Award nominations:...
- Ned WashingtonNed WashingtonNed Washington was an American lyricist.-Biography:Washington was nominated for eleven Academy Awards from 1940 to 1962...
(1 win) - Franz WaxmanFranz WaxmanFranz Waxman was a German-American composer, known for his bravura Carmen Fantasie for violin and orchestra, based on musical themes from the Bizet opera Carmen, and for his musical scores for films....
(2 wins) - Kenneth WebbKenneth WebbKenneth S. Webb was an American film director, screenwriter, and composer noted for directing a number of films in the early age of the American film industry...
- Roy WebbRoy WebbRoy Webb was a film music composer.Webb has hundreds of composing credits to his name, mainly with RKO Pictures, and while most of the movies he scored were fairly light in content, he is today best known for his dark horror and film noir scores...
- Kurt WeillKurt WeillKurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
- Jerry WexlerJerry WexlerGerald "Jerry" Wexler was a music journalist turned music producer, and was regarded as one of the major record industry players behind music from the 1950s through the 1980s...
- Matthew WilderMatthew WilderMatthew Wilder is an American musician, composer and record producer, best known for his 1983 Top 5 hit, "Break My Stride"....
- John WilliamsJohn WilliamsJohn Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
(5 wins) - Patrick Williams
- Paul WilliamsPaul Williams (songwriter)Paul Hamilton Williams, Jr. is an Academy Award-winning American composer, musician, songwriter, and actor. He is perhaps best known for popular songs performed by a number of acts in the 1970s including Three Dog Night's "An Old Fashioned Love Song", Helen Reddy's "You and Me Against the World",...
- Meredith WillsonMeredith WillsonRobert Meredith Willson was an American composer, songwriter, conductor and playwright, best known for writing the book, music and lyrics for the hit Broadway musical The Music Man...
- Charles WolcottCharles WolcottCharles Wolcott served as a member of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the Bahá'í Faith, between 1963 and 1987.Wolcott was born in Flint, Michigan, USA...
- Albert Woodbury
- Gabriel YaredGabriel YaredGabriel Yared is a Lebanese composer, best known for his work in French and American cinema.Born in Beirut, Lebanon, his work in France included the scores for Betty Blue and Camille Claudel. He later began working on English language films, particularly those directed by Anthony Minghella...
(1 win) - Victor YoungVictor YoungVictor Young was an American composer, arranger, violinist and conductor. He was born in Chicago.-Biography:...
(1 win) - Hans ZimmerHans ZimmerHans Florian Zimmer is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including critically acclaimed film scores for The Lion King , Crimson Tide , The Thin Red Line , Gladiator , The Dark Knight and Inception .Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the...
(1 win) - David ZippelDavid ZippelDavid Joel Zippel is an American musical theatre lyricist.-Biography:Zippel was born in Easton, Pennsylvania. He is a 1976 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. While there, he wrote a "bizarre political musical" called Rotunda...
Source: The Official Academy Awards Database http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/ampas_awards/BasicSearchInput.jsp
Other award nominees and winners
The following list includes all composers who have been nominated for one of the other major film music awards (Golden Globes, BAFTA Awards, Grammy Awards, Emmy Awards, International Film Music Critics AssociationInternational Film Music Critics Association
The International Film Music Critics Association is a professional association for online, print and radio journalists who specialize in writing about original film and television music.-History and purpose:...
), but have never been nominated for an Oscar. Winners of an Award appear in bold.
- John AltmanJohn Altman (composer)John Altman is a British film composer, music arranger, orchestrator and conductor.-Biography:Altman was introduced to the music of the 1930s and 1940s at an early age by an uncle who arranged and composed music for big bands and conducted for Judy Garland, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy,...
(BAFTA) - Armand AmarArmand AmarArmand Amar is an Israel-born French composer who grew up in Morocco. He won the 2010 César Award for Best Music Written for a Film for Le Concert .-Biography:...
(IFMCA) - Benny AnderssonBenny AnderssonGöran Bror "Benny" Andersson is a Swedish musician, composer, a former member of the Swedish musical group ABBA , and co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia!...
(BAFTA) - Oscar Araujo (IFMCA)
- Craig Armstrong (Globe, BAFTA, Grammy)
- David ArnoldDavid ArnoldDavid Arnold is an English film composer best known for scoring five James Bond films, the 1994 film Stargate, the 1996 film Independence Day, and the television series Little Britain.-Film and television career:...
(BAFTA, Grammy, Emmy) - Angelo BadalamentiAngelo BadalamentiAngelo Badalamenti is an American composer, known for his movie soundtrack work for director David Lynch, notably Blue Velvet, the Twin Peaks saga and Mulholland Drive...
(Globe, BAFTA, Grammy) - Lionel BartLionel BartLionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!-Early life:...
(Globe) - Jeff BealJeff BealJeff Beal is an American composer of music for film, television, recordings, and the concert hall. Highly regarded as a jazz instrumentalist and versatile composer, Beal's music often incorporates a synthesis of improvisatory and composed elements.- Early life :Beal began trumpet studies in the...
(Emmy) - Christophe BeckChristophe BeckChristophe Beck , also credited as Chris Beck, is a Canadian television and film score composer....
(Emmy) - Richard BellisRichard BellisRichard Bellis is notable as an Emmy Award winning composer for the mini-series "Stephen King's It." Bellis is a former President of the Society of Composers & Lyricists, former governor of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences a USC lecturer and the composer of music for numerous TV...
(Emmy) - Howard BlakeHoward BlakeHoward Blake, OBE is an English composer , particularly noted for his film scores, although he is prolific in several fields of classical and light music...
(BAFTA) - Terence BlanchardTerence BlanchardTerence Oliver Blanchard is an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, arranger, and film score composer. Since he emerged on the scene in 1980 with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and then shortly thereafter with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Blanchard has been a leading artist in jazz...
(Globe) - Pieter BourkePieter BourkePieter Bourke is an Australian percussionist, composer, and audio engineer. He has collaborated with Dead Can Dance, and recorded material with ex-Dead Can Dance Lisa Gerrard. He also collaborated with Australian musician David Thrussell , first as part of the latter's band Snog, then just the two...
(Globe) - Steven BramsonSteven BramsonSteven Bramson is a professional composer who has been nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards, and has won one Daytime Emmy Award and three ASCAP Awards. He has written music to George Lucas' Young Indiana Jones and the CBS series JAG. Bramson’s music has been played in New York City and London....
(Emmy) - Jon BrionJon BrionJon Brion is an American rock and pop multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, composer and record producer.-Early life:...
(Grammy) - Michael BrookMichael BrookMichael Brook is a Canadian guitarist, inventor, producer, and film music composer. He plays in many genres, including rock, electronica, world music, minimalism and film scores....
(Globe) - Stephen BrutonStephen Bruton-Background:Born in Wilmington, Delaware as Turner Stephen Bruton, he moved with his family to Texas at the age of two. He fell into the Fort Worth music scene after graduating from Texas Christian University when he joined Kris Kristofferson's band as the latter's career was about to take off;...
(BAFTA) - Velton Ray BunchVelton Ray BunchVelton Ray Bunch is Emmy winner film and television composer. Sometimes credited as Ray Bunch. Bunch has been nominated for an Emmy three times for his work, and won the fourth time for his score to the Enterprise episode "Similatude".He's worked on dozens and dozens of television series and TV...
(Emmy) - T-Bone BurnettT-Bone BurnettJoseph Henry Burnett , widely known as T-Bone Burnett, is an American musician, songwriter, and soundtrack and record producer.He was a guitarist in Bob Dylan's band on the Rolling Thunder Revue...
(BAFTA) - Carter BurwellCarter BurwellCarter Benedict Burwell is an American composer of film scores.-Life and career:Burwell was born in New York City, the son of Natalie , a math teacher, and Charles Burwell, who founded Thaibok Fabrics, Ltd...
(Globe, BAFTA, Emmy) - Sean CallerySean CallerySean Callery is an film and television composer best known as the composer for the action/drama 24, a TV series for which he also composed three full soundtracks. The first soundtrack, containing music from the first three seasons was released on December 7, 2004...
(Emmy) - Jay ChattawayJay ChattawayJay Chattaway is an American composer of film and television scores. He is mainly known for his work as score composer for several Star Trek television series: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise...
(Emmy) - Eric ClaptonEric ClaptonEric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
(Grammy) - Alf ClausenAlf ClausenAlf Clausen is an American film and television composer. He is best known for his work scoring many episodes of The Simpsons, of which he has been the sole composer since 1990...
(Emmy) - Harvey CohenHarvey CohenHarvey R. Cohen was an American composer and orchestrator...
(Emmy) - Michel ColombierMichel ColombierMichel Colombier was a French composer, songwriter, arranger, and conductor.- External links :*...
(Globe, Grammy) - Ry CooderRy CooderRyland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
(BAFTA) - Stewart CopelandStewart CopelandStewart Armstrong Copeland is an American musician, best known as the drummer for the band The Police. During the group's extended hiatus from the mid-1980s to 2007, he played in other bands and composed soundtracks...
(Globe) - Bruno CoulaisBruno CoulaisBruno Coulais is a French composer, most widely known for his music on film soundtracks. He recently composed the score for the animated film, The Secret of Kells, released 12 March 2010.- Life and career :...
(BAFTA) - Daft PunkDaft PunkDaft Punk are an electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter . Daft Punk reached significant popularity in the late 1990s house movement in France and met with continued success in the years following, combining elements of house with synthpop...
(IFMCA) - Burkhard DallwitzBurkhard DallwitzBurkhard von Dallwitz is a German-born composer based in Melbourne, Australia. He was born near Frankfurt and began ten years of classical piano training at the age of eight. By thirteen he was writing songs and music, and from fifteen, Burkhard wrote, arranged and performed for various musical...
(Globe) - Jeff DannaJeff DannaJeffrey W. “Jeff” Danna is a composer and musician noted for his work in film scores.A reluctant piano student at age eight, he found solace in the guitar at age eleven. Danna began playing professionally at fifteen until a hand injury in 1987 curtailed his performance career...
(Emmy) - Mychael DannaMychael DannaMychael Danna is a Canadian film composer.-Life and career:Mychael Danna is the brother of fellow composer Jeff Danna. He has been scoring films since his 1987 feature debut for Atom Egoyan's Family Viewing, a score which earned Danna the first of his thirteen Genie Award nominations. He has won...
(Emmy) - Carl DavisCarl DavisCarl Davis CBE is an American born conductor and composer who has made his home in the UK since 1961. In 1970 he married the English actress Jean Boht....
(BAFTA, Grammy) - Don DavisDon Davis (composer)Donald Romain Davis is an American film score composer, conductor, and orchestrator. Best known for his work on The Matrix, he has worked on a variety of films, from horror to comedy.- Early life :...
(Emmy) - Paco de LucíaPaco de LucíaPaco de Lucía, born Francisco Sánchez Gómez , is a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist and composer. He is considered by many to be one of the finest guitarists in the world and the greatest guitarist of the flamenco genre...
(BAFTA) - Marius de VriesMarius de VriesMarius Van Wyk de Vries is an English music producer and composer. He has been behind some of the key albums and soundtracks of recent times, gathering five Grammy nominations, two BAFTAs, and an Ivor Novello award along the way.-Music Producer:...
(BAFTA) - Vince DiColaVince DiColaVince DiCola is an Italian-American composer, keyboardist, and arranger best known for his work on the The Transformers: The Movie, Staying Alive and Rocky IV soundtracks...
(Grammy) - James Di PasqualeJames Di PasqualeJames Di Pasquale is an American musician and composer of contemporary music and music for television and films.-Biography:...
(Emmy) - Neil DiamondNeil DiamondNeil Leslie Diamond is an American singer-songwriter with a career spanning over five decades from the 1960s until the present....
(Globe, Grammy) - Ramin DjawadiRamin DjawadiRamin Djawadi is a German composer of orchestral music for film and television. He was born in Duisburg, Germany to an Iranian father and German mother...
(Grammy) - Jim DooleyJim DooleyJames William Dooley was a former American football player and coach. He is best remembered for his tenure in both capacities with the National Football League's Chicago Bears....
(Emmy) - Clint EastwoodClint EastwoodClinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
(Globe, Grammy) - Fred EbbFred EbbFred Ebb was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera....
(Globe) - Randy EdelmanRandy EdelmanRandy Edelman is an American film and TV score composer.-Life and career:Edelman was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He was raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, the son of a first-grade teacher and an accountant. He attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before heading to New York where he played...
(Globe, BAFTA) - Ilan EshkeriIlan Eshkeri- Early life :Eshkeri was born in London. During his childhood, he learned to play the violin and guitar and later went on to play in a rock band. Eshkeri attended Leeds University where he studied music and English literature...
(IFMCA) - Harold FaltermeyerHarold FaltermeyerHarold Faltermeyer is a German musician, keyboardist, composer and record producer.He is recognized as one of the composers/producers who best captured the zeitgeist of 1980s synth-pop in film scores...
(Globe) - Allyn FergusonAllyn FergusonAllyn Malcolm Ferguson Jr. was an American composer, best known for the themes for 1970s television programs Barney Miller and Charlie's Angels, which he co-wrote with Jack Elliott...
(Emmy) - David FosterDavid FosterDavid Walter Foster, OC, OBC , is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter, and arranger, noted for discovering singers such as Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, and Charice Pempengco; and for producing some of the most successful artists in the world, such as Céline Dion, Toni...
(Grammy) - Charles FoxCharles Fox (composer)Charles Ira Fox is an American composer for film and television. His most heard compositions are probably the "love themes" , and the dramatic theme music to ABC's Wide World of Sports and the original Monday Night Football.....
(Globe, Grammy) - Benjamin FrankelBenjamin FrankelBenjamin Frankel was a British composer. Frankel's most famous pieces include a cycle of five string quartets and eight symphonies as well as a number of concertos for violin and viola; his single best-known piece is probably the First Sonata for Solo Violin, which, like his concertos, resulted...
(Globe) - Dominic FrontiereDominic FrontiereDominic Frontiere is an American composer, arranger, and jazz accordionist. He is known for composing the theme and much of the music for the first season of the television series The Outer Limits.-Early years:...
(Globe) - Peter GabrielPeter GabrielPeter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
(Globe, Grammy) - Brian Gascoigne (BAFTA)
- Lisa GerrardLisa GerrardLisa Gerrard is an Australian musician, singer, and composer who rose to prominence as part of the music group Dead Can Dance with former music partner Brendan Perry....
(Globe, Grammy)
- Barry GibbBarry GibbBarry Alan Crompton Gibb, CBE , is a singer, songwriter and producer. He was born in the Isle of Man to English parents. With his brothers Robin and Maurice, he formed The Bee Gees, one of the most successful pop groups of all time. The trio got their start in Australia, and found their major...
(Globe) - Nick Gold (BAFTA)
- Billy GoldenbergBilly GoldenbergWilliam Leon "Billy" Goldenberg is an American composer most known for his work on television and film....
(Emmy) - Howard GoodallHoward Goodall210px|thumb|Howard Goodall at St. John the Baptist Church in Devon, United Kingdom, May 2009Howard Lindsay Goodall CBE is a British composer of musicals, choral music and music for television...
(Emmy) - Miles GoodmanMiles GoodmanMiles Goodman was an American musician who composed music for television programs, including Teen Wolf, and many films, notably the toe-tapping tunes from Footloose and the incidental music to Little Shop of Horrors . As a producer, Goodman specialized in light jazz and classics...
(Globe) - Ron GoodwinRon GoodwinRonald Alfred Goodwin was a British composer and conductor known for his film music. He scored over 70 films in a career lasting over fifty years....
(Globe) - Gordon GoodwinGordon GoodwinGordon L. Goodwin is a Grammy award-winning American studio pianist, saxophonist, composer, arranger and conductor. He now lives in Southern California with his wife Lisa, daughter Madison and two sons, Trevor and Garrison.- Early years :...
(Emmy) - Gerald Gouriet (Globe)
- Jonny GreenwoodJonny GreenwoodJonathan Richard Guy "Jonny" Greenwood is an English musician and composer, best known as a member of the English rock band Radiohead. Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist, but serves mainly as lead guitarist and keyboard player. In addition to guitar and keyboard, he plays viola, harmonica,...
(BAFTA, Grammy) - Harry Gregson-WilliamsHarry Gregson-WilliamsHarry Gregson-Williams is a prolific British composer, orchestrator, conductor, and music producer. He is best known for his film scores, of which he has composed over sixty using electronic music and orchestral pieces...
(Globe, BAFTA) - Guy GrossGuy Gross (Australian composer)Guy Gross is an Australian film and television music composer. He is known most for writing the award winning music for the American science fiction series Farscape and the international hit film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. He also composed for the animated television series...
(BAFTA) - Christopher GunningChristopher GunningChristopher Gunning is a British composer of concert works and music for films and television....
(BAFTA) - James HanniganJames HanniganJames Hannigan is an award-winning British film, television and video game composer who has composed music for various entries in the Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Command & Conquer, Wing Commander, Warhammer and Grand Prix series' of games.-Career:Notable early game credits of Hannigan...
(IFMCA) - Richard HartleyRichard HartleyRichard Hartley is a British composer.His work is extensive and varied, including musical arrangement for theatre and many scores for television and film. In the 1970s he began a long association with Richard O'Brien. Hartley was originally part of the four-piece band for the Rocky Horror Show. ...
(Emmy) - Knut Avenstroup Haugen (IFMCA)
- Joe HisaishiJoe Hisaishi, known professionally as , is a composer and director known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981.While possessing a stylistically distinct sound, Hisaishi's music has been known to explore and incorporate different genres, including minimalist, experimental electronic,...
(IFMCA) - Lee HoldridgeLee HoldridgeLee Holdridge is a Haitian-born American television composer and orchestrator.-Biography:He was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, of a Puerto-Rican mother and an American father, the botanist an climatologist Leslie Holdridge...
(Emmy) - Junior Homrich (BAFTA)
- Nellee HooperNellee HooperNellee Hooper is a British producer/remixer/composer best known for his work with Björk, No Doubt/Gwen Stefani, Madonna, Sinéad O'Connor, Garbage, Andrea Corr, U2, Sneaker Pimps, Soul II Soul and Massive Attack...
(BAFTA) - Nicholas HooperNicholas HooperNicholas Hooper is a British film and television composer. He has scored the award-winning BBC productions Land of the Tiger and Andes to Amazon, as well as the TV movies The Girl in the Café and My Family and Other Animals among others...
(Grammy) - Richard HorowitzRichard HorowitzRichard Horowitz is a composer, producer, arranger, and musician .He is best known for his work on The Sheltering Sky, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, which was awarded the 1990 Golden Globe and LA Film Critics Music Awards; Any Given Sunday, directed by Oliver Stone, which was awarded the 2000...
(Globe) - Dick HymanDick HymanRichard “Dick” Hyman is an American jazz pianist/keyboardist and composer, best-known for his versatility with jazz piano styles. Over a 50 year career, he has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and, increasingly, as composer...
(BAFTA) - Joe Jackson (Grammy)
- Chaz Jankel (BAFTA)
- Carl Johnson (Emmy)
- Adrian Johnston (Emmy)
- Dan JonesDan Jones (composer)Dan Jones is a BAFTA award winning composer and sound designer working in film and theatre. He read music at the University of Oxford, studied contemporary music theatre at the Banff Centre for the Arts and studied electro-acoustic composition and programming at the Centro Ricerche Musicali in Rome...
(Emmy) - Ron JonesRon Jones (composer)Ron Jones is an American composer who has written music for TV shows, including Star Trek: The Next Generation, Duck Tales, American Dad!, and Family Guy...
(Emmy) - Trevor JonesTrevor Jones (composer)Trevor Alfred Charles Jones is a South African orchestral film score composer. Although not especially well known outside the film world, he has composed for numerous films and his music has been critically acclaimed for both its depth and emotion.-Career:At the age of five, Jones already had...
(Globe, BAFTA) - Michael KamenMichael KamenMichael Arnold Kamen was an American composer , orchestral arranger, orchestral conductor, song writer, and session musician.-Background:...
(Globe, Grammy) - John KanderJohn KanderJohn Harold Kander is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.-Life and career:Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice and Harold S. Kander...
(Globe, BAFTA) - Rolfe KentRolfe KentRolfe R. Kent is a British film score composer.Kent was born in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England. He attended St Albans School, then graduated in Psychology from the University of Leeds in 1986...
(Globe) - Wojciech KilarWojciech KilarWojciech Kilar ; b. 17 July 1932 in Lwów, Poland) is a Polish classical and film music composer.-Biography:Wojciech Kilar is one of Poland’s esteemed composers. Born in 1932 in Lwów . His father was a gynecologist and his mother was a theater actress...
(BAFTA) - Kaki KingKaki KingKaki King is an American guitarist and composer. King is known for her percussive and jazz-tinged melodies, energetic live shows, use of multiple tunings on acoustic and lap steel guitar, and her diverse range in different genres.In February 2006, Rolling Stone released a list of "The New Guitar...
(Globe) - KitaroKitaro, better known as , is an award winning Japanese musician, composer and multi-instrumentalist who is regarded as one of the pioneers of new age music.-Early life:...
(Globe) - Mark KnopflerMark KnopflerMark Freuder Knopfler, OBE is a Scottish-born British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the British rock band Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977...
(BAFTA, Grammy) - Krzysztof KomedaKrzysztof KomedaKrzysztof Komeda was a Polish film music composer and jazz pianist. Perhaps best-known for his work in film scores, Komeda wrote the scores for Roman Polanski’s films Rosemary’s Baby, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Knife in the Water and Cul-de-sac...
(Globe) - Abel KorzeniowskiAbel KorzeniowskiAbel Korzeniowski is a Polish film and theatre scores composer.He had contact with music from early childhood: his mother Barbara plays cello and both his brothers Antoni and Andrzej are musicians. He graduated from the Academy of Music in Kraków majoring in cello and composer studies under the...
(Globe, IFMCA) - Henry KriegerHenry KriegerHenry Krieger is an American composer.Krieger wrote the music for the Broadway shows Dreamgirls , The Tap Dance Kid , and Side Show , as well as other works of musical theatre.He was nominated for the Tony Awards for Best Score for both Dreamgirls and Side Show, won a Grammy...
(BAFTA) - Robert Lane (IFMCA)
- Andrew LockingtonAndrew LockingtonAndrew Lockington is a Canadian film score composer, who composes scores for American and Canadian films. He was born July 31, 1974 in Burlington, Ontario....
(IFMCA) - Joseph LoDucaJoseph LoDucaJoseph LoDuca is an American television and film score composer best known for his work writing television scores for the series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Leverage, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, The Librarian Telefilm series, American Gothic and Jack of All Trades...
(Emmy) - John LurieJohn LurieJohn Lurie is an American actor, musician, painter and producer. He is co-founder of The Lounge Lizards, a jazz ensemble. Lurie has acted in 19 films including Stranger than Paradise and Down by Law, composed and performed music for 20 television and film works, and he produced and starred in...
(Grammy) - Nuno Malo (IFMCA)
- Johnny MandelJohnny MandelJohnny Mandel is an American composer and arranger of popular songs, film music and jazz. Among the musicians he has worked with are Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Anita O'Day, Barbra Streisand, and Shirley Horn.-Life:...
(Globe) - Chuck MangioneChuck MangioneCharles Frank "Chuck" Mangione is an American flugelhorn player and composer who achieved international success in 1977 with his jazz-pop single, "Feels So Good." Mangione has released more than thirty albums since 1960.-Early life and career:...
(Globe) - Hummie MannHummie MannHummie Mann is a two-time Emmy award-winning American film score composer. He is best known for his scores to the Mel Brooks films Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It...
(Emmy) - Clint MansellClint MansellClinton Darryl "Clint" Mansell, is an English musician, composer, and former lead singer and guitarist of the band Pop Will Eat Itself....
(Globe) - David MansfieldDavid MansfieldDavid Mansfield is an American violinist, mandolin player, guitarist, pedal steel guitar player, and composer....
(Globe) - Wynton MarsalisWynton MarsalisWynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences...
(Grammy) - Peter Martin (BAFTA)
- Cliff MartinezCliff MartinezCliff Martinez is an American film score composer and former drummer.-Biography:Cliff Martinez was born in the Bronx, New York. Raised in Columbus, Ohio, his first job composing was for the popular television show Pee Wee's Playhouse...
(Grammy) - Rob MathesRob MathesRob Mathes is an American record producer, music arranger, composer, songwriter, and performer. He also writes bluesy spiritual-pop music.-Background:Born in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, Mathes showed interest and skill in music at a very early age...
(Emmy) - Dennis McCarthyDennis McCarthy (composer)Dennis McCarthy is an ASCAP- and Emmy Award-winning composer, mostly for television programs and films produced in the United States....
(Emmy) - Bear McCrearyBear McCrearyBear McCreary is an American composer and musician living in Los Angeles, California. He is known for his work on the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica television series.-Biography:...
(IFMCA)
- Joel McNeelyJoel McNeely-Biography:Joel McNeely was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Both of his parents were involved in music and theater, and as a child he played the piano, saxophone, bass, and flute...
(Emmy) - Gil MelleGil MelleGil Mellé was an American artist, jazz musician and film composer.In the 1950s, Mellé's paintings and sculptures were shown in New York galleries and he created the cover art for albums by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins...
(Globe) - Dudley MooreDudley MooreDudley Stuart John Moore, CBE was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television...
(Globe) - Trevor MorrisTrevor Morris (musician)Trevor Morris is a Canadian orchestral composer, music producer, and creator of electronic music. He is probably best known for the creating the soundtracks for the television shows The Tudors, The Pillars of the Earth and The Borgias...
(Emmy) - Stanley MyersStanley MyersStanley Myers , was a prolific British film composer who scored over sixty films. Born in Birmingham, as a teenager Myers went to King Edward's School in Edgbaston, a suburb of Birmingham...
(BAFTA) - Garth NeustadterGarth NeustadterGarth Neustadter is an Emmy Award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist.- Biography :Garth Neustadter began studying the violin and piano at the age of four, later undertaking saxophone and voice studies...
(Emmy) - Lennie NiehausLennie NiehausLennie Niehaus is an American alto saxophonist, arranger, and composer on the West Coast jazz scene. He has played with the Stan Kenton big band, and various other jazz bands on the West Coast of the U.S. Niehaus has arranged and composed for motion pictures, including several produced by Clint...
(BAFTA) - Julian NottJulian NottJulian Nott is a British film composer, mostly of animated films. He is best known for his work in the Wallace & Gromit films....
(IFMCA) - Michael NymanMichael NymanMichael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...
(Globe, BAFTA) - Mike OldfieldMike OldfieldMichael Gordon Oldfield is an English multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, working a style that blends progressive rock, folk, ethnic or world music, classical music, electronic music, New Age, and more recently, dance. His music is often elaborate and complex in nature...
(Globe) - Riz OrtolaniRiz OrtolaniRiziero "Riz" Ortolani is an Italian film composer.In the early 1950s Ortolani was founder and member of a jazz band of national Italian renown...
(Globe) - Karen Orzolek (Globe)
- Larry Paxton (Globe)
- James Peterson (IFMCA)
- Jean-Claude PetitJean-Claude PetitJean-Claude Petit is a French composer and arranger, born in Vaires-sur-Marne. After accompanying jazzmen in his childhood, Petit went to the Conservatoire de Paris, where he studied harmony and counterpoint...
(BAFTA) - Barrington PheloungBarrington PheloungBarrington Somers Pheloung is an Australian composer, now living in England. He is one of the most prolific television and film composers in the UK, known for his wide range of compositional genres....
(BAFTA) - Basil PoledourisBasil PoledourisVassilis Konstantinos "Basil" Poledouris was a Greek-American music composer who concentrated on the scores for films and television shows...
(Emmy) - Jocelyn PookJocelyn PookJocelyn Pook is a British composer, pianist and viola player.- Biography :Jocelyn Pook’s distinctive style is a product of her diverse experiences in classical, commercial, and so-called world music...
(Globe) - Mike PostMike PostMike Post is an American multi-Grammy and Emmy Award winning composer best known for scoring some of the most popular TV theme songs in the United States, for primetime series such as Law & Order, NYPD Blue, The Rockford Files, LA Law, Quantum Leap, Magnum, P.I., Hill Street Blues, among numerous...
(Emmy) - Zbigniew PreisnerZbigniew PreisnerZbigniew Preisner is a Polish film score composer, best known for his work with film director Krzysztof Kieślowski.-Life:Zbigniew Preisner studied history and philosophy in Kraków. Never having received formal music lessons, he taught himself music by listening and transcribing parts from records....
(Globe) - Alan PriceAlan PriceAlan Price is an English musician, best known as the original keyboardist for the English band The Animals, and for his subsequent solo work....
(Globe) - Michael PriceMichael Price (composer)Michael Price is a builder composer, producer, arranger and award-winning music editor.He is equally at ease writing in full orchestral or more electronic and contemporary idioms, and is in great demand as a producer, arranger and programmer, having worked on more than 30 major studio...
(Emmy) - Jeff RichmondJeff RichmondJeffrey "Jeff" Wayne Richmond is an American composer, actor and television producer. Richmond currently produces and composes the music for 30 Rock, a sitcom created by and starring his wife Tina Fey.-Career:...
(Emmy) - Harold Rome (Globe)
- David RoseDavid RoseDavid Rose was a British-born American songwriter, composer, arranger, pianist, and orchestra leader. His most famous compositions were "The Stripper", "Holiday for Strings", and "Calypso Melody"...
(Emmy) - Brett Rosenberg (IFMCA)
- William RossWilliam Ross (composer)William Ross is an American composer, orchestrator, arranger, conductor and music director. He has worked with a large array of artists and musicians, from famous Hollywood composers John Williams, Alan Silvestri, John Powell, Michael Giacchino, Klaus Badelt, or Michael Kamen, to pop music icons...
(Emmy) - Arthur B. RubinsteinArthur B. RubinsteinArthur B. Rubinstein is a composer and behind in particular several TV series soundtracks, but also occasional film scores, possibly most notably work such as Video Fever and Edge of the World in the film WarGames. During the making of these soundtracks, he was a member of the band The Beepers...
(Emmy) - Pete RugoloPete RugoloPietro "Pete" Rugolo was an Italian-born jazz composer and arranger.-Life and career:Rugolo was born in San Piero Patti, Sicily, Italy. His family emigrated to the United States in 1920 and settled in Santa Rosa, California...
(Emmy) - The RZA (BAFTA)
- Arturo SandovalArturo SandovalArturo Sandoval is a jazz trumpeter and pianist. He was born in Artemisa, in the newest renamed Artemisa Province, Cuba....
(Grammy) - David Schwartz (Grammy)
- Edward Shearmur (Emmy)
- Kevin ShieldsKevin ShieldsKevin Patrick Shields is an American-born, Irish vocalist, guitarist, and producer of alternative rock band My Bloody Valentine....
(BAFTA) - David ShireDavid ShireDavid Lee Shire is an American songwriter and the composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. The soundtrack to the movie The Taking of Pelham 123 and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as Night on Disco Mountain, an adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald...
(BAFTA) - Carlo SiliottoCarlo SiliottoCarlo Siliotto is an Italian composer best known for his soundtrack scores.-Early Life and Career:Siliotto was born in Rome, Italy, in 1950. At an early age he began studying guitar and violin, before progressing to the Conservatory of Music...
(Globe) - Carly SimonCarly SimonCarly Elisabeth Simon is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and children's author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records, and has since been the recipient of two Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for her work...
(BAFTA) - Morton StevensMorton StevensMorton Stevens was an American film score composer from Newark, New Jersey. In 1965 Stevens became director of music for CBS West Coast operations...
(Emmy) - Richard StoneRichard Stone (composer)Richard Stone was an American composer. He played an important part in the revival of Warner Bros. animation in the 1990s, composing music and songs for Tiny Toon Adventures, Taz-Mania, SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid!, The Sylvester and Tweety...
(Emmy) - Marc StreitenfeldMarc StreitenfeldMarc Streitenfeld is a German film score composer, known for his collaborations with director Ridley Scott.-Life and career:Born in Munich, Germany, Streitenfeld relocated to Los Angeles at the age of 19, first working briefly as a musical assistant for composer Hans Zimmer, then independently as a...
(BAFTA) - Marty StuartMarty StuartJohn Martin "Marty" Stuart is an American country music singer-songwriter, known for both his traditional style, and eclectic merging of rockabilly, honky tonk, and traditional country music...
(Globe) - Mikis TheodorakisMikis TheodorakisMikis Theodorakis is one of the most renowned Greek songwriters and composers. Internationally, he is probably best known for his songs and for his scores for the films Zorba the Greek , Z , and Serpico .Politically, he identified with the left until the late 1980s; in 1989, he ran as an...
(Globe) - Mark Thomas (Emmy)
- Yann TiersenYann TiersenYann Tiersen is a musician from France. His musical career is split between studio albums, collaborations and film soundtracks with a distinctive sound that is always involved...
(BAFTA) - Pinar ToprakPinar ToprakPınar Toprak is a Turkish composer, best known for composing the film score for Behind Enemy Lines II: Axis of Evil and the Xbox 360 video game Ninety-Nine Nights....
(IFMCA) - Ernest Troost (Emmy)
- Bjorn UlvaeusBjörn UlvaeusBjörn Kristian Ulvaeus is a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, writer, producer, a former member of the Swedish musical group ABBA , and co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia!...
(BAFTA) - Eddie VedderEddie VedderEddie Vedder is an American musician and singer-songwriter who is best known for being the lead singer and one of three guitarists of the alternative rock band Pearl Jam. He is widely considered a cultural icon of alternative rock.He is also involved in soundtrack work and contributes to albums...
(Globe) - Joseph Vitarelli (IFMCA)
- W.G. "Snuffy" WaldenW. G. WaldenW. G. Snuffy Walden is a musician and composer for television shows. He has been awarded or nominated for numerous Emmy Awards and BMI Awards.- Early life :...
(Emmy) - Don WasDon WasDon Was is an American musician, bassist and record producer.-Life and career:Was was born in Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from Oak Park High School in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park, then attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor but dropped out after the first year...
(BAFTA) - Shirley WalkerShirley WalkerShirley Walker was an American television and film composer and conductor. She was one of the few female film score composers working in Hollywood...
(Emmy) - Mark WattersMark WattersMark Watters is a five-time Emmy Award winning American composer of music for film and television. He currently lives in Chatsworth with his wife Vanessa.- Biography :...
(Emmy) - Norman WhitfieldNorman WhitfieldNorman Jesse Whitfield was an American songwriter and producer, best known for his work with Berry Gordy's Motown label during the 1960s...
(Grammy) - Kristin Wilkinson (Globe)
- Nancy Wilson (BAFTA)
- Christopher YoungChristopher YoungChristopher Young is an American music composer for both film and television.Many of his music compositions are for horror films, including Hellraiser, Tales from the Hood, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, Urban Legend, and Drag Me to Hell...
(Globe) - Geoff ZanelliGeoff ZanelliGeoff Zanelli is a composer working primarily in the medium of film music. His early career was notable for scoring additional music on roughly 30 film scores written by Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell, Klaus Badelt and Steve Jablonsky including several blockbuster films...
(Emmy)
Sources: HFPA Award Search http://www.goldenglobes.org/browse/categories, BAFTA Awards Database http://www.bafta.org/awards-database.html?sq=, Primetime Emmy Award Database http://www.emmys.com/award_history_search, Grammy Awards Archive http://www.grammy.com/nominees/search, IFMCA Awards Archive http://filmmusiccritics.org/awards-archive/
Box office champions
The following list includes all composers who have scored one of the 100 Highest Grossing Films of All Time, but have never been nominated for a major award (Oscar, Golden Globe etc.)- William AlwynWilliam AlwynWilliam Alwyn, CBE, born William Alwyn Smith was an English composer, conductor, and music teacher.-Life and music:...
– Swiss Family RobinsonSwiss Family Robinson (film)Swiss Family Robinson is a 1960 American Technicolor feature film starring John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, and Sessue Hayakawa in a tale of a shipwrecked family building an island home. The screenplay by Lowell S. Hawley was loosely based upon the 1812 novel Der Schweizerische Robinson by Johann...
(1960) - Klaus BadeltKlaus BadeltKlaus Badelt is an award-winning German composer, best known for composing film scores.-Life and career:Badelt was born in Frankfurt, Germany. He started his musical career composing for many successful movies and commercials in his homeland...
– Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black PearlPirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black PearlPirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a 2003 adventure fantasy film based on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney theme parks. It was directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer...
(2003) - Tyler BatesTyler BatesTyler Bates is a music producer and composer for films. His most known work includes "The Hangman's Song" and various other tracks from the zombie horror film Dawn of the Dead, and 2008's Day of the Dead...
– 300300 (film)300 is a 2007 American fantasy action film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller. It is a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant...
(2007) - David ButtolphDavid ButtolphDavid Buttolph was a film composer who scored over 300 movies in his career. Born in New York City, Buttolph showed musical talent at an early age, and eventually studied music formally...
– House of WaxHouse of Wax (1953 film)House of Wax is a 1953 American horror film starring Vincent Price. It is a remake of Warners' Mystery of the Wax Museum without the comic relief featured in the earlier film, and was directed by André de Toth...
(1953) - George S. ClintonGeorge S. ClintonGeorge S. Clinton is an American composer, songwriter, arranger, and session musician.Clinton was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His musical career began in Nashville while earning degrees in music and drama at Middle Tennessee State University...
– Austin Powers in GoldmemberAustin Powers in GoldmemberAustin Powers in Goldmember is a 2002 American spy comedy film and the third installment of the Austin Powers series starring Mike Myers in the title role. The movie was directed by Jay Roach, and co-written by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers. Myers also plays the roles of Dr. Evil, Goldmember,...
(2002) - Brad FiedelBrad FiedelBrad Ira Fiedel is an American movie music composer. Raised in the Village of Bayville, on Long Island's tony North Shore, Fiedel graduated from The Barlow School in upstate New York....
– Terminator 2: Judgment DayTerminator 2: Judgment DayTerminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr.. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, and Edward Furlong...
(1991) - Steve JablonskySteve JablonskySteven Jablonsky is an American music composer for film, television and video games. He has been the music director for all the Michael Bay movies produced and directed since The Island...
– Transformers (2007), Transformers: Revenge of the FallenTransformers: Revenge of the FallenTransformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a 2009 American science fiction-action film directed by Michael Bay and produced by Steven Spielberg. It is the sequel to the 2007 film Transformers and the second installment in the live-action Transformers series...
(2009), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) - Alexander Janko – My Big Fat Greek WeddingMy Big Fat Greek WeddingMy Big Fat Greek Wedding is a 2002 Canadian and American romantic comedy film written by and starring Nia Vardalos and directed by Joel Zwick. The film is centered on Fotoula "Toula" Portokalos , a middle class Greek American woman who falls in love with a non-Greek upper middle class "White...
(2002) - Bill JustisBill JustisWilliam E. "Bill" Justis Jr. was an American pioneer rock and roll musician, composer, and musical arranger, best known for his 1957 Grammy Hall of Fame song, "Raunchy."-Biography:...
– Smokey and the BanditSmokey and the BanditSmokey and the Bandit is a 1977 American film starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed, Pat McCormick, Paul Williams, and Mike Henry. It inspired several other trucking films, including two sequels, Smokey and the Bandit II, and Smokey and the Bandit Part 3...
(1977) - Harald KloserHarald KloserHarald Kloser is an Austrian-born film composer and writer who has won the BMI Film Music Award in 2005 for both of his scores of Alien vs...
– The Day After TomorrowThe Day After TomorrowThe Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 American science-fiction disaster film that depicts the catastrophic effects of global warming in a series of extreme weather events that usher in global cooling which leads to a new ice age. The film did well at the box office, grossing $542,771,772 internationally...
(2004), 20122012 (film)2012 is a 2009 American disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich. It stars John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, and Woody Harrelson. It was produced by Emmerich's production company, Centropolis Entertainment and was distributed by Columbia Pictures...
(2009) - Christopher Lennertz – Alvin and the ChipmunksAlvin and the Chipmunks (film)Alvin and the Chipmunks is a 2007 comedy film directed by Tim Hill. Based on the animated series of the same name, the film stars Jason Lee, David Cross, and Cameron Richardson with the voices of Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, and Jesse McCartney. It was distributed by 20th Century Fox and...
(2007) - Mark MancinaMark MancinaMark Alan Mancina is a U.S. composer, primarily for Hollywood soundtracks, such as his collaboration with Trevor Rabin on the soundtrack for Con Air. He arranged many of the songs behind Disney's The Lion King including the Broadway musical...
– Twister (1996) - John OttmanJohn OttmanJohn Ottman is an American film editor, composer and director.He is best known for his collaborations with film director Bryan Singer, acting as film editor and composing the scores for The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil, X2: X-Men United, Superman Returns and most recently...
– X2: X-Men UnitedX2 (film)X2 is a 2003 superhero film based on the fictional characters the X-Men. Directed by Bryan Singer, it is the second film in the X-Men film series...
(2003) - Heitor PereiraHeitor PereiraHeitor Teixeira Pereira , or Heitor TP, is a Brazilian musician, who played with Simply Red and several famous musicians, like Elton John, Rod Stewart, k.d...
– Despicable MeDespicable MeDespicable Me is a 2010 American computer-animated 3D comedy film from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment that was released on July 9, 2010 in the United States. The film features the voices of Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, and...
(2010) - Trevor RabinTrevor RabinTrevor Charles Rabin is a South African born musician, best known as a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for the British progressive rock band Yes from 1983–1994, and since then, as a film composer.- Early years :...
– Armageddon (1998), National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) - William RossWilliam Ross (composer)William Ross is an American composer, orchestrator, arranger, conductor and music director. He has worked with a large array of artists and musicians, from famous Hollywood composers John Williams, Alan Silvestri, John Powell, Michael Giacchino, Klaus Badelt, or Michael Kamen, to pop music icons...
– Harry Potter and the Chamber of SecretsHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film)Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a 2002 fantasy film directed by Chris Columbus and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the second instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by David Heyman...
(2002) - Brian TylerBrian Tyler (composer)Brian Tyler is an American composer, producer, conductor, and film producer most known for his scores of Eagle Eye, The Expendables, Battle: Los Angeles, The Final Destination, Rambo, Fast & Furious, Fast Five, and Final Destination 5. Tyler is a symphonic conductor and conducts his own scores....
– Fast Five (2011) - Pharrell WilliamsPharrell WilliamsPharrell Williams , commonly known simply as Pharrell, is an American rapper, singer, record producer, composer, and fashion designer. Williams and Chad Hugo make up the record production duo The Neptunes, producing hip hop and R&B music...
– Despicable MeDespicable MeDespicable Me is a 2010 American computer-animated 3D comedy film from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment that was released on July 9, 2010 in the United States. The film features the voices of Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, and...
(2010) - Chris Wilson – My Big Fat Greek WeddingMy Big Fat Greek WeddingMy Big Fat Greek Wedding is a 2002 Canadian and American romantic comedy film written by and starring Nia Vardalos and directed by Joel Zwick. The film is centered on Fotoula "Toula" Portokalos , a middle class Greek American woman who falls in love with a non-Greek upper middle class "White...
(2002)
Source: Box Office Mojo – All-Time Domestic Box Office Grosses http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/domestic.htm, All-Time Domestic Box Office Grosses Adjusted for Inflation http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm, All-Time Worldwide Box Office Grosses http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/
Production music
Many companies such as Jingle Punks, Associated Production Music and Extreme Music provide music to various film, TV and commercial projects for a fee. Sometimes called library music, the music is owned by production music libraries and licensed to customers for use in film, television, radio and other media. Unlike popular and classical music publishers, who typically own less than 50 percent of the copyright in a composition, music production libraries own all of the copyrights of their music, meaning that it can be licensed without seeking the composer's permission, as is necessary in licensing music from normal publishers. This is because virtually all music created for music libraries is done on a work for hireWork for hire
A work made for hire is an exception to the general rule that the person who actually creates a work is the legally recognized author of that work...
basis. Production music is therefore a very convenient medium for media producers — they can be assured that they will be able to license any piece of music in the library at a reasonable rate.
Production music libraries will typically offer a broad range of musical styles and genres, enabling producers and editors to find much of what they need in the same library. Music libraries vary in size from a few hundred tracks up to many thousands. The first production music library was setup by De Wolfe in 1927 with the advent of sound in film, the company originally scored music for use in silent film. Another music library was set up by Ralph Hawkes of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers in the 1930s. APM, the largest US library, has over 250,000 tracks.
See also
- AFI's 100 Years of Film ScoresAFI's 100 Years of Film ScoresPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores is a list of the top 25 film scores in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute in 2005.-The List:-External links:**...
- FilmiFilmiFilmi is Indian popular music as written and performed for Indian cinema. Music directors make up the main body of composers; the songs are performed by playback singers and it makes up 72% of the music sales in India....
, Bollywood film music - List of film score composers
- Musivisual LanguageMusivisual LanguageIn art, the musivisual language is a semiotic system that is the synchronous union between the language of music and the language of image. The term was first coined by the Spanish composer Alejandro Román, and indicates the existence of an own unique language of film music.For over a century, film...
Film music organizations
- ASCAP - Performing rights organization
- BMI - Performing rights organization
- Film Musicians Secondary Markets FundFilm Musicians Secondary Markets FundThe Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund is a not-for-profit organization that collects and processes residual payments from producers and distributes them to film and television musicians...
- Society of Composers and Lyricists
Independent specialist original soundtrack recording labels
- 1M1 Records1M1 Records1M1 Records is an Australian record label formed in 1988 as oneMone Records, to promote and archive Australian film soundtracks. It was the creation of Australian film music recording producers Philip Powers and James McCarthy, both of whom were previously Director of Music at the Australian...
- Digitmovies AEDigitmovies AEDigitmovies Alternative Entertainment is an Italian label that starts in 2002 the rescue of Italian film music.Digitmovies AE has released over 100 soundtracks from many Italian original archives such as, C.A.M., Cinevox, Beat Records, EMI General music......
- Film Score MonthlyFilm Score MonthlyFilm Score Monthly is an online magazine founded by editor-in-chief and executive producer Lukas Kendall in June 1990 as The Soundtrack Correspondence List...
- Intrada RecordsIntrada RecordsIntrada Records is an American record company based in Oakland, California. Intrada Records is an American record company based in Oakland, California. Intrada Records is an American record company based in Oakland, California...
- La-La Land RecordsLa-La Land RecordsLa-La Land Records is an American record company based in Burbank, California . The company specializes in film and television soundtracks. The label is run by Michael V...
- Milan RecordsMilan RecordsMilan Records is a record label located in Los Angeles, California specializing in film scores and soundtrack albums. In addition, Milan boasts an extensive electronic catalog which features down-tempo, chillout, and eclectic electronic releases....
- MovieScore MediaMovieScore MediaMovieScore Media is a Swedish record label devoted to original film scores, founded in 2005 by former film music journalist Mikael Carlsson. The label is the main business activity of Carlsson's company, MovieScore Media Sweden....
- Perseverance RecordsPerseverance RecordsPerseverance Records is a record label which releases film scores on CD and online. Releases are usually accompanied by extensive, well-researched booklets...
- Prometheus RecordsPrometheus RecordsPrometheus Records is a Belgium-based soundtrack label, established in 1980 by Luc Van de Ven, which originally began as a film music magazine known as Soundtrack. The magazine ceased production in 2004, but the label still continues to issue film score CDs with the assistance of Ford A...
- Trunk RecordsTrunk RecordsTrunk Records is a British independent record label, which specialises mainly in lost film scores, unreleased TV music, library music, sexploitation and kitsch releases...
- Varèse SarabandeVarèse SarabandeVarèse Sarabande is an American record label, distributed by Universal Music Group, which specializes in film scores and original cast recordings. It aims to reissue rare or unavailable albums as well as newer releases by artists no longer under a contract...
Further reading
- Andersen, Martin Stig. “Electroacoustic Sound and Audiovisual Structure in Film.” eContact! 12.4 — Perspectives on the Electroacoustic Work / Perspectives sur l’œuvre électroacoustique (August 2010). Montréal: CECCanadian Electroacoustic CommunityFounded in 1986, La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / The Canadian Electroacoustic Community is Canada’s national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and as such is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from “pure” acousmatic...
. - Elal, Sammy and Kristian Dupont (Eds.). “The Essentials of Scoring Film.” Minimum Noise. Copenhagen, Denmark.
- Various contributors [wiki]. “Films with Significant Electroacoustic Content.” eContact! 8.4 — Ressources éducatives / Educational Resources (September 2006). Montréal: CECCanadian Electroacoustic CommunityFounded in 1986, La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / The Canadian Electroacoustic Community is Canada’s national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and as such is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from “pure” acousmatic...
.
External links
Film music organizationsFilm music review sites
- Cinemusic (cinemusic.net)
- MusicWeb International: Film Music on the Web (site closed in December 2006 and remains for archive purposes only)
- MainTitles (maintitles.net)
- Movie Music UK (moviemusicuk.us)
- Movie Wave (movie-wave.net )
- ScoreNotes (scorenotes.com)
Journals (online and print)