pegastar

I want to expand my breadth of knowledge so I have been asking everyone, who is your favorite film composer? What is your favorite score?

batman

John Barry and Patrick Doyle are the tops for me.

Favourite scores by them are ...

John Barry - Somewhere in Time
Patrick Doyle - Dead Again

... I also like Anne Dudley's music.

My all time favourite score is The Great Silence by Ennio Morricone.

"Aha Mr Aubergine ... that's where you're wrong!"

Nick Dando

Sir William Walton (Henry V, The Foreman Went to France, Went the Day Well?)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (Scott of the Antarctic, The Flemish Flag)
Michael Nyman (The Draughtsman's Contract)
Adrian Johnston (Perfect Strangers, Shooting the Past)
Simon Fisher Turner (Blue)
Brian Easdale (Gone to Earth)
David Holmes (Ocean's Eleven)
Ron Goodwin (Battle of Britain, Where Eagles Dare)

Nick

Bernardo

For English film music it has to be Ralph Vaughan Williams without a doubt. I will not copy and paste the large list, which is still growing, have a look.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

moonfleet

Just coming to mind:

Ennio Morricone

Nino Rota

John Dankworth

François de Roubaix

George Delerue

Franz Waxman

Jerry Goldsmith

Henry Mancini
.......


Moon.

'Very difficult !!' 'Craazy !!'

moonfleet

And adding a "forever theme":

Moon Music & Prelude from Alex North's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf


(For Martha and George)

'Very difficult !!' 'Craazy !!'

Steve Crook

Brian Easdale - The Red Shoes. He wrote a complete ballet in the middle of a film

Steve

Gary D.

I see no one's mentioned Richard Adinsell, who composed the Warsaw Concerto for some relatively obscure wartime film (Fighter Squad?), as well as the Marilyn Monroe/Laurence Olivier The Prince and the Showgirl. Aside from Marilyn, Adinsell's music has caused me to watch this 1957 film over and over.

Steve Crook

He also wrote (or co-wrote with William Blezard) a lot of the music for Joyce Grenfell's sketches

Steve

vincenzo

John Barry is my fave British composer. Henry Mancini is my top U.S one.

Geoffers

Good choices! Barry on top of his game (mostly 60s & 70s for me) is hard to beat. I know he also won Oscars in the 80s and 90s, but I preferred it when he was writing for smaller films like The Knack, The Ipcress File, Lion in Winter and almost any Bryan Forbes film he scored. Moving to the USA in the mid-70s may have brought him financial security but I feel his style became much more rigid from that time onwards.

I cannot imagine a Bond film today being scored the way he did OHMSS - just full of wonderful memorable cues and themes. Even The Living Daylights, a film he didn't enjoy working on, is top-notch. With all due respect to his Bond successors, I don't hear many memorable cues in their scores ...

He had a gift for melody that few composers appear to have today.

Reeldigger

Confining myself to British composers, I would have to say that William Walton is way ahead of the pack. His score for Henry V may be his best and, judging from the number of times it has been recorded, best remembered.

Let's not forget Miklos Rozsa who had a brief career in the British films before settling down in Hollywood.

CliveT

Although Miklos Rosza was not British-his score for "The Private Life of S.Holmes" is really good. Ron Goodwin & John Barry are the two other composers who seem to have the talent for British film scores-especially in the 60s.

CliveT

vincenzo

Hard to pick a fave Barry score though OHMSS and The Knack are right up at the top. Of his later work I find his King Kong score hugely underrated (unlike the ape-alling film).

Ditto for Mancini. Two For The Road is a particular favourite of mine.

SirOllyBolly

Does Vangelis count?

SirOllyBolly

"What fresh lunacy is this?"