1. Ennio Morricone
2. Jerry Goldsmith

After no. 2 it gets tough.

piano632, August 24, 2007; 4:45 PM

Favorite composers... not composer is more like it.

Naming one is impossible and limiting and sort of unfair.

I notice scorelover you have named three... piano two.

Danny Elfman I like too by the way.

I think two or three for me is not enough...

Not in any order of preference and depending on my mood...

Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, John Barry, Roy Budd, Vic Mizzy, John Cacavas, Lalo Schifrin, Maurice Jarre, Bernard Herrmann, Kenyon Hopkins, John Williams.

I can dig Beltrami (listening to him right now), Silvestri of course, Tyler Bates, John Carpenter, Mark Isham.

Georges Delerue on a different level... Michel Magne, Piero Piccioni, Nino Rota, Bill Conti.

I kneel to Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, and all the founding fathers of film music my memory is escaping at the moment.

Morricone for heaven's sake... Henri Mancini.

Unfair I tell ya!

BTW my favorite color is red but most of the time I end up buying blue...

???

Salut!

serifiot, August 24, 2007; 4:48 PM

PS

As to which composer my film music collection is dominated by...

JERRY GOLDSMITH

Darn, I really like red!

serifiot, August 24, 2007; 4:52 PM

I'll add some of my favourite CDs of each composer I'm naming.

I have a first tier which includes those who composed lots of scores I adore:

1. Ennio Morricone (too many favourite scores to name)
2. John Barry (Bond. Bond. Bond. QUILLER MEMORANDUM)
3. Jerry Goldsmith (RENT-A-COP, RUSSIA HOUSE)
4. John Williams (EIGER SANCTION)
5. Roy Budd (too many to single out one and to distinguish ;-))
6. Bill Conti (ROCKY, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY)

My second tier consists of composers of whom I know only a few scores, but am amazed how good all of these are:

7. Richard Rodney Bennett (EQUUS, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, LADY CAROLINE LAMB...I could go on)
8. Wojciech Kilar (THE NINTH GATE)

My third tier includes the ones who composed a few scores I really love. However, their other scores are just in the 3 out of 5 stars area to me.

9. John Powell (FACE/OFF, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY)
10. Craig Armstrong (THE BONE COLLECTOR, THE QUIET AMERICAN)
11. James Horner (LEGENDS OF THE FALL, THE PERFECT STORM)

And then there are those who composed only very few scores, but they still those few impressed me a lot. Or they only composed very few scores I liked. Call them "one hit wonders" (though I'd say Bruhn composed three hits to me). OK, that term is not fair.

12. Christian Bruhn (CAPTAIN FUTURE, PATRIK PACARD, JACK HOLBORN)
13. Klaus Doldinger (DAS BOOT)
14. Michel Colombier (LE HASARD ET LA VIOLENCE)
15. Charles Bernstein (MR. MAJESTYIK)
16. Harry Gregson-Williams (SPY GAME)
17. Carter Burwell (THE JACKAL)

If this question had been asked in the year of my birth (1973), I would have had a hard time deciding if Barry or Morricone was my #1 so far.

Urs

handstand, August 24, 2007; 5:43 PM

You're right serifiot, but that was only some. I have more.

Elmer Bernstein
John Williams
John Debney
Jerry Goldsmith
Randy Edelman

and so forth.

scorelover, August 24, 2007; 6:06 PM

Jim Parker, George Fenton, Bernard Herrmann, Toru Takemitsu, Johnny Mandel, Elmer
Bernstein, Geoffrey Burgon, no particular order. There are hardly any bad scores from these
guys. But other folks also came up with incredible good music. However I hardly grow tired of
listening to these composers over and over again. Maybe I should add Philippe Sarde, Maurice
Jarre, Franz Waxman, Richard Robbins, some John Williams, Goldsmith, Morricone and Rota as
well. But it's a matter of taste, and I like strange atmospheric sounds and orchestral colour, one
of the best in that department is Takemitsu.

chris, August 24, 2007; 6:11 PM

Ok, then I'll be the first one to answer this question literally: John Barry, period.

;-))

coma, August 24, 2007; 9:22 PM

Goblin, Claudio Simonetti, Fabio Frizzi, Riz Ortolani, Stelvio Cipriani, Stefano Mainetti, Nico Fidenco, Franco Micalizzi, Ennio Morricone, Guido & Maurizio De Angelis, Francesco De Masi, Pino Donaggio, Bruno Nicolai, Masaru Satoh, Akira Ifukube, Shunsuke Kikuchi, Chumei Watanabe, Riichiro Manabe, Isao Tomita, Bernard Herrmann, John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, Simon Boswell, Wendy Carlos, Jerry Goldsmith, Lalo Schifrin, Charles Bernstein, David Shire, Giorgio Moroder, Klaus Doldinger, Alan Silvestri, Elmer Bernstein, Richard Band, John Williams, Craig Safan, John Barry, Basil Poledouris, Brad Fiedel, David Newman, Laurence Rosenthal, Barry Gray, Stu Phillips, James Horner, Bill Conti...

...to name a few.

;-)


American.Nightmare, August 24, 2007; 9:56 PM

I Love anything of the following

JOHN WILLIAMS
ENNIO MORRICONE
JERRY GOLDSMITH
WOJCIECH KILAR
LALO SCHIFRIN
PIERO PICCIONI
PHILIPPE SARDE
BERNARD HERRMANN
FRANZ WAXMAN
CHRIS YOUNG
FRANCESCO DeMASI
JAMES HORNER (Specially in the 80,s and 90,s)
MAURICE JARRE
JEAN CLAUDE PETIT
ARMANDO TROVAIOLI
NINO ROTA
CARLO RUSTICHELLI
JOHN POWELL
ALBERTO IGLESIAS
HENRY MANCINI
PINO DONAGGIO

byronger, August 24, 2007; 9:58 PM

But also i can´t forget to name others like

JOHN CARPENTER
BRUNO NICOLAI
GOBLIN
CAROLYN PETIT
DEBBIE WISEMAN
PATRICK DOYLE
ROY BUDD
JOE HISAISHI
MARIO NASCIMBENE
RYUICHI SAKAMOTO....

Impossible to try!!!

byronger, August 24, 2007; 10:00 PM

Hello,

I can narrow it down to 10 composers:(no particular order)

1. Jerry Goldsmith
2. Elmer Bernstein
3. Maurice Jarre
4. Georges Delerue
5. John Addison
6. Bruce Broughton
7. Miklos Rozsa
8. John Scott
9. Basil Poledouris
10. Patrick Doyle

Best Regards,
David Phoenix, AZ.




deg63iami, August 25, 2007; 7:56 PM

Narrow it to one, that is hard. you all have named someone great, but just one. i can give one answer to the question... every one composer who invokes a feeling good or bad, the one that makes us all come to this great place "soundtrack collector". so everyone who makes the music, is every one composer. it is sort of one...

thanks,
happy

happyevil666, August 24, 2007; 11:57 PM

An easy answer:

1) JOHN WILLIAMS (Superman, Star Wars, Indiana Jones)
2) JERRY GOLDSMITH (Star Trek, Legend, Rambo)
3) JAMES HORNER (Krull, Cocoon, Braveheart)

For me, all 3 are the composers of THE SOUNDTRACK OF MY LIFE!

jordiroselles, August 25, 2007; 4:53 AM

Well, there is the Italians:

Ennio Morricone (as Willem Breuker -Dutch composer- described him in 1990 "the Mozart of our time")
Nino Rota alsways beautiful
Armando Trovajoli I love it jazzy
Piero Piccioni he did great stuff

The French:
Georges Delerue the best from France
Maurice Jarre great
Desplat new but good
Michel Legrand great
Jean Claude Petit also great

Americans:

Jerry Goldsmith, John Wiliams, Elmer Bernstein, James Horner, John Barry etc. etc. see my favorites list on this site to get an idea.

But the best composer? I go for Ennio Morricone.

s.tonkens, August 25, 2007; 5:12 AM

My favourite composers, with no particular order, are:

1. JERRY GOLDSMITH
2. JERRY GOLDSMITH
3. JERRY GOLDSMITH
4. JERRY GOLDSMITH
5. JERRY GOLDSMITH

And then, a lot of other great composers most of you have already mentioned.

Best regards,
Angel

angeldibujo, August 25, 2007; 7:12 AM

John Barry's British!

http://search.ebay.com.au/_W0QQsassZclockleader

mjngraves, August 25, 2007; 7:43 AM

No.1: Peer Raben!
for my other favourites, see my profile.

philkws, August 25, 2007; 10:56 AM

If someone put a gun to my head and insisted I name a favorite composer I'd probaby say... Kenyon Hopkins or Neal Hefti or Lalo Schrifin or Elmer Bernstein or Les Baxter or Billy May or 1960's Jerry Goldsmith or Franz Waxman or Mundell Lowe or Johnny Mandel or...

victoravalentine, August 25, 2007; 12:52 PM

it's interesting that Goldsmith is on virtually every list above. I wonder, what is it
specifically that makes the man's music so popular? So many of the films he scored were
stinkers yet he still manages such a respected position in his artform. Thoughts?

glenngarv, August 25, 2007; 11:55 PM

I'll be the first to answer my own question since Jerry (alongside Bernard Herrmann)
makes it into my top Two. His scores can stand alone from the films as fine music and
outlast the original films moreso than any other composer I can think of. He was never
afraid to experiment with unusual rhythms and always seemed to be having fun doing it.
He was a total professional with every assignment.

glenngarv, August 26, 2007; 12:03 AM

It's almost impossible for me to narrow down my favorite composers, but here is my brief list of essentials:

Ennio Morricone
Bruno Nicolai
Pino Donaggio
Stelvio Cipriani
Carlo Bixio
Vincent Tempera, a highly regarded pianist and session player who hides under the well-known pseudonym of Fabio Frizzi. I encourage everyone who likes him to check out his non-soundtrack albums, Terra en Boca or Il Volo, where he plays a variety of keyboards.
Giorgio Gasalini
Goblin, Claudio Simonetti
Pippo Caruso
Nico Fidenco
Francis Lai
Pierre Bachlet
Michel Legrand
David Michael Frank
Toshiyuki Kimori
Yuzo Koshiro
Kattushi Hattori
Kukeiha Club... and the list goes on and on...

P.S. I'm sure I'll be pelted with stones for this, but I can't share the love for Jerry Goldsmith. He is truly one of the most important flim composers, and I maintain a lot respect for him; however, his music never does anything for me.

Best,
Jeremy

Jmicpilars, August 26, 2007; 2:37 AM

Hey Jeremy,

You and I share a lot of the same favorite composers! I didn't even think of listing my favorite game music composers (I'm a fan of Kukeiha Club and Yuzo Koshiro as well, as well as other VGM legends like Koji Kondo, etc.). Have you ever listened to Goldsmith's synth-heavy scores for LINK, RUNAWAY, or even THE 'BURBS? Those are three of my favorite Goldsmith scores, and they seem like scores you may be able to "get into"... ;-)

-Josh


American.Nightmare, August 26, 2007; 2:44 AM

Hello Jeremy,

I'm afraid there is an error in your list:

"Vincent Tempera, a highly regarded pianist and session player who hides under the well-known pseudonym of Fabio Frizzi."

As far as I know Vince Tempera is not the same person as Fabio Frizzi. In fact, they both were associated to Franco Bixio (not Carlo Bixio, as stated in your list). The trio was called "Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera" and were the composers of, for example, SETTE NOTE IN NERO (a great soundtrack indeed).

They are not one but three italian composers, usually working together:

- FRANCO BIXIO was born in Rome in 1950
- FABIO FRIZZI was born in Rome in 1956
- VINCE TEMPERA was born in Milan in 1946

Ciao,
Angel

angeldibujo, August 26, 2007; 7:58 AM

Hmmmm,

To name ten, and also one which I don't think anyone has mentioned.

1. Jerry Goldsmith
2. James Horner
3. John Williams
4. Howard Shore (I think I am the first to name H Shore)
5. Lalo Schifrin
6. David Arnold
7. Alan Silvestri
8. Bernard Herrmann
9. Michael Kamen
10. Thomas Newman

There are many others, but I have just come back from a camp, and my arms are aching, and I am not in thinking mood, but good question!!!

paulbologiannis, August 26, 2007; 8:02 AM

Hey Josh,

Thank you for the Goldsmith recommendations! As a matter of fact, I have a shrink-wrapped copy of the Burbs that I was saving for a rainy day. Now I'll have to crack it open. Perhaps I'll get to like Goldsmith more once I start listening to this soundtrack. Like you, I have a passion for synth-dominated soundtracks! Thanks again!

Hey Angel,

Whoops! Thank you for correcting my list! I associated the name Fabio Frizzi with Vince Tempera because I read in the book "Beyond the Gates," by Chas Baulin, that the composer Fabio Frizzi did not really exist. In this book there was a direct quote from Lucio Fulci that stated Fabio Frizzi is not Fabio Frizzi at all. His real name is Vince Tempera, and he disguised himself by using the name of a popular Italian talk-show host. Perhaps the publication or Fulci is in error? Either way, thank you for pointing out my mistake.

Best to both of you,
Jeremy

Jmicpilars, August 26, 2007; 1:18 PM

I don't believe anyone mentioned Zbigniew Preisner...

Trois Couleurs
Fatale
La Double Vie De Veronique

to name a few.

Beautiful music!

serifiot, August 26, 2007; 1:21 PM

Hi Jeremy!

Now I don't know what to think... Perhaps you are right and Frizzi doesn't exist. That information is new for me, and I think Lucio Fulci is a good source. I'll keep on searching more about both composers. Thanks for your information about the Chas Baulin book. Anyway it's really curious that a composer uses two names at once to sign his scores... That's not a pseudonym but a ghost friend! :-)

Best regards,
Angel

angeldibujo, August 27, 2007; 7:10 AM

No one has mentioned my favorite composer. Everything he has written is great:

JOHN SCOTT

After him:

Miklos Rozsa
Jerry Goldsmith
John Williams
James Horner

jari.bjorklov, August 27, 2007; 9:48 AM

In the following interview, Lucio Fulci says, "Then I met producer Fulvio Frizzi - the father of Fabio, my composer [...]," which leads me to believe that his birth name is indeed Fabio Frizzi.

http://www.shockingimages.com/fulci/interview2.html

American.Nightmare, August 27, 2007; 4:11 PM

Here's a link to the book I mentioned that has the quote from Fulci: http://www.amazon.com/Lucio-Fulci-Beyond-Chas-Balun/dp/1888214074/ref=sr_1_5/103-8903078-4369427?ie=UTF8&;s=books&qid=1188274733&sr=1-5

I'll rummage through my books tonight and see if I can find the exact page of that quote from Fulci about Frizzi.

By the way, I misspelled the author's name, it's Chas Balun. Thanks for the link, Josh.

Jeremy

Jmicpilars, August 28, 2007; 2:26 AM

Hi Jeremy and Josh!

I've done my homework and I've found a very interesting italian book entitled SPAGHETTI NIGHTMARES (M&P Edizioni, 1997), written by Luca M. Palmerini and Gaetano Mistretta.

In this book, the authors interview a number of composers (Boswell, Donaggio, Emerson, Gaslini, Guarini, Marangolo, Martino, Morante, Morricone, Pignatelli, Rizzati, Simonetti and Fabio Frizzi). There is also a biography of Fabio: Born in Bologna in 1951, son of italian producer Fulvio Frizzi and father of popular italian TV host Fabrizio Frizzi. Besides that, In the interview Fabio talks about his relationship with Franco Bixio and Vince Tempera.

I hope this helps. All my best,
Angel

angeldibujo, August 28, 2007; 8:30 AM

Hey Angel,

That settles it; Thanks a lot, Angel! Did the interview mention anything about Fabio doing anything outside soundtrack composing? It seems like he has disappeared along with the Italian fantasy genre. Thanks!
I guess the book I was referring to is probably not a good source. In truth, it was written by a fan-boy of Fulci, so, the accuracy of the information is dubious, and the direct quotations carry no citations for reference. Thanks for setting the record straight.

Ciao,Jeremy

Jeremy

Jmicpilars, August 28, 2007; 12:45 PM

Hi Jeremy!

According to IMDB, Frizzi's last italian horror film was Fulci's UN GATTO NEL CERVELLO (1990), and after that he has been busy doing music for comedies and TV.

On the other hand, I've read in Palmerini & Mistretta's book that Frizzi performed live a revolutionary computerized version of the Italian operetta "Al Cavallino Bianco" in 1985. He has also been conductor of the "Festival di Castrocaro" Orchestra since 1989. In 1991 he recorded the CD "Io le canto così", which featured Italian traditional songs performed by baritono Renato Bruson. Nowadays he conducts his 120 piece orchestra touring Italy and performing film music.

See you,
Angel

angeldibujo, August 28, 2007; 1:24 PM

Judging by the way the question is phrased it would seem we are allowed to choose only one. If that is the case-

CLIFF MARTINEZ (Solaris, Traffic, Narc, the Underneath, Wicker Park..etc)..hands down..

IF it's not a huge violation to have runners up:

NICK GLENNIE SMITH (A Sound of Thunder)
HARRY GREGSON WILLIAMS (Kingdom of Heaven)
BEAR MC CREARY (Battlestar Galactica- any season and with or without Richard Gibbs)

Happy Collecting!

Kim

emt8134, August 28, 2007; 8:42 PM

Gee...

And I thought no one would think of Zbigniew Preisner... Serifiot named him before me.

I have two favorite composers (my most favorite), but I really cannot pick which one I'd say I like more:

1. Alan Silvestri and John Williams.

If I was under torture, I still could not say which one I like more than the other. IT'S JUST TOO DARN HARD!

In no particular order, I'd say my other 10 favorites (however not in number 1) are:

--2. James Horner (Titanic of course; Braveheart)
--3. James Newton Howard (King Kong; Signs; The Postman; Unbreakable; Liar Liar main theme) (I don't think anyone mentioned him)
--4. Danny Elfman (Black Beauty; Spider-Man)
--5. Harry Gregson-Williams (Contributed to Chicken Run; The Chronicles of Narnia: tL,tW,atW)
--6. Nino Rota (The Taming of the Shrew; Romeo and Juliet)
--7. Randy Newman (A Bug's Life; Pleasantville)
--8. Maurice Jarre (Jesus of Nazareth; Lawrence of Arabia)
--9. Klaus Badelt (The Time Machine; Pirates of the Caribbean: tCotBP)
--10. Nick Glennie-Smith (We Were Soldiers; The Man in the Iron Mask)

And of course, 11. Zbigniew Preisner (The Secret Garden; that's the only one I know him for, but that score makes him one of my favorite composers.)

Those are mine. :)

raalerasoul, October 14, 2007; 11:57 AM

mine are;
john williams
john barry
james hornor
Christopher Young
Danny Elfman
ennio morricone
hanszimmer
jerry gold smith
howard shore
micalosroza

kotisalur, July 24, 2008; 3:25 AM