Music was part of the cinema-going experience from the very beginning. The early films were silent with no audio soundtrack. (Feature films with synchronised sound were not widely available until the 1930s. The first feature film originally presented as a ‘talkie’ was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927, but that film used ‘sound-on-disc’ technology). During the ‘Silent Film’ era, ‘film music’ was generally ‘live’, with a pianist or small orchestra providing musical accompaniment to the screened film. In the USA, phonograph recordings of music and sound effects on a disc were occasionally used. In the very early days of cinema, live or recorded music was used to drown out the sound of the noisy film projector or a talkative audience, but the main purpose of ‘film music’ was to provide atmosphere and to enhance the mood and emotional impact of the film.

For the first dozen years of cinema (1896-1907) musical accompaniment was intermittent and often improvised by a pianist, but from 1908 a continuous musical performance became standard. Around 1909, bound copies of “cue sheets” became available. ‘Cue Sheets’ provided a list of musical selections which could be fitted to an individual film. These inventories of suitable film music were drawn from 19th Century European ‘classical’ music pieces, supplemented by original compositions. In these ‘cue sheet’ collections, there would be music that was deemed appropriate for chase scenes, fight scenes and love scenes, for individual characters (e.g. villains, children, young women) and for particular geographical settings (e.g. a tropical jungle, a Middle-Eastern desert). During the ‘Silent Film’ era, original orchestral film scores were rarely used in the USA but were occasionally employed in Europe. For instance, in 1908, the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) provided original music for the historical film L'Assassinat du duc de Guise (The Assassination of the Duke of Guise).

1913-1930. The Introduction of Orchestral Film Scores

During the latter part of the ‘Silent Film’ era it became common practice to distribute ‘musical cue sheets’ with each print of a film. Very occasionally, a full music score to be played by an accompanying piano or theatre organ was provided. Orchestral film scores were rare in the United States until the release of D. W. Griffiths film The Birth of a Nation in 1915. For this film, the American composer Joseph Carl Breil (1870-1926) created a three-hour-long musical score that combined all three types of music in use at the time: adaptations of existing works by classical composers, new arrangements of well-known melodies, and original composed music. Briel composed original theme music for the film, but he also raided classical works by composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Edvard Grieg, and Richard Wagner for particular scenes e.g. Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries was used as a ‘leitmotif’ for the arrival of the Ku Klux Klan. [The ‘leitmotif’ - a musical form derived from opera – is an identifying musical phrase, often a melody, which through repetition becomes associated with a particular character, place, emotion, or even an abstract idea contained in the film]. Breil also included arrangements of several traditional and popular tunes such as "The Star-Spangled Banner", "Dixie", "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Auld Lang Syne". Joseph Carl Breil went on to compose music for Griffiths next epic film Intolerance (1916). The American composer Louis F. Gottschalk (1864-1934) created a musical score for D. W. Griffiths’ 1919 film Broken Blossoms.

In Europe, leading composers created music scores for feature films and short movies. In France, Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) provided music for Abel Gance’s 1927 film Napoléon. René Clair’s short film Entr'acte featured music by the French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925). In Germany, Gottfried Huppertz (1887-1937), a former opera singer, composed the film score for Fritz Lang’s expressionist science fiction drama Metropolis (1927). Hans Richter’s avant-garde film Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928) had an original accompanying score composed by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963). The original soundtrack was destroyed by the Nazis as “degenerate” but this extract from the film will give you a flavour of the type of music that could have been used. The great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) composed an original music score for The New Babylon (Grigoriy Kozintsev/Leonid Trauberg (1927). Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin (1925) was provided with a music score by the Austrian-born composer Edmund Meisel (1894-1930). Although Dziga Vertov’s experimental film The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) was a silent film, Vertov’s original music has been lost. This is the modern soundtrack by The Cinematic Orchestra

Émigré Composers in the USA during the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’

By 1931, ‘sound-on-film’ systems had replaced synchronized phonograph records in the production and presentation of ‘sound films’. Music could now be directly recorded onto film.

Because of political developments in Europe and the resulting turmoil that followed, a number of European composers moved to the United States and were subsequently drawn towards the Hollywood film industry. Consequently, the style and character of the film scores they created were greatly influenced by 19th Century European ‘Classical Music’, both symphonic and operatic.

Max Steiner (1888-1971) was born in Vienna and had begun his music career conducting operettas and producing music for the theatrical stage. After a period in London where he conducted orchestras in stage musicals and operettas, in 1914, at the start of the First World War, Steiner emigrated to the United States. In America, Steiner became a conductor and orchestrator of Broadway musicals. In 1929, with the advent of sound in the movie industry, Steiner moved to Hollywood where he was employed by RKO pictures to compose music scores for films. After composing music for the main and end titles on a couple of films, Steiner composed his first complete film score for the 1931 Western Cimarron. Steiner’s big breakthrough as a film composer was with his original music score for King Kong (1933). In 1935, Max Steiner won the Academy Award for ‘Best Music Score’ for John Ford’s Ireland-set drama The Informer. Over the next 30 years, Steiner scored the music on over 200 films. He was nominated for 18 Oscars in the ‘Best Music Score’ category, winning three Academy Awards. His best-known music scores are those he composed for The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Gone with the Wind (1939), Now Voyager (1942), Casablanca (1943), The Big Sleep (1946) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Ephraim Katz, the author of The International Film Encyclopedia, notes that Max Steiner “exerted an enormous influence on the development of the musical score as a functional element in films”. Katz describes Steiner’s film scores as “typically melodious and full-bodied and closely linked with the visual images”.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was a Czech-born composer and conductor who had worked in the concert halls of Vienna and Berlin. With the rise of the Nazi regime, Erich Korngold moved to the U.S.A. in 1934 to write music scores for films. Korngold’s first job in Hollywood was to re-orchestrate Felix Mendelssohn's music for the 1935 film of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He went on to compose original film scores for historical adventure films such as Captain Blood (1935), Anthony Adverse (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The Sea Hawk (1940).

Franz Waxman (1906-1967) was a German-born composer of Jewish descent. As Franz Wachsmann, he studied composition and conducting at the Dresden Music Academy and piano at the Berlin Music Conservatory. In 1930, Wachsmann was employed as an orchestrator for the UFA film company. In 1933, Wachsmann made an impressive debut as a film composer with the score for Liliom but in 1934 he was severely beaten by a gang of anti-Semitic hooligans, which led him to leave Germany for Paris. In 1935, Wachsmannn emigrated to the United States and changed his name to ‘Waxman’. He quickly established himself as one of the most gifted composers of American film music. Franz Waxman’s film scores include The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Rebecca (1940), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) Suspicion (1941), Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951).

Dimitri Tiomkin (1894-1979) was a Russian concert pianist and conductor who had studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory of Music. Tiomkin remained in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, but, because of the diminishing opportunities for classical musicians in his own country, he moved to Berlin in 1921 and, after a couple of years, moved to Paris. In 1925, Tiomkin emigrated to the United States and by the early 1930s he was composing music for Hollywood movies. In 1937, Tiomkin’s film score for Lost Horizon was nominated for an Oscar. Over a long career, Tiomkin composed scores for numerous films in a wide range of genres and styles, but from the late 1940s he was best known for the music he composed for Westerns – Duel in the Sun (1947), Red River (1948) and High Noon (1952). Ephraim Katz judges that Dimitri Tiomkin was “perhaps the most versatile and certainly the best known of the American screen’s composers”. Katz notes that Tiomkin’s “melodious scores combined elements from both the European and American cultures, and he admitted to generous borrowings from the classical and folk repertoire of both continents”.

Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995) was born in Budapest, Hungary, but moved to Germany in 1925 to study composition at the Leipzig Conservatory. From 1931 to 1934, Rózsa was based in Paris, where he composed classical pieces. At the suggestion of the Swiss composer, Arthur Honegger, who was supplementing his income by composing film scores, Rózsa decided to pursue a career in the film industry. From 1935 until 1940, Rózsa worked in London, scoring films for the producer Alexander Korda, a fellow Hungarian e.g. The Four Feathers (1939) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Film production was transferred to Hollywood when the war broke out and consequently Rózsa remained in the United States for most of his film career. Notable film scores composed by Miklós Rózsa during the 1940s and early 1950s include: Double Indemnity (1944), The Killers (1946) and Madame Bovary (1949). Rózsa won Academy Awards for Spellbound (1945) and A Double Life (1947).

Unlike the other leading film composers employed by the major studios during the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’, Alfred Newman (1901-1970), was born in the United States. Newman began his musical career as a conductor of symphony orchestras and Broadway musicals, but in 1930 he moved to Hollywood to compose music for films. Newman became one of Hollywood’s most prolific film composers. His film scores include: Wuthering Heights (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green was my Valley (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943) and All About Eve (1950). During his long career, Alfred Newman received 43 Academy Award nominations, winning 9 Oscars for his film scores.

1931-1952. Film Music in Europe. The Contribution of ‘Serious Composers’.

In France, the celebrated composer Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) scored a considerable number of films, including Les Misérables (1934) and Crime and Punishment (1935). In the Soviet Union, the Russian composer, pianist, and conductor Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) was writing film music – Lieutenant Kijé (1934) and Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (1938) - which eventually became concert pieces. In England, the composer Arthur Bliss (1891-1975) wrote the score for the film Things to Come and William Walton (1902-1983) worked with Laurence Olivier on his films Henry V (1945) and Hamlet (1948). Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) contributed music to a number of films including 49th Parallel (1941) and Scott of the Antarctic (1948).

The David Lean film Brief Encounter (1945) did not employ an original film score, it used instead accompanying music taken from Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 2, a piece of music composed 44 years before the film was made. Pieces of ‘Classical Music’ are still used on the soundtracks of modern films. See, for example, Simon Henderson’s ‘Top 12’ under the heading of ‘Classical Music and the Cinema’ on the Musical Memories web page at Spartacus Educational.

Significant American composers have occasionally ventured into the world of film. In 1939, Aaron Copland (1900-1990) was nominated for an Oscar for his original score for the film Of Mice and Men and he went on to provide music for several other films including Our Town (1940), The North Star (1943), The Red Pony (1949) and The Heiress (1949). The American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) provided the music for the screen versions of On the Town (1949) and West Side Story (1961) but during his long music career he only composed one original film score – On the Waterfront (1954). Bernstein’s music for this film made an impression because it combined the dynamics of a symphony orchestra with the rhythms of jazz.

Alex North (1910-1991) was greatly influenced by Aaron Copland and Duke Ellington and in 1951 he composed the music for Elia Kazan’s film A Streetcar Named Desire, considered to be “the first all-jazz score ever written for a motion picture”. In 1955, Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004) composed, arranged, and conducted the film score for The Man with the Golden Arm, in which he employed modern jazz music. It has been described as "one of the finest jazz soundtracks to come out of the '50s". Elmer Bernstein also utilised a ‘modern jazz’ style of music for the scores he composed for Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and A Walk on the Wild Side (1962).

The jazz bassist Charles Mingus (1922-1979) supplied the music for John Cassavetes’ film Shadows (1958). The respected jazz musician Duke Ellington (1899-1974) provided the score for Otto Preminger’s ‘courtroom drama’ film Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and composed the music for Paris Blues (1961). Kenyon Hopkins (1912 -1983) composed many film scores in a jazz idiom including Baby Doll (1956) and The Hustler (1961).

The musician and composer David Amram (born 1930, Philadelphia, USA) has performed with a number of jazz groups and during the early 1960s he wrote two outstanding film scores Splendour in the Grass (1961) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). A number of other American film composers, such Jerry Fielding and Dave Grusin, had a background in jazz music.

The jazz pianist Lalo Schifrin (born 1932, Buenos Aires, Argentina) composed the jazz-inspired music for Bullitt (1968).

1951-1970. The Use of Jazz and Modern Music in European Films

In 1957, the American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-1991) provided the soundtrack for Louis Malle’s thriller Ascenseur pour l'echafaud (Lift to the Scaffold) by improvising in front of the projected film at the recording studio. The French jazz pianist Martial Solal (born 1927, Algiers) composed the music for Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature film À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960).

The British jazz saxophonist Johnny Dankworth (1927-2010) composed the score for Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). Dankworth went on to compose the jazz inflected music for a number of British films including The Criminal (1960), The Servant (1963), Darling (1965) and Accident (1967). The original soundtrack for the British movie Alfie featured the American jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins (born 1930), who also composed the theme music for the film. (Burt Bacharach & Hal David supplied the song Alfie which is sung by Cher during the closing credits).

Krzysztof Komeda (1931-1969) was a Polish jazz pianist who provided scores for a number of Roman Polanski films including Knife in the Water (1962), Cul-de-sac (1966) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968). The music composed by Nino Rota for Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita has a jazz flavour.

Hikaru Hayashi (1931-2012) was a contemporary Japanese composer, pianist and conductor who provided music for films made by Japanese directors, such as Kaneto Shindo and Nagisa Ōshima. Hikaru Hayashi’s score for Kaneto Shindo’s 1964 film Onibaba (The Hole) uses elements of ‘Free Jazz’.

Leandro "Gato" Barbieri (1932-2016) was an Argentine jazz tenor saxophonist who was associated with the ‘Free Jazz” movement in the 1960s. Barbieri composed and performed the music for Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1973 film Last Tango in Paris.

The English film composer John Barry (1933-2011) began his musical career as a trumpeter in a ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ band and in 1957 formed his own ‘pop music’ group, The John Barry Seven. From 1959 until 1962, Barry was employed as an arranger for the EMI record label providing orchestral accompaniments for ‘pop singles’ performed by Adam Faith and other singers. When Adam Faith made his first film, Beat Girl (1960), Barry composed, arranged, and conducted the film score. Barry worked as a composer, arranger, and orchestrator on other British films before being brought in to arrange and perform the "James Bond Theme” (composed by Monty Norman) for the film Dr. No (1962). Between 1963 and 1987, John Barry composed the scores for eleven ‘James Bond’ films.

Drawing on jazz and pop influences, John Barry provided film scores for Zulu (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), The Ipcress File (1965), Born Free (1966), You Only Live Twice (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Walkabout (1971), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Robin and Marian (1976), Moonraker (1979), Body Heat (1981), Somewhere in Time (1981), Octopussy (1983), Out of Africa (1986), Dances with Wolves (1990), Chaplin (1992) and many other films over a 50 year career.

Two Favourite Film Composers: Bernard Herrmann and Elmer Bernstein

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975)

Bernard Herrmann was born in New York City. He studied Music at New York University and attended the Juilliard School of Music. At the age of 20, Herrmann formed his own orchestra and in 1934 he joined CBS as a staff conductor for radio programmes. He later become Chief Conductor to the CBS Symphony Orchestra. While at CBS Herrmann met Orson Welles and between 1938 and 1940, he conducted the music on Welles’s various radio productions, including The War of the Worlds broadcast.

When Orson Welles was given a film contract by RKO Pictures, Bernard Herrmann was employed to provide the original music for Welles’s first two films, Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). For Citizen Kane, Herrmann received an Academy Award nomination for “Best Score of a Dramatic Picture” and in 1941 won an Oscar for his music score for All That Money Can Buy. Although nominated 5 times for an Academy Award during his career, this was the only Oscar that Bernard Herrmann ever won.

Between 1942 and 1954, Bernard Herrmann composed over a dozen film scores, including Jane Eyre (1944), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), On Dangerous Ground (1951) and The Wages of Fear (1953).

Bernard Herrmann is best known for his collaboration with the film director Alfred Hitchcock. He wrote the scores for seven Hitchcock films: The Trouble with Harry (1955); The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956); The Wrong Man (1957); Vertigo (1958); North by Northwest (1959); Psycho (1960); Marnie (1964). There is no actual music in Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) but Herrmann worked as the ‘Sound Consultant’ on the electronically made bird sounds. Herrmann's relationship with Hitchcock came to an end when they disagreed over the score for Torn Curtain. [Apparently, Hitchcock and the studio wanted a more modern, popular style of music for the film, and Herrmann retorted “I don't write pop music.”].

During his time with Hitchcock, Bernard Herrmann composed music for other film directors, writing scores for The Naked and the Dead (1958), Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1959), Cape Fear (1962), Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and several other films. Hermann’s style of film music was out of favour during the late 1960s and early 1970s, but he was hired by Brian De Palma to write the score for Blood Sisters (1972) and Obsession (released in 1976) and wrote the film score for Larry Cohen’s horror movie It’s Alive (1974). The last film score Bernard Herrmann wrote before he died in 1975 was for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976).

Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004)

Elmer Bernstein was born in New York City. At the age of 12, he was awarded a piano scholarship and made his first public performance as a concert pianist at the age of 15.

Encouraged by the composer Aaron Copland, Bernstein received his music training at the Juilliard School of Music. During the Second World War, Bernstein served with the military band of the United States Airforce, arranging music for Major Glenn Miller. Bernstein composed music for Armed Forces Radio and after the war provided music for UN Radio shows.

In 1949, Elmer Bernstein went to Hollywood, but because of his left-wing politics his progress as a film composer was impeded by the Red Scare and McCarthyism. His breakthrough film score was the jazzy ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’ (1955) which was nominated for an Academy Award.

Scoring over 150 films during a 50 year career, Bernstein achieved recognition as one of Hollywood’s most prolific and versatile composers. His eclecticism is seen in the wide variety of his critically acclaimed film scores: The Man with the Golden Arm (1955); The Ten Commandments (1956); Sweet Smell of Success (1957); The Magnificent Seven (1960); A Walk on the Wild Side (1962); To Kill a Mockingbird (1962); Hud (1963); The Great Escape (1963); Hawaii (1966); True Grit (1969); Airplane! (1980), American Werewolf in London (1981); Ghostbusters (1984); The Age of Innocence (1993); Far from Heaven (2002).

Bernstein won an Academy Award for his ‘Original Score’ for the film Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and was nominated for 14 Oscars during his film career. In an obituary for Elmer Bernstein’s, Michael Freeland remarked that Bernstein was “definitely one of the few in his profession whose scores often lived longer than the films from which they came.” An example of the effectiveness of Bernstein’s film music can be seen in the opening title credits for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Mainstream Film Scores and Soundtrack Albums in the 1960s and 1970s

In the 1960s and early 1970s film producers realised that romantic and melodious soundtracks could be marketed as popular albums for the record buying public. It was a period when film composers such as Maurice Jarre, Francis Lai and Michel Legrand met with commercial success. The French-born composer Maurice Jarre (1924-2009) not only won Academy Awards for the scores created for David Lean’s historical epics Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Dr Zhivago but also the soundtrack albums sold well. Another French composer, Francis Lai (1932-2018), gained worldwide fame as a result of his score for Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman (1966). In 1970, Francis Lai won both the Oscar for ‘Best Original Score’ and a Golden Globe Award for the music he composed for the film Love Story, and the soundtrack album went to No. 2 in the Billboard album charts. Michel Legrand (1932-2019), a French composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist, had provided music for French ‘New Wave’ films such as Godard’s Une femme est une femme aka “A Woman Is a Woman” (1961), Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7 (1961) and the two Jacques Demy musicals The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). Legrand won his first Oscar for the song The Windmills of Your Mind from his score of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). In 1971, he composed the music for the British film The Go Between and won the ‘Best Original Score’ Oscar for the American movie Summer of '42 (1971).

Henry Mancini (1924) started out as a pianist and arranger with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and other big bands. Mancini had provided the jazzy score for the Orson Welles’ film noir Touch of Evil (1958) but became more mainstream with the music he composed for Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) and the Pink Panther movies.

Popular Music in the Soundtracks of American films

When Mike Nichols used the songs of Simon & Garfunkel in his 1967 film The Graduate he started a trend in which the entire musical soundtrack of a film was formed of popular songs or ‘hit records’. Easy Rider, the independent film made in 1969, employed a soundtrack that featured numbers by The Band, The Byrds, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Steppenwolf. George Lucas’s 1973 coming-of-age movie American Graffiti, which was set in 1962, dispensed with a traditional film score and used a soundtrack made up of “41 original hits” from the period 1953 to 1973. The film includes music by Buddy Holly, the Beach Boys, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, and Chuck Berry. The music for Martin Scorsese’s early film Mean Streets (1973) comprises of popular records from the period e.g. I Met Him on A Sunday by The Shirelles, Be My Baby by The Ronettes. The music soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever (1977) was largely made up of songs performed by the Bee Gees (e.g. Stayin' Alive, How Deep Is Your Love?).

The music featured in the films of Quentin Tarantino are often singles from the world of pop or rock'n'roll e.g. the 1964 song You Never Can Tell performed by Chuck Berry in Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction. Tarantino did not use a film score for his first feature-length film Reservoir Dogs (1992) but selected pop music songs to act as counterpoint to the on-screen violence and action e.g. the torture scene set to the tune of Stuck in the Middle with You, from the record by Stealers Wheel.

Stanley Kubrick was more eclectic in his use of music; Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra and Johann Strauss’s The Blue Danube, as well as pieces from the avant-garde contemporary composer György Ligeti (1923 -2006) were used in the soundtrack of his film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). When I recall the music soundtrack for Apocalypse Now (1979), I inevitably think of The Doors’ playing The End or Richard Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries rather than the music score composed by the director’s father Carmine Coppola (1910-1991).

I think we can all think of songs that are strongly associated with particular films e.g. Harry Nilsson’s Everybody’s Talkin in Midnight Cowboy (1969). There are a number of films which serve as music compilations e.g. High Fidelity (2000) which features music tracks by the Kinks, Elvis Costello, the Velvet Underground, etc. The Coen Brothers' film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) provides the opportunity to listen to the country music of Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Alison Krauss.

Film Music in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s

John Williams (born 1932, New York) has dominated the world of film scoring since 1975, the year he won the ‘Best Original Score’ Oscar for Jaws. To date, John Williams has been nominated 52 times in the music category at the Academy Awards ceremony, winning 5 Oscars. His award winning scores include Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T.- the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Schindler's List (1993). Formerly a jazz pianist, John Williams began composing TV themes in the late 1950s. Before his success with Jaws, Williams composed the scores for disaster movies such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974) and The Towering Inferno (1974). His other films scores include Superman (1978), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Jurassic Park (1993).

Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004), who, like John Williams, perfected his craft by composing themes for television shows, although he composed his first film score in 1957. During the 1960s, Goldsmith produced scores for a large number of films, including Seven Days in May (1964), The Sand Pebbles (1966) and Planet of the Apes (1968), but he became particularly busy in the 1970s, especially after winning a ‘Best Original Score’ Oscar for The Omen in 1976. His film credits include Patton (1970) Papillon (1973), Chinatown (1974), The Wind and the Lion (1975), Alien (1979) and L.A. Confidential (1997), as well as the scores for five Star Trek movies and three Rambo films.

The Italian composer, orchestrator, and conductor Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) made his name with Sergio Leone’s ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ in the late 1960s - A Fistful of Dollars (1965), The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Morricone went on to compose acclaimed film scores during the 1970s and 1980s. He received Academy Award nominations for his scores to Days of Heaven (1978), The Mission (1986) and The Untouchables (1987), amongst others, but did not win an Oscar for ‘Best Original Score’ until Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight in 2016. Other notable film scores composed by Morricone include Once Upon a Time in America (1984) and Cinema Paradiso (1989).

Another Italian film composer, Nino Rota (1911-1979), is best known for his scores for the films of Federico Fellini but he also composed the music for Francis Ford Coppola's first two ‘Godfather’ films, receiving the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II (1974).

Modern Composers and Film Scores

The ‘minimalist’ composer Michael Nyman (born 1944, London) has mainly provided music for European art films, including several directed by the British film-maker Peter Greenaway e.g. The Draughtsman's Contract (1982), A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), Drowning by Numbers (1988) The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) Prospero's Books (1991). Jane Campion's 1993 film The Piano had a music score written by Nyman. In 2002, Nyman produced a soundtrack for the 1929 silent film Man with a Movie Camera.

The American composer and pianist Philip Glass (born 1937, Baltimore) has composed music for films, including the orchestral score for Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and the soundtracks for documentaries such as The Thin Blue Line (1988) and The Fog of War (2003). Philip Glass's music was featured in two award-winning films by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, Elena (2011) and Leviathan (2014).

The Japanese musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (born 1952, Tokyo) composed the score for Nagisa Ōshima’s 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Sakamoto’s other film scores include The Last Emperor (1987) and The Revenant (2015).

Jonny Greenwood (born 1971, Oxford), the lead guitarist and keyboardist of the alternative rock band Radiohead, has written a number of film scores including There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012) and You Were Never Really Here (2017).

The classically trained musician Mica Levi was active in experimental pop music before creating the score for the Jonathan Glazer film Under the Skin in 2013. Her music for Pablo Larraín's film Jackie (2016) received an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Original Score’. In 2019, Mica Levi created the film score for the South American film Monos.

The Icelandic musician and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir (born 1982, Reykjavík) provided the music for the action thriller film Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018). At the 92nd Academy Awards, Hildur won the ‘Best Original Score’ Oscar for Joker (2019).

Popular Film Music in the 21st Century

Hans Zimmer (born 1957, Frankfurt, Germany) began his music career in the 1970s playing keyboards and synthesizers in ‘pop’ bands. Zimmer made his mark as a film composer in 1988 with Rain Man. His award winning films include The Lion King (1994), Gladiator (2000), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014) and Dunkirk (2017).
Other film composers active in the 21st Century include: Thomas Newman (born 1955, Los Angeles) an American composer who in recent years has scored the ‘James Bond’ films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), and the Sam Mendes war film 1917 (2019).

The French film composer Alexandre Desplat (born 1961, Paris) has won two Academy Awards for his musical scores, one for The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), the other for The Shape of Water (2017). In 2019, Desplat’s music for Greta Gerwig’s Little Women was nominated for the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Score’.

My Personal Favourites

For this list of ‘Favourite Film Music’, I have made a distinction between music soundtracks (where film-makers employ pre-existing music drawn from pop, rock, folk, or classical recordings) and film scores (where music has been specially composed for the film). One of my favourite albums is the soundtrack from Pedro Almodóvar's Hable con ella aka Talk to Her (2002) but although the composer Alberto Iglesias provided an original score for the film, for me the stand out tracks are by popular Brazilian singers - Por Toda a Minha Vida sung by Elis Regina and Cucurrucucu Paloma performed by Caetano Veloso.

For my 'Films and Music' list, I have chosen 'Film Scores' which were specially composed for the film in question rather than soundtracks which feature a variety of music drawn from different sources. Top of the list is the film score composed by Leonard Bernstein for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront, one of the few pieces of film music that can stand alone and be appreciated without the benefit of the images on the screen. My two favourite 'film score' composers are Bernard Herrmann and Elmer Bernstein and I could have compiled a ‘Top 12’ from these two film composers' extensive back catalogue alone. I also like the film music of Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Amram and Jonny Greenwood. I have included two scores by Bernard Herrmann, the other composers are represented by a single film title each. I have provided YouTube links to the selected music.

My List of ‘Favourite Film Scores’ (Listed Chronologically)

On the Waterfront: Main Theme & Love Theme (1954) – Leonard Bernstein

Lift to the Scaffold (1958) – Miles Davis

Psycho (1960) – Bernard Herrmann

A Walk on the Wild Side (1962) – Elmer Bernstein

This video features film's title credits designed by the great Saul Bass

Onibaba (1964) - Hikaru Hayashi

This is a link to the whole movie - just listen to the first two minutes of the soundtrack.

The Godfather (1972) – Nino Rota

Last Tango in Paris (1973) – Leandro "Gato" Barbieri

Taxi Driver (1976) - Bernard Herrmann

There Will Be Blood (2007) - Jonny Greenwood

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) - Hans Zimmer & Benjamin Wallfisch

Monos (2019) - Mica Levi

Ema Dance Scene & Main Theme (2019) - Nicolas Jaar

Documentaries and Interviews

Bernard Herrmann Documentary

Elmer Bernstein Interview