Famous film music composers
1.
John Williams: As one of the
best known, awarded, and financially successful composers in US history, John
Williams is as easy to recall as John Philip
Sousa, Aaron Copland or Leonard
Bernstein, illustrating why he is "America's composer"
time and again. Born in Long Island, New York on February 8, 1932, John
Towner Williams discovered music almost immediately, due in no small measure to
being the son of a percussionist for CBS Radio and the Raymond Scott Quintet.
After moving to Los Angeles in 1948, the young pianist and leader of his own
jazz band started experimenting with arranging tunes; at age 15, he determined
he was going to become a concert pianist; at 19, he premiered his first
original composition, a piano sonata.
2.
Maurice Jarre: Unlike many
musicians who started to learn music while still in their childhood, Maurice
Jarre was already late in his teens when he discovered music and decided to
make a career in that field. He enrolled at Conservatoire de Paris where he
studied percussions, composition and harmonies. He also met and studied under
Joseph Martenot, inventor of the Martenot Waves, an electronic keyboard that
prefigured the modern synthesizer. After leaving the Conservatoire, Jarre
played percussion and Martenot Waves for a while at Jean-Louis Barrault's
theater. In 1950, another actor-director, Jean Vilar, asked Jarre to score his
production of Kleist's 'The Princess of Homburg', the first score Jarre wrote.
3.
John Barry: John Barry was
born in York, England in 1933, and was the youngest of three children. His
father, Jack, owned several local cinemas and by the age of fourteen, Barry was
capable of running the projection box on his own - in particular, The Rialto in
York. As he was brought up in a cinematic environment, he soon began to
assimilate the music which accompanied the films he saw nightly to a point
when, even before he'd left St. Peters school, he had decided to become a film
music composer.
4.
James Horner: James Horner began
studying piano at the age of five, and trained at the Royal College of Music in
London, England, before moving to California in the 1970s. After receiving a
bachelor's degree in music at USC, he would go on to earn his master's degree
at UCLA and teach music theory there. He later completed his Ph.D. in Music
Composition and Theory at UCLA. Horner began scoring student films for the
American Film Institute in the late 1970s, which paved the way for scoring
assignments on a number of small-scale films. His first large, high- profile
project was composing music for Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan (1982), which would lead to numerous other
film offers and opportunities to work with world-class performers such as the
London Symphony Orchestra.
5.
Elmer Bernstein: Elmer
Bernstein was educated at the Walden School and New York University. He served
in the US Army Air Corps in World War II. A prolific and respected film music
composer, he was a protégé of Aaron Copland,
who studied music with Roger Sessions and Stefan Wolpe.
Bernstein worked in various artistic endeavors, including painting and the
theatre and also performed as an actor and dancer. Among his early composition
work were scores for United Nations radio programs and television and
industrial documentaries.
6.
Danny Elfman: As Danny
Elfman was growing up in the Los Angeles area, he was largely unaware of his
talent for composing. It wasn't until the early 1970s that Danny and his older
brother Richard
Elfman started a musical troupe while in Paris; the group
"Mystic Knights of Oingo-Boingo" was created for Richard's
directorial debut, Forbidden
Zone (1980) (now considered a cult classic by Elfman fans). The
group's name went through many incarnations over the years, beginning with
"The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo" and eventually just Oingo Boingo.
While continuing to compose eclectic, intelligent rock music for his L.A.-based
band (some of which had been used in various film soundtracks, Danny formed a
friendship with young director Tim Burton,
who was then a fan of Oingo Boingo.
7.
Hans Zimmer: German-born
composer Hans Zimmer is recognized as one of Hollywood's most innovative
musical talents. He featured in the music video for The Buggles' single
"Video Killed the Radio Star", which became a worldwide hit and
helped usher in a new era of global entertainment as the first music video to be
aired on MTV (August 1, 1981). Zimmer entered the world of film music in London
during a long collaboration with famed composer and mentor Stanley Myers,
which included the film My Beautiful
Laundrette(1985). He soon began work on several successful solo
projects, including the critically acclaimed A World Apart, and during these
years Zimmer pioneered the use of combining old and new musical technologies.
Today, this work has earned him the reputation of being the father of
integrating the electronic musical world with traditional orchestral
arrangements.
8.
James Newton Howard: James
Newton Howard attended the University of Southern California's music school,
but dropped out to tour with Elton John,
and eventually compose music for film and television. He started with Head Office (1985)
in 1985. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards. He currently is a
songwriter, record producer, conductor, keyboardist, and film composer.
9.
Nino Rota: Born in Milan in 1911 into a family of
musicians, Nino Rota was first a student of Orefice and Pizzetti. Then, still a
child, he moved to Rome where he completed his studies at the Conservatory of
Santa Cecilia in 1929 with Alfredo Casella. In the meantime, he had become an
'enfant prodige', famous both as a composer and as an orchestra conductor. His
first oratorio, "L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista," was performed
in Milan and Paris as early as 1923 and his lyrical comedy, "Il Principe
Porcaro," was composed in 1926. From 1930 to 1932, Nino Rota lived in the
USA. He won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia where he
attended classes in composition taught by Rosario Scalero and classes in
orchestra taught by Fritz Reiner.
10.
Howard Shore: Shore showed
plenty of promise early in his career with moody, sinister scores on thrillers
like “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Seven.” And in the early 2000s, he wrote
his masterwork: The epic, magnificent score for “The Lord of the Rings.” The
breadth and depth of Shore’s work on those three films holds up completely
alongside the films themselves. From the melancholy strings that accompany each
film’s title sequence to the bombastic brass of the battle scenes to the
haunting choral vocals following Gandalf’s apparent demise, Shore’s music
always perfectly suits and enhances the mood at hand. It’s no wonder he was
hired back for “The Hobbit”; Middle-Earth without Shore’s music just isn’t the
same, and that’s the true sign of a great score.
References:
A good variety of composers & succinct insight into each. Well done.
ReplyDelete