The Best Composers Ever!

1. Max Steiner

Composer | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Austrian composer Max Steiner achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. He was born Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner in Vienna, Austria, the son of Marie Mizzi (Hasiba) and Gabor Steiner, an impresario, and the grandson of actor and theater director and ...

2. Ennio Morricone

Composer | The Hateful Eight

A classmate of director Sergio Leone with whom he would form one of the great director/composer partnerships (right up there with Eisenstein & Prokofiev, Hitchcock & Herrmann, Fellini & Rota), Ennio Morricone studied at Rome's Santa Cecilia Conservatory, where he specialized in trumpet. His first ...

3. Franz Waxman

Composer | Sunset Blvd.

Franz Waxman (Wachsmann) pursued his dream of a career in music despite his family's misgivings. He worked for several years as a bank teller and paid for piano, harmony and composition lessons with his salary. He later moved to Berlin, where he continued his study and progress as a musician. He ...

4. Alfred Newman

Composer | All About Eve

Alfred Newman was born on March 17, 1901 in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He is known for his work on All About Eve (1950), Airport (1970) and How the West Was Won (1962). He was married to Martha Montgomery and Mary Lou Dix. He died on February 17, 1970 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.

5. Nino Rota

Composer | The Godfather

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...

6. Dimitri Tiomkin

Music_department | High Noon

Dimitri Tiomkin was a Russian Jewish composer who emigrated to America and became one of the most distinguished and best-loved music writers of Hollywood. He won a hallowed place in the pantheon of the most successful and productive composers in American film history, earning himself four Oscars ...

7. Hans Zimmer

Composer | Gladiator

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 ...

8. Philippe Sarde

Composer | Barocco

Philippe Sarde was born on June 21, 1948 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France as Philippe Albert Sarde. He is a composer, known for Barocco (1976), The Tenant (1976) and Lord of the Flies (1990). He has been married to Clotilde Burrer since 1994. They have two children. He was previously ...

9. Georges Delerue

Composer | Platoon

Georges Delerue was born on March 12, 1925 in Roubaix, Nord, France as Georges Henri Jean-Baptiste Delerue. He was a composer, known for Platoon (1986), Twins (1988) and The Day of the Dolphin (1973). He was married to Micheline Gautron. He died on March 20, 1992 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

10. John Williams

Composer | Star Wars

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. With a massive list of awards that includes over 52 Oscar ...

11. Maurice Jarre

Composer | Lawrence of Arabia

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. Against his father's will, he enrolled at Conservatoire de Paris where he studied percussions, ...

12. Miklós Rózsa

Composer | Ben-Hur

A child prodigy, Miklos Rózsa learned to play the violin at the age of five and read music before he was able to read words. In 1926, he began studying at the Leipzig Conservatory where he was considered a brilliant student. He obtained his doctorate in music in 1930. Moving to Paris the following ...

13. Alexandre Desplat

Composer | The King's Speech

Composer and conductor Alexandre Desplat, Oscar winner and seven-time Academy Award nominated, for his prolific filmography and his collaborations with Stephen Frears, Terrence Malick, Ang Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, Jacques Audiard, Wes Anderson, Roman Polanski, George Clooney or Matteo Garrone is one ...

14. Bernard Herrmann

Composer | Taxi Driver

The man behind the low woodwinds that open Citizen Kane (1941), the shrieking violins of Psycho (1960), and the plaintive saxophone of Taxi Driver (1976) was one of the most original and distinctive composers ever to work in film. He started early, winning a composition prize at the age of 13 and ...

15. Thomas Newman

Music_department | Skyfall

Thomas Newman is an American film score composer. He was born in Los Angeles. His father was notable film score composer Alfred Newman (1900-1970). The Newman family is of Russian-Jewish descent, and includes several other well-known musicians. Thomas' mother Martha Louis Montgomery (1920-2005) ...

16. Elmer Bernstein

Composer | Far from Heaven

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 ...

17. Jerry Goldsmith

Music_department | Star Trek: First Contact

Born on February 10, 1929, Jerry Goldsmith studied piano with Jakob Gimpel and composition, theory, and counterpoint with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He also attended classes in film composition given by Miklós Rózsa at the Univeristy of Southern California. In 1950, he was employed as a clerk ...

18. Carter Burwell

Music_department | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Carter Burwell was born on November 18, 1954 in New York City, New York, USA as Carter Benedict Burwell. He is known for his work on Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), Carol (2015) and Fargo (1996). He has been married to Christine Sciulli since 1999.

19. Eduard Artemyev

Composer | 12

Eduard Artemyev is a Soviet and Russian composer. He is widely known as the author of music for films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrey Konchalovskiy and Nikita Mikhalkov.

Artemyev was born in Novosibirsk. He received his primary musical education at the Moscow Choir School. Later in 1960 he graduated ...

20. Armando Trovajoli

Soundtrack | Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Armando Trovajoli was born on September 2, 1917 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He is known for his work on Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), A Special Day (1977) and The Family (1987). He was married to Maria Paola Sapienza and Pier Angeli. He died on February 28, 2013 in Rome.

21. Alberto Iglesias

Composer | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Alberto Iglesias was born in 1955 in Donostia-San Sebastián, Guipúzcoa, País Vasco, Spain as Alberto Iglesias Fernández-Berridi. He is known for his work on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), The Skin I Live In (2011) and The Constant Gardener (2005).

22. Herbert Stothart

Music_department | The Wizard of Oz

Of Scottish and German ancestry, Herbert Stothart was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1885. At first, he was slated for a career as a teacher of history. However, he became enamored with music while singing in a school choir, and again, later, while attending the University of Wisconsin. There, he...

23. John Barry

Music_department | Dances with Wolves

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 ...

24. Roy Webb

Composer | Notorious

Trained in classical music at Columbia University, Webb worked on Broadway by the time he was in his mid-20's, not only composing incidental music, but co-writing original plays with his older brother, the director Kenneth S. Webb. By 1923, he worked as conductor/arranger on hit shows like "Music ...

25. Friedrich Hollaender

Music_department | Sabrina

Friedrich Hollaender was the son of the composer Victor Hollaender, who composed shows in Berlin in the 1890s to 1910s. Frederick received early musical training, since 1913 he was student of opera composer Engelbert Humperdinck (who composed Hänsel und Gretel). He started as repetitor at a theater...

26. Henry Mancini

Soundtrack | Breakfast at Tiffany's

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, but brought up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute in a local band, as a youth, before sending some arrangements to Benny Goodman. Goodman offered him a job and, after serving in WWII, he joined the rearranged Glenn Miller band. In 1952, he was given a two-week ...

27. Wojciech Kilar

Composer | The Ninth Gate

Wojciech Kilar was born on July 17, 1932 in Lwów, Lwowskie, Poland. He was a composer, known for The Ninth Gate (1999), The Pianist (2002) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). He was married to Barbara Pomianowska. He died on December 29, 2013 in Katowice, Slaskie, Poland.

28. Frank Skinner

Composer | Harvey

The author of the textbook "F.Skinner's Simplified Method for Modern Arranging" (published 1934) began his musical career as a pianist in vaudeville alongside his brother Carl. He then became a noted arranger for New York dance orchestras in the 1930's and was briefly active in the field of music ...

29. Erik Nordgren

Composer | Det sjunde inseglet

Composer, violinist, conductor and music teacher, a graduate of the Stockholm Royal Academy of Music. Nordgren served as music director at Svensk Filmindustri from 1952 to 1967, where he worked on most of Ingmar Bergman's early films (seventeen scores in total).

30. Georges Auric

Composer | Le salaire de la peur

At the least George Auric was a fine musician, having been a child prodigy, but he was much more in the musical world. He studied under Vincent D'Indy (a devotee of Cesar Franck and the German school of symphonic composition) and attended the Paris Conservatory (1920). By the time he was 20 he had ...

31. James Newton Howard

Composer | King Kong

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, ...

32. Carlo Rustichelli

Composer | L'uomo di paglia

Carlo Rustichelli was born on December 24, 1916 in Carpi, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He was a composer, known for The Seducer-Man of Straw (1958), For Love and Gold (1966) and The Facts of Murder (1959). He was married to Evi. He died on November 13, 2004 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

33. Victor Young

Composer | The Quiet Man

Violinist and conductor Victor Young was a prolific composer and arranger, who worked on more than 300 film scores over a period of twenty years. He came from an impoverished, but musical background and was trained on the violin at the Warsaw Imperial Conservatory, later studying piano in Paris ...

34. Gustavo Santaolalla

Music_department | Brokeback Mountain

Argentine musician and leader of the now defunct bands "Arco Iris" and "Soluna", Gustavo Santaolalla was one of the references of his country's national music by the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s. During the 70s he relocated to the United States, where he formed the band Wet Picnic, ...

35. Cyril J. Mockridge

Music_department | Guys and Dolls

British-born arranger, pianist and composer, who emigrated to the United States in 1922, after serving with the London Rifle Brigade in World War I, followed by subsequent incarceration as a POW in Germany. Staff composer at 20th Century Fox from 1935 to 1961.

36. Howard Shore

Music_department | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Howard Shore is a Canadian composer, born in Toronto. He was born in a Jewish family. He started studying music when 8-years-old, and played as a member of bands by the time he was 13-years-old. He was interested in a professional career in music as a teenager. He studied music at the Berklee ...

37. Adolph Deutsch

Composer | The Apartment

Academy Award-winning composer, songwriter, conductor and arranger, educated at London Poly. and the Royal Academy of Music. He came to the USA in 1910 and became a US citizen in 1920, eventually leading his own orchestra; later he composed and arranged for and conducted other dance bands. He was ...

38. Takanobu Saitô

Composer | Tôkyô monogatari

39. Heinz Roemheld

Composer | The Lady from Shanghai

Held a position as Chief of Film, Theater and Music Sections of the Information Control Division, with American forces in Europe, in 1945.

40. Alessandro Cicognini

Composer | Ladri di biciclette

Italian film and classical composer, trained at the Milan Conservatory of Music. From 1946, frequently associated with the films of Vittorio de Sica. Cicognini retired from film composition in 1965 to pursue a career in teaching.

41. Hugo Friedhofer

Composer | The Best Years of Our Lives

Hugo Friedhofer -- how many times have you seen that name in the credits of 1930s and '40s movies for "orchestration" or "musical arranger" and thought -- Gee, what a busy guy! He was, and, ironically, much of that work went uncredited. He is not usually mentioned with the great film composers of ...

42. Fumio Hayasaka

Composer | Nora inu

During his roughly 15-year-long career, Fumio Hayasaka composed scores for some of the biggest names in Japanese cinema and was regarded by many as the finest Japanese film composer alive. Many of his scores were written for no less a cinematic luminary than Akira Kurosawa, including the legendary ...

43. Quincy Jones

Producer | The Color Purple

Considered to be one of the greatest minds in music and television history, Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. was born on March 14, 1933 in Chicago, Illinois. He is the son of Sarah Frances (Wells), a bank executive, and Quincy Delight Jones, Sr., a carpenter.

Jones found his love for music while he was ...

44. André Previn

Music_department | My Fair Lady

German-American pianist, composer, arranger and conductor André George Previn (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin, in Berlin) was for eight decades a hugely influential and prolific figure in jazz, as well as classical and film music. Being Jewish, Previn's family was forced to leave Hitler's Germany in ...

45. Bronislau Kaper

Composer | Mutiny on the Bounty

Born: February 5, 1902 in Warsaw, Poland Died: April 25, 1983 in Los Angeles, California, USA Kaper displayed musical talent as early as the age of seven when his family acquired a piano. His inclination to music led him to study both piano and composition, while also taking courses in law to ...

46. John Leipold

Music_department | Stagecoach

47. William Alwyn

Composer | Escape to Danger

Virtuoso flautist and composer who taught at London's Royal Academy of Music as a professor from 1926 to 1955. During the war years, he was employed by the Ministry of Information, where he came to the fore as a composer of scores for documentary films which were used for morale building, the ...

48. Michel Legrand

Composer | The Thomas Crown Affair

Michel Legrand is a three-time Academy Award-winning French composer, conductor and pianist who composed over 200 film and television scores as well as recorded over a hundred albums of jazz, popular and classical music.

He was born on February 24, 1932, in Becon-les-Bruyeres, in the Paris suburbs, ...

49. Alex North

Music_department | Spartacus

Alex North studied music at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, then won a scholarship to Juilliard in New York (1929) and the Moscow Conservatoire (1933), making him the first-ever American to become a member of the Union of Soviet Composers. In Europe, he worked as music director for the ...

50. Piero Piccioni

Composer | Le mépris

Piero Piccioni was born in Turin (Italy) on the 6th December 1921. Son of a pure Turinese mother (her maiden name was Marengo), and from here the pseudonym Piero Morgan, which he adopted until 1957. He had played on the radio with his historic Big Band "013" in 1938, to then return, after the ...

51. Mark Isham

Composer | Crash

From his days as one of the pioneering icons of electronic music to his current status as a world-renowned legendary film composer, Mark Isham continues to be one of the most prolific and provocative artists on the scene. His gift for creating unforgettable melodies and his love of fresh, ...

52. Frank De Vol

Composer | Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Frank DeVol was born to Herman Frank DeVol and Minnie Emma (Humphreys) DeVol in Moundsville, West Virginia, on September 20, 1911 and grew up in Canton, Ohio. His father had a "pit" orchestra at the local movie house, and his mother had a sewing shop in Canton. His father was also an accountant. ...

53. Peer Raben

Soundtrack | 2046

Peer Raben was born on July 3, 1940 in Viechtafell, Viechtach, Bavaria, Germany as Wilhelm Rabenbauer. He was a composer and actor, known for 2046 (2004), Querelle (1982) and Finding Forrester (2000). He died on January 21, 2007 in Mitterfels, Bavaria.

54. Renzo Rossellini

Composer | I fratelli Karamazoff

Renzo Rossellini was born on February 2, 1908 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He is known for his work on The Brothers Karamazov (1947), Paisan (1946) and Caligula (1979). He died on May 13, 1982 in Monte Carlo, Monaco.

55. Werner R. Heymann

Composer | To Be or Not to Be

Werner Richard Heymann was active as a classical composer in Berlin from 1912. By the end of the decade, he also wrote songs for cabaret and served as musical director for Max Reinhardt from 1918 to 1919. In films with Ufa from 1923, he initially worked as assistant to the head of the music ...

56. James Horner

Music_department | Avatar

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 ...

57. Ernest Gold

Music_department | It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Ernest Gold was born on July 13, 1921 in Vienna, Austria as Ernst Siegmund Goldner. He is known for his work on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), On the Beach (1959) and Exodus (1960). He was married to Jeanette (Jan) Keller, Marni Nixon and Ruth Andree Golbin. He died on March 17, 1999 in ...

58. Mychael Danna

Composer | Life of Pi

Mychael Danna is an Oscar and and Emmy Award-winning film composer recognized for his evocative blending of non-western traditions with orchestral and electronic music. His highly awarded works include the Oscar-winning score for Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012), and his many Genie Award-winning scores ...

59. David Raksin

Soundtrack | Captain America: The First Avenger

David Raksin's father Isidore, who both conducted and owned a music store, taught his son to play piano as well as woodwind instruments at an early age. He eventually studied music with Arnold Schönberg, but became by-and-large a self-taught multi-instrumentalist (organ and percussion), as well as ...

60. Danny Elfman

Music_department | The Nightmare Before Christmas

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 ...

61. Charles Chaplin

Writer | The Great Dictator

Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the ...

62. Jerry Fielding

Composer | The Wild Bunch

A three-time Oscar nominee, Jerry Fielding was among the boldest and most experimental of all Hollywood film composers. His music typically utilized advanced compositional procedures, producing dense, often richly dissonant orchestral textures, sometimes flavored with jazz. Fielding's film music ...

63. Zbigniew Preisner

Composer | Trois couleurs: Bleu

Born in Poland in 1955, Zbigniew Preisner studied philosophy and history in the university of Cracow. In his twenties he started to study music in a autodidactical way: buying records and learning to write by taking the music in parts. He started to write his own compositions. His style has always ...

64. W. Franke Harling

Music_department | Stagecoach

Songwriter ("Beyond the Blue Horizon", "Sing You Sinners"), composer and conductor, educated at the Grace Church Choir School in New York and the London Academy of Music. He was also a music student of Theodore Ysaye. His career included being chief organist at the Church of the Resurrecion in ...

65. Philip Glass

Composer | The Illusionist

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Glass worked in his father's radio store and discovered music listening to the offbeat Western classical records customers didn't seem to want. He studied the violin and flute, and obtained early admission to the University of Chicago. After graduating in mathematics ...

66. Mikis Theodorakis

Composer | Serpico

Mikis Theodorakis was born in the Greek island of Chios, in 1925. The exact same year that the other great composer of Greece was born in Xanthi, Manos Hatzidakis. He fought during the 2nd World War, and he was captured at the city of Tripoli. He was tortured, but when he was set free, he joined ...

67. Alfred Schnittke

Soundtrack | The Lobster

Born in Engels, an autonomous region for ethnic Germans on the Volga river, Alfred Schnittke trained as a pianist in Vienna, Austria, where his father served as a correspondent for a Soviet newspaper. In 1953, he moved on to the Moscow Conservatory and served on its faculty from 1962 to 1972. ...

68. Nicola Piovani

Composer | La vita è bella

Nicola Piovani was born on May 26, 1946 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He is a composer, known for Life Is Beautiful (1997), The Tiger and the Snow (2005) and The Son's Room (2001).

69. Andrzej Korzynski

Composer | Possession

Andrzej Korzynski was born on March 2, 1940 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland. He is known for his work on Possession (1981), Bird Talk (2019) and Big Shar (1983).

70. Giovanni Fusco

Composer | L'avventura

Giovanni Fusco was born on October 10, 1906 in Sant'Agata de' Goti, Campania, Italy. He was a composer, known for L'Avventura (1960), Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and Story of a Love Affair (1950). He died on May 31, 1968 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

71. Dario Marianelli

Composer | Atonement

Dario Marianelli was born in Pisa and studied piano and composition in Florence and London. After a year as a postgraduate composer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he spent 3 years at the National Film and Television School, from which he graduated in 1997. Dario's film scores include '...

72. David Buttolph

Composer | Crash Dive

Prolific screen composer, arranger, and conductor, educated at Juillard and the Academie fur Musik in Vienna. He played in night clubs in Vienna and Munich from 1923 to 1926, then was an opera coach in Munich, 1926-1927. In 1927 he conducted for NBC, and then became music director for WGY in ...

73. Leigh Harline

Composer | Pinocchio

Academy Award-winning composer (score, Pinocchio (1940), conductor, songwriter ("When You Wish Upon a Star" [Academy award, Best Song, 1940) and arranger Leigh Harine was educated at the University of Utah. He was a music student of J. Spencer Cornwall. He arranged the first transcontinental ...

74. Maurice Jaubert

Soundtrack | Frances Ha

Maurice Jaubert was born on January 3, 1900 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. He is known for his work on Frances Ha (2012), L'Atalante (1934) and Le Jour Se Leve (1939). He was married to Marthe Poidlouë. He died on June 19, 1940 in Azerailles, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France.

75. Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov

Composer | Andrey Rublev

76. George Fenton

Composer | Groundhog Day

George Fenton was born on October 19, 1949 in Bromley, Kent, England as George Richard Ian Howe. He is known for his work on Groundhog Day (1993), The Bounty Hunter (2010) and Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998).

77. Daniele Amfitheatrof

Soundtrack | Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

A well-respected conductor and composer, who arrived in the US in 1937 and became a citizen in 1944. His education included studies with Wladimir Tscherbachev, Otto Respighi, and Jaroslav Krichka in the Conservatory and Pontifical Academy of Sacred Music of Vatican in Rome. He was assistant ...

78. Krzysztof Komeda

Composer | Rosemary's Baby

Krzysztof Komeda was born on April 27, 1931 in Poznan, Wielkopolskie, Poland as Krzysztof Komeda-Trzcinski. He was a composer, known for Rosemary's Baby (1968), The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and Mammals (1962). He was married to Zofia von Tittenbrun. He died on April 23, 1969 in Warsaw, ...

79. Pierre Jansen

Composer | Violette Nozière

Pierre Jansen was born on February 28, 1930 in Roubaix, Nord, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France. He was a composer, known for Violette (1978), Alice or The Last Escapade (1977) and Les Biches (1968). He was married to Colette Zerah. He died on August 13, 2015 in Saint-Pierre-Saint-Jean, Rhone-Alpes, ...

80. Dave Grusin

Composer | The Firm

Dave Grusin was born on June 26, 1934 in Littleton, Colorado, USA as David Grusin. He is known for his work on The Firm (1993), The Graduate (1967) and Tootsie (1982). He was previously married to Edith Ruth Price, Sara Jane Tallman and Barbara Jo Davidson.

81. Johnny Mandel

Music_department | MASH

Inducted into the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame in 2009 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame a year later, Johnny Mandel is perhaps best known as the composer of the iconic M*A*S*H (1972) theme song, "Suicide is Painless". Born and raised in Manhattan, he was the son of a garment manufacturer and an opera ...

82. Hans J. Salter

Composer | It Started with Eve

Wrote most of his scores for films and television shows made by Universal; he was with them for nearly thirty years.

83. Patrick Doyle

Composer | Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Patrick Doyle is a classically trained composer.

His first film score, the acclaimed adaptation of "Henry V" with Kenneth Branagh for Renaissance films was scored in 1989. He has subsequently worked with Kenneth Branagh, a long time collaborator on numerous pictures including "Dead Again", "Much Ado...

84. Goran Bregovic

Composer | Underground

In the end of '70s and all through the '80s, he was the leader of the most popular Yugoslav band "Bijelo dugme" (from Sarajevo). They published more than 10 LPs, selling altogether more than 15 million copies. He was the first one to introduce "shepperd's rock" (a kind of folk-rock) into popular ...

85. Max Richter

Soundtrack | Shutter Island

Max Richter was born on March 22, 1966 in Hamelin, Lower Saxony, West Germany. He is known for his work on Shutter Island (2010), The Leftovers (2014) and Waltz with Bashir (2008).

86. William Axt

Composer | The Thin Man

Composer and conductor, educated at DeWitt Clinton High School, and in private music study in Berlin. He was the assistant conductor at the Hammerstein Grand Opera Company in New York, and conducted for Emma Trentini between 1914-1918. He was musical director at the Capitol Theatre in New York, and...

87. Vladimir Cosma

Composer | Octav

Vladimir Cosma was born on April 13, 1940 in Bucharest, Romania. He is a composer, known for Octav (2017), Diva (1981) and Le Bal (1983).

88. Francis Lai

Composer | Love Story

Francis Lai was born on April 26, 1932 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France as Francis Albert Lai. He was a composer, known for Love Story (1970), Ocean's Thirteen (2007) and My Best Friend's Wedding (1997). He was married to Dagmar Puetz. He died on November 7, 2018 in Paris, France.

89. Elliot Goldenthal

Music_department | Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Elliot Goldenthal is an Academy Award-winning composer best known for his original music scores for such films as Frida (2002) and Across the Universe (2007), among his other works.

He was born on May 2, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a house-painter, and his mother was a seamstress. ...

90. Rachel Portman

Composer | Never Let Me Go

Rachel Portman was born on December 11, 1960 in Haslemere, Surrey, England as Rachel Mary Berkeley Portman. She is known for her work on Never Let Me Go (2010), Emma (1996) and Chocolat (2000). She has been married to Uberto Pasolini since 1995. They have three children.

91. Cliff Martinez

Composer | Only God Forgives

Cliff Martinez was born on February 5, 1954 in The Bronx, New York, USA. He is a composer, known for Only God Forgives (2013), The Neon Demon (2016) and Drive (2011).

92. Sol Kaplan

Soundtrack | Star Trek

Brrother-in-law of Van Heflin and Frances E. Neal.

93. George Antheil

Composer | In a Lonely Place

Composer and pianist, educated at the Curtis Music Settlement School. He studied with Constantin von Sternberg, Ernest Bloch and Clark Smith under a Guggenheim Fellowship. In Europe, he gave piano recitals between 1921-1926. He wrote incidental music to the play "Oedipus". Besides his film music, ...

94. A.R. Rahman

Composer | Slumdog Millionaire

A two-time winner and five-times nominee of the Academy Award (Oscar), A. R. Rahman is popularly known as the man who has redefined contemporary Indian music. Rahman, according to a BBC estimate, has sold more than 150 million copies of his work comprising of music from more than 100 film ...

95. Leonard Rosenman

Composer | Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Leonard Rosenman was born on September 7, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He is known for his work on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Barry Lyndon (1975) and La La Land (2016). He was married to Judie Gregg, Adele Bracker and Kay Scott. He died on March 4, 2008 in Woodland ...

96. Jan A.P. Kaczmarek

Composer | Finding Neverland

Jan A. P. Kaczmarek is a composer with a tremendous international reputation that continues to grow. As a successful recording artist and touring musician, Jan turned to composing film scores as his primary occupation. Jan's first success in the United States came in theater. After composing ...

97. Kenyon Hopkins

Music_department | 12 Angry Men

Was the chief composer and arranger at Radio City Music Hall from 1951 until 1961. From 1963 to 1964, he was the director of music for the CBS radio network. In 1970, Hopkins became director of music for Paramount's television division, working on shows like The Odd Couple, Love American Style, and...

98. Joseph Kosma

Soundtrack | Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Joseph Kosma was born in Budapest. He took an interest in music at a very young age, writing an opera called "Noel dans les Tranchées" as a teenager. One of his greatest loves in Budapest was the music of Bela Bartok. Finding the political atmosphere to be more and more oppressive in Budapest, ...

99. Dmitri Shostakovich

Soundtrack | Children of Men

Dmitri Shostakovich, one of Russian culture's most acclaimed intellectuals who was censored under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, was an internationally recognized composer whose music was in over 100 films.

He was born Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich on September 25, 1906, in St. Petersburg, ...

100. Alan Silvestri

Composer | Avengers: Endgame

In his ongoing, decades-long career as a composer, Alan Silvestri has blazed an innovative trail with his exciting and melodic scores, winning the applause of Hollywood and movie audiences the world over. With a credit list of over 100 films Silvestri has composed some of the most recognizable and ...