| If you liked Braveheart and Titanic, check out other James Horner movies...he wrote the music for both of those.
My vote is John Williams. Just his Star Wars contributions are fantastic, but then you look at all of his works like E.T., Jaws, the Patriot and you can see he's very prolific. Of course, I'm a bit biased as his music is romantic (not like lovey-dovey romantic, but romanticism is a style of music popular in the late 19th century) and I think romantic music makes the best classical music. His themes are arguably the most recognized of all film composers.
I think what makes a really good film score is subtlety above all else. Films are about 75% visual, and 25% aural. The point of the music isn't to stand out, but to heighten each individual scene so that you don't conciously hear the music...it simply propels the scene to even greater emotional heights. That's why a film scorer is a special breed...they must not only write good music, but they must understand the emotions that are generated by the actors and such as well. It's really a complex thing being a film composer. |