[Poll] Who’s the greatest film composer of all time?

dougieb

Danny Elfman? Ennio Morricone? Jerry Goldsmith?

Don_Angelo

John Williams

I understand the necessity of reducing the list to a reasonable amount of names in such a poll. However, I consider myself being a film music enthusiast and can't help but notice there are two names in that list I did not know, while so many names for iconic scores were left out.

I would recommend checking out this compilation of classic Hollywood main themes from the first generations of film composers: https://www.discogs.com/release/14922310-Charles-Gerhardt-Charles-Gerhardt-Conducts-Classic-Film-Scores

Paule

Hans Zimmer

@dougieb

Ennio Morricone?

It's the third if you count from above.

EDIT 2022-10-13

@Kaiwan_NI

Is the poll finished? There are 81 votes only.

PK The DJ

John Williams

The story of Hans Zimmer on BBC iPlayer:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001d9jf

Paule

Hans Zimmer

A collection of movie sounds here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqG8u0jsk1A

A toc is also there

LostInFoundation

Ennio Morricone

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/68416#Comment_68416

You should decide if you are cesarmiller or rubytaylor 😂😂😂

I voted for Morricone (and I would have voted for him in ANY case), but as many says, too many composers are missing here. Do we wanna talk about Kenji Kawai, Yann Tiersen, Danny Elfman or Joe Hisaishi? And since he just passed away, let’s honor also Ryūichi Sakamoto

(yes, as you can imagine I love Japanese movie composers…the Japanese movie scene always put a lot of importance to the audio side, even the most trivial anime have a good score, main themes aside that sometimes are ridiculous 😂).

This poll is a little too Hollywood-centric. I know Hollywood is Hollywood, but…they can work good also abroad

evajames

Sinceramente, I believe it depends on the movie. The style and approach of the film director tend to highlight the styles of most composers. John Williams cannot be confused with Danny Elfman. Imagine if Elfman and Williams composed the music for Star Wars... (Go one step farther and picture John Williams as Jack!) A Nightmare. Seriously though, it can be difficult to depart from your "style". Having said that, I genuinely admire what Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have accomplished. Talk about eschewing a fashion. if you had told me that Trent, my favourite rock star, would one day record songs like "Mank" and "Soul." I would declare you to be insane!

Kymeia

Ennio Morricone

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/74673#Comment_74673

lol - the Nightmare before Star Wars would be cool - would much prefer that to the JW turgidity