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Favourite sci-fi/fantasy composer?

AntonyF

AntonyF

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Who are your favourite composers, for sci-fi and fantasy TV or film?

I notice more with TV, and there are quite a few good ones.

Christopher Franke was brilliant doing B5. There are some really memorable tunes from there... and the one from the end of Sleeping in Light makes the hairs on the back of my neck tingle... they're even doing it right now thinking of it.

Christophe Beck did some really nice Buffy stuff... The Gift is another spine tingling momemt when Buffy dies.

But I have to say I a completely blown away by Bear McCreary of BSG. He's just amazing. His work is so multi-layered so many instruments, and moods and stories being told...

I think some music does go out of date... Trek is way too antiquated now IMO. Bear is very current. Down the line, he may be out of date who knows.
 
sbk1234 said:
^^^^Ditto.
Click to expand...

Megaditto.

But I'll add a list:

Jerry Goldsmith
Joel Goldsmith
David Arnold
James Horner
Brad Feidel
Bear McCreary
Bruce Broughton
Mike Post
Cory Lerios & John DeAndrea
Hoyt Curtin
Shirley Walker

(shrug) I like music scores.
 
Howard Shore, without question. Nobody has ever invested themselves in a project the way he did for "Lord of the Rings". The sheer breadth and depth he covered in creating distinctive themes for characters and cultures, blending them with a deft touch to create audio imagery I have never seen before. The Fellowship themselves had their own theme, separate and definite from everything else in the film. You had grand landscapes and intimate moments, echoes of ancient battles, strains of powerful love, poignancy in the death of kings. He even turned an inanimate golden ring into a character itself, full of temptation and evil. When you hear a theme repeated, it's with deliberate intent and an altered instrumentation for a definite purpose. John Williams is great and has earned his reputation, but my one criticism of him is that he tends to become repetitive between works such as in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Star Wars". But that's a minor quibble and nothing more.

Howard Shore bows to no one. ;)
 
Alpha_Geek said:
John Williams. Discussion OVAH! ;)
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Agreed. His Star Wars, Superman and Indiana Jones themes are some of the best out there. In the case of The Temple of Doom, I hated the movie, but loved the music. The one time Williiams disapionted me was Return of the Jedi. I HATE, HATE, HATE the Ewok themes. Thankfully, he replaced his awful Ewok theme at the end of Jedi with that instrumental piece that I thought worked much better.

I should also mention Jerry Goldsmith. I never cared for TMP's opening theme (and hated the fact that TNG co-opted it), but his opening theme for First Contact is my most favorite Star Trek theme.
 
John Williams by a mile.

I'd also mention Jerry Goldsmith, Hans Zimmerman, Howard Shore and Danny Elfman, though I haven't been dying about anything he's done over the last few years. Still, his score for the Burton Batman movies are about the only area in which I'd give those movies the edge over the Nolan ones.
 
Going back a ways, let's not forget Bernard Herrmann:

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, PSYCHO, VERTIGO, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR, THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, as well as various other Hitchcock and Harryhausen films. He also scored several episodes of the original TWILIGHT ZONE.
 
Bah. All the greats already got their nods - so I'll second Bernard Hermann (name-dropping Fahrenheit 451), Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams and Howard Shore. Lately, Bear McCreary has wowed me, but I've only just gotten into BSG while those lot would be on the tip of my tongue for years now.

This said, I'll give additional nods to Gottfried Huppertz for his brilliant score in Metropolis (and Die Nibelungen), and also note I really liked Clint Mansell's work in The Fountain and Moon.
 
Dorian Thompson said:
John Williams, with an honorary mention for James Horner.
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I find all of James Horner's music sounds the same. I remember watching The Perfect Storm. In the scene where the giant waves keep hitting the boat I remember thinking "I don't get it, are there waves coming or is the starship Reliant attacking?"
 
The thing about James Horner is, he composed one great movie score. So great, apparently, it shouldn't be confined to just one movie. ;)
 
In no order:


John Williams
"E.T."
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind"
First three "Star Wars" films


Jerry Goldsmith
"Capricorn One"
"Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend"
The first four Trek films he scored
"Explorers"


Christophe Beck
"Buffy the Vampie Slayer" (TV series, for which he won an Emmy for his work)


Velton Ray Bunch
"Qauntum Leap"
"Enterprise"

James Horner
"Willow"
"Star Trek 2"
"Star Trek 3"
"Something Wicked This Way Comes"


And of course other Trek series work, and Trek films (excluding Nemesis onward, and Brian Tyler's "Enterprise" efforts)

Elmer Bernstein
"Ghostbusters"

Danny Elfman
"Edward Scissorhands"

Trevor Jones
"Dark City"

David Newman
"Serenity"
"Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure"
"Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey"

Basil Poledouris
"Conan the Barbarian"

Graeme Revell
"Pitch Black"
"The Chronicles of Riddick"

Mark Snow
"The X-Files"

James L. Venable
"Samurai Jack"


The work on "Batman: The Animated Series", which I loved so much, I created this site:
http://www.btasscores.150m.com

Probably others I have forgotten. How broad a range is "fantasy"?
 
Jerry Goldsmith. To my ear, a lot of John Williams's scores are interchangeably bombastic. Goldsmith's Logan's Run doesn't sound anything like his Planet of the Apes which doesn't sound anything like his Star Trek - The Motion Picture.

I'm also a big fan of Bebe and Louis Barron's Forbidden Planet, Howard Shore's Crash (the Ballard/Cronenberg movie), Vangelis's Blade Runner, Barry Gray's Space: 1999 year one, Cliff Martinez's Solaris, Yoko Kanno's Cowboy Bebop...
 
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