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Posted: |
Apr 9, 2021 - 7:12 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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John Williams, for sure. My favourite composer, but you'd also be hardpressed to argue for others in a more 'objective' sense. Perhaps Hans Zimmer, but not really when push comes to shove.
I do, however, agree with your selection of Elliot Goldenthal. He's my third favourite composer of all time. But he's been semi-retired from film scores for almost a decade, doing only the occasional small project, or whatever his partner Julie Taymour does.
By the way, if you want more "adventurous" Williams, please do check out IMAGES from 1972.
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John Towner Williams AINEC
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There's some good ones but the great are all dead.
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The key here is that this depends on how you would define "greatest".
Your favorite? Ok, that may be different for everybody, and any composer can be your favorite.
But who is "greatest"? If I tried to pick the "greatest" living film composer, I would consider and evaluate several things. How prolific, respected, innovative, influential, original, versatile, famous, successful, etc. is the composer, to name just a few things. Then I would have to say that John Williams is probably the "greatest" living film composer. He may not be everybody's favorite composer, but he is usually well liked and respected even by those with other favorite film composers. He is hugely influential, versatile (people sometimes forget that he can write jazzy and atonal scores too), has more Academy Award nominations than anyone else, his music is played all over the world in concert halls, and, and, and... and last, but by no means least, he IS a great film composer. His music for JAWS did what Bernard Herrmann's score did for PSYCHO, it made the movie scary. STAR WARS would not have had nearly as much cultural impact if it were not for Williams' operatic score(s). And scores as different as, say, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, THE EIGER SANCTION, IMAGES, and CATCH ME IF YOU CAN attest to his versatility. So yes, it's John Williams. It's not an "original" answer, in fact, it is probably the most expected answer (and most likely the winner if it were a poll question), but it is also the "right" answer in my book.
But I absolutely agree that Elliot Goldenthal is a terrific composer as well, he is among my favorite musical voices in the movies, and I dearly miss his contributions to movies as well. I wish he would score more movies than he does.
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A lot of people will probably say that John Williams is the greatest living film composer. This is something I disagree with heavily. I don't get what people like so much about Williams's music in general. Sure, he at least has craft, but I tend to find him too conventional and too much of a routine composer, which is something I find quite boring. Don't get me wrong, he has his moments, but i'm not really much of a Williams fan. I prefer more adventurous composers.
I consider Elliot Goldenthal to be the greatest living film composer. The experimentation, the daring of many of his scores alone puts him head and shoulders above most other film composers. I would love to hear more Goldenthal scores - I miss him so much.
I also like Thomas Newman a lot, who exhibits a rare form of tonality and also likes to experiment; he is my choice as the second greatest living film composer after Goldenthal.
Aside from Goldenthal and Newman, there aren't many other living film composers that I care much for. There are a handful of other film composers who have done some good work in the past, but who haven't done anything of consequence in a long time. To my mind Goldenthal and Newman are better than anyone else working in film music today. I give Goldenthal the edge despite his inactivity in film music because of some amazing scores he did in the 1990s in particular. I think I actually prefer several Goldenthal scores above any Newman score.
Who do you consider to be the greatest living film composer (doesn't have to be active) and why? I'm curious if anyone out there agrees with me regarding Goldenthal and Newman.
Why don't you start saying that you believe that Elliot Goldenthal is the greatest living film composer and instead you start by saying bad things about John Williams. Why the negativity?
Oh and John Williams is the greatest. Randy Newman thinks so.The greatest ever actually. I agree with Randy
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The key here is that this depends on how you would define "greatest".
Your favorite? Ok, that may be different for everybody, and any composer can be your favorite.
But who is "greatest"? If I tried to pick the "greatest" living film composer, I would consider and evaluate several things. How prolific, respected, innovative, influential, original, versatile, famous, successful, etc. is the composer, to name just a few things. Then I would have to say that John Williams is probably the "greatest" living film composer. He may not be everybody's favorite composer, but he is usually well liked and respected even by those with other favorite film composers. He is hugely influential, versatile (people sometimes forget that he can write jazzy and atonal scores too), has more Academy Award nominations than anyone else, his music is played all over the world in concert halls, and, and, and... and last, but by no means least, he IS a great film composer. His music for JAWS did what Bernard Herrmann's score did for PSYCHO, it made the movie scary. STAR WARS would not have had nearly as much cultural impact if it were not for Williams' operatic score(s). And scores as different as, say, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, THE EIGER SANCTION, IMAGES, and CATCH ME IF YOU CAN attest to his versatility. So yes, it's John Williams. It's not an "original" answer, in fact, it is probably the most expected answer (and most likely the winner if it were a poll question), but it is also the "right" answer in my book.
But I absolutely agree that Elliot Goldenthal is a terrific composer as well, he is among my favorite musical voices in the movies, and I dearly miss his contributions to movies as well. I wish he would score more movies than he does.
Well said.
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