What are your top six film (movie) scores?

[vandermolen]

Auric: Beauty and the Beast
Elmer Bernstein: To Kill a Mockingbird
Rozsa: Ben Hur
Waxman: Rebecca
Poledouris: Conan the Barbarian
Clint Mansell: Noah

[Sergeant Rock]

I'm sure we've done this before...or something like it. I wonder how my picks now match what I chose in the past.

Hans Zimmer  Crimson Tide
Bill Conti  The Right Stuff
Jerry Goldsmith  Strar Trek: The Motion Picture
Max Steiner  The Charge of the Light Brigade
Michael Nyman  The Piano
Erich Korngold  The Sea Hawk

Sarge

[Brian]

Young Frankenstein (John Morris)
Up (Michael Giacchino)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Ennio Morricone)
Star Wars (John Williams)
A Hard Day's Night (Beatles)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (various)

Hon. Mentions:
The Graduate (Simon & Garfunkel)
Inherent Vice (Jonny Greenwood and various)
Henry V (Patrick Doyle)

[RJR]

Bonnie & Clyde
A Clockwork Orange
2001: A Space Odyssey
Amarcord
La Strada
Taxi Driver

[Cato]

Up (Michael Giacchino)

Clint Mansell: Noah

Interesting choices!

And yes, Sarge is right, we have done something similar, but in case this is some sort of psychological experiment...

Max Steiner: King Kong
Miklos Rosza: Ben-Hur and El Cid
Jerome Moross: The Big Country
Bernard Herrmann: On Dangerous Ground and Psycho
Dmitri Tiomkin: Red River
Aaron Copland: Our Town and The Red Pony

[EigenUser]

I haven't seen many movies, but here is my little list:

Bernard Herrmann Psycho, Vertigo, North by Northwest
Dmitri Tiomkin Dial 'M' for Murder
Bartok/Penderecki/Ligeti The Shining (not original music for the film, but still a favorite).

[Brian]

Interesting choices!

My particular voting criterion is different! I did not to try to list the six film scores with the "objective" (ha) best music. I tried to list the six film scores most essential to the success of the movie. With an inferior or even merely average soundtrack, I think Up would be remembered far less fondly, and Young Frankenstein wouldn't tug at the heart strings in its final act. Most of all, I think a bland, inferior score would be catastrophic to Star Wars, which hides behind its astonishing music while the flimsier screenplay struggles to catch hold in the imagination!

[(poco) Sforzando]

I tried to list the six film scores most essential to the success of the movie.

I would agree with that. There are any number of movies for which the music in itself may not impress me much, but in context of the film it works very well. Nino Rota's scores for Fellini are good examples. But some original scores that both work well in their films and stand alone include:

John Williams's E.T. (Think of that moment near the end where the main theme soars just as the kids' bikes leave the ground.)
Prokofiev's score for Alexander Nevsky. (Even more effective as a cantata than in the film itself.)
Leonard Bernstein's music for On the Waterfront.
Maurice Leroux's score for Albert Lamorrisse's The Red Balloon, perhaps the best short film about innocent childhood ever made.
Karl-Birger Blomdahl's score for Bergman's Sawdust and Tinsel.
Henze's score for Volker Schloendorff's Young Toerless.

But then again, there are all kinds of imaginative uses of "borrowed" classical music in films, cases where the composer never imagined his music would wind up in the movies but where it works very well:

Richard Strauss's Zarathustra and Johann Strauss's The Blue Danube in 2001.
The Kyrie from Mozart's C minor mass in Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped.
The slow movement of the Emperor Concerto in the Dardenne Brothers' The Kid with a Bike.
The Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah in Bunuel's Viridiana.
Terrence Malick's use of Smetana's Moldau and the Berlioz Requiem in Tree of Life.
The Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now.
The Mascagni selections in Scorsese's Raging Bull.
Numerous examples from Woody Allen, including the Gershwin selections in Manhattan, the Schubert G major quartet in Crimes and Misdemeanors, the operatic excerpts in Match Point, the use of Varese's Ecuatorial in Another Woman, etc.

And doubtless many more.

[Todd]

Rota: The Godfather
Poledouris: Conan the Barbarian
Carpenter: Halloween
Morricone: The Thing
Arnold: The Bridge on the River Kwai
Hermann: North by Northwest



(The last go-round isn't even a year old, though this is top as opposed to greatest.)

[kishnevi]

I am not sure what else I would put in there but I would certainly include Schindler's List.

perhaps a category of its own: Amadeus which remains the only movie I've ever seen for which the audience stayed so it could listen to the music for the final credits.

[Sean]

The Wicker Man (1972)
(Paul Giovanni)

Forbidden Planet (1957)
(First all electronic score)

The Devils (1971)
(Peter Maxwell Davies)

Apocalypse Now Redux (1979)

Also these being four of the greatest of all films.

Must agree that John Williams' 1977 Star Wars score is one of the most evocative cinematic achievements; also agree about the Nyman and a mention for Glass's score for Beauty and the Beast.

[Rinaldo]

Original scores:

Basil Poledouris - Conan the Barbarian
Jerry Goldsmith - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan
Vangelis - Blade Runner
John Carpenter (with a little help of Debussy) - Escape from New York
Clint Mansell - The Fountain
Neil Young - Dead Man

Sourced music:

insert any preferred combination of Kubrick / Malick, as long as 2001 is the top choice

[jochanaan]

In no particular order:

Star Wars (John Williams)  Just because.  Yeah, everyone loves it, but there are good reasons for that.
Harold and Maude (Cat Stevens et al)  Gotta love those Cat Stevens songs, and they fit the movie perfectly.
Logan's Run (Jerry Goldsmith)  Some good electronic work.
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Bernard Herrmann)  Excellent integration of concert music into the film plot.
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Erich Wolfgang Korngold)  Quite possibly the greatest action music ever written for film, and some lovely lyrical music for the love scenes too.
Ben Hur (Miklos Rosza)  Especially the fanfare for the chariot race.

Honorable mention: Holly Hunter's playing in The Piano.  Ms. Hunter actually performed all of the music her character played.

Notably absent from my list are the Lord of the Rings movies.  Howard Shore's score fits the film well enough, but his craft is definitely a step below that of Williams, Goldsmith, Herrmann and especially Korngold.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Original scores:

Basil Poledouris - Conan the Barbarian
Jerry Goldsmith - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan
Vangelis - Blade Runner
John Carpenter (with a little help of Debussy) - Escape from New York
Clint Mansell - The Fountain
Neil Young - Dead Man

Sourced music:

insert any preferred combination of Kubrick / Malick, as long as 2001 is the top choice

I would definitely agree that a distinction should be made between music originally composed for a film (Star Wars, Psycho, Nevsky, whatever floats your boat), and what you're calling sourced music and I called borrowed music (lots of clear examples from my post and those of others).

Another category can be classical music that is used by the characters themselves in a film (such as Fitzcarraldo playing Caruso recordings while the natives pull that steamship up the mountain, the Wagner Ride of the V. in Apocalypse Now, and Tom Hanks in Philadelphia playing Callas while he's dying from AIDS). The Hallelujah Chorus in Viridiana falls into both categories 2 and 3 (first as underscoring the opening credits, later as the recording chosen by the beggars to accompany their banquet).

A very minor category could be called "parody" classical scores: I can think of only a couple of examples, one being Mayuzumi's parody of the Jupiter Symphony in the opening music to Ozu's Good Morning, the other probably more familiar example being the parody of the Mahler 6th in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits.

[vandermolen]

Thanks for replies. Yes, I'm sure that we've done something similar before but I was suffering from list deprivation.
I could definitely agree about North by Northwest and 2001, which I saw eight times at the cinema as a 13 year old when it first came out. Just to show off I attended the premiere of A Hard Day's Night and Ringo Starr refused to sign an autograph for me at the premiere of Yellow Submarine. 

PS I should have included Prokofiev's score for 'Ivan the Terrible' which I prefer to Alexander Nevsky. Leonard Bernstein's only film score for 'On the Waterfront' (mentioned above) is another favourite of mine.

[Cato]

PS I should have included Prokofiev's score for 'Ivan the Terrible' which I prefer to Alexander Nevsky.

Yes, we are in the same club!

[vandermolen]

Yes, we are in the same club!

[some guy]

I also don't spend much time watching movies. But there are some film scores I'm quite fond of.

Bokanowski, Battements solaires
Bokanowski, L'ange
Blade, Birdman (There are also some bits of Mahler, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, and Adams (John Coolidge))
Prokofiev, Ivan the Terrible
Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky

Well, that's five. For someone who doesn't watch movies, much, that's pretty good, though.

[Szykneij]

Elmer Bernstein: To Kill a Mockingbird

I'm not sure about 2 through 6, but that's my definite number one.

[vandermolen]

Here is my list No 2

Prokofiev: Ivan the Terrible
Max Richter: Sarah's Key
Jerry Goldsmith: Alien
Bernard Herrmann: The Ghost and Mrs Muir
Bernard Herrmann: North by Northwest
Sergei Ovchinnikov: War and Peace (Bondarchuk)