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John Williams

How do I have an A-List about composers without putting John Williams on this list? If he had been the man behind the blaring, brass-infused theme to Star Wars, it’d be enough. If he had created the infamous, heroic introduction to Indiana Jones, it would be enough. If he’d done the same for Jurassic Park and Jaws, it’d be enough. That he’s created all of those themes, plus the haunting opener to the Harry Potter series, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Saving Private Ryan, and Schinder’s List makes him one of the most influential, most important, and most amazing composers of all time. How do we look at the man’s filmography and not walk impressed? Frankly, how would any of us walk away from that list and not end up humming the various themes he’s come up with over the past 50 years for the rest of the day?

Williams, winner of numerous Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar awards, is best-known for his collaboration with Steven Spielberg, who’s been using the man ever since his first feature film, The Sugarland Express. But, as we all know, it was the theme for Spielberg’s next film, Jaws, (Da-dum, da-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-DUM-dum…) that solidified Williams as the go-to blockbuster composer. Two years later, it was Star Wars: A New Hope and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The next year, he had Superman. In 1980…well, the list goes on and on. Though he doesn’t work as much now (I will say, however, that the Catch Me If You Can soundtrack is amazing, and some of his best scoring), John Williams is forever going to be the ideal American film composer, someone whose work is as recognizable over the world as anything else from this country.

Thomas Newman

Is it a good sign or a bad sign when your film scores are so ingrained in the public consciousness that people automatically know it and make fun of it? For good or bad, Thomas Newman is a composer who’s managed to make enough great and easy-to-recall scores in enough big movies over the past 20 years that his style of composing is almost a bad sign when copied. Newman shares a similarity or two with Michael Giacchino: both have Emmy and Grammy Awards (Newman for his singular and amazing main theme for the HBO drama Six Feet Under), and both have put their personal stamp on the sound of Pixar movies (Newman is responsible for the scores for Finding Nemo and WALL-E). Newman, however, is more mocked for his “quirky” themes, heard in films as varied as those Pixar films, American Beauty, and The Shawshank Redemption.

Newman’s work is not often bombastic, but some of his most moving music has been featured in movies that truly deserve it. What’s more, it makes the films he’s part of even more moving. It might just be me, but the final 20 minutes of The Shawshank Redemption (granted, my favorite movie, so I’m a bit biased) are not nearly as powerful without the plaintive, regretful piano tones behind Morgan Freeman’s understated narration. Though his score for American Beauty, one of many films for which Newman was Oscar-nominated (he’s never won), is what people so often rag on—it doesn’t help that the common themes of the film’s score have been copied and ripped off for the past decade on TV and in film—his entire body of work, ranging over the past 30 years, is very impressive and lovely, as is every one of his scores.

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