Music composers are, without a doubt, the proprietors of a film’s soul. An original score paired with a talented director is a potent Hollywood symbiosis. We’ve previously discussed how important a good director is for the essence of a great film, but now we’ll discuss how paramount the composer is. The composer is responsible for bringing every scene to life by capturing and conveying even the most minor emotions and themes. In some cases, music composers will write the score before seeing one frame of the film they’re writing for. They’re just that brilliant.
John Williams
If there is one of the Hollywood music composers who needs no introduction, it’s John Williams. With a Resume spanning over seven decades, it’s easy to see why Williams is as renowned as he is: the man has worked on nearly every major film series in Hollywood from the 70s onward. Imagine Star Wars, Jaws, Harry Potter, or Jurassic Park without their memorable themes; they couldn’t exist as we know them without Williams.
Hans Zimmer
It seems impossible to comprehend the brilliance of Hans Zimmer’s soundtracks, especially his work on Interstellar. According to Zimmer, he wrote some of the score for Interstellar before Christopher Nolan even wrote the script. Zimmer claims he only received a written letter from Nolan in the early stages of the film’s inception. It was later reported that Nolan felt compelled to create the movie after hearing what Zimmer composed. In an iconic interview on The Jonathan Ross Show, Zimmer shared the following anecdote:
It goes back to Chris Nolan and Interstellar. Chris asked me to write this piece of music before he’d even written the script. So I play it to him without looking at him. You can see the couch behind me, he was sitting on the couch. So I was not facing him, and I got to the end of it and I said, ‘So what do you think?’ And he’s just leaning back and goes, ‘Hmm, suppose I better make the movie.’ And I’m going, ‘What is the movie?’ Because he never told me what it was going to be about.
If you’ve somehow never heard of Zimmer, chances are your favorite movie soundtrack was composed by him. His achievements are too long to list in this article, so here is a link to his work.
John Powell
John Powell crafted one of the most enchanting scores of all time in the 2010 DreamWorks Animation movie How to Train Your Dragon. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 99%, this movie remains the number 1 highest-rated DreamWorks film of all time – a feat not possible without Powell’s innovative musical language and emotional depth. Powell also exemplifies a deep understanding of how music can enhance any frame, making his scores feel as if they are produced naturally by the scene itself.
Howard Shore
Where would The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies be without Howard Shore’s masterful touch and understanding of J.R.R. Tolkien’s themes in his writing? Shore single-handedly constructed the spellbinding score of Middle Earth. As prestigious as these films are, they wouldn’t exist without Shore’s work. Shore took his love for Tolkien and crafted what are known as leitmotifs. These leitmotifs are the reason we associate Shore’s deeply emotional themes with particular regions or characters of Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth. This method is complex and only works because Shore understands the magnitude of film and storytelling.
Final Thoughts
Music composers are essential for evoking emotional depth and storytelling. Their work elevates our viewing experience while transporting us into a memorable and immersive journey: one that reverberates long after the credits roll.
