Jarry Goldsmith is a joke compared to John Williams.

As for the question, John Williams is absolutely the best film composer of all time. His soundtracks and his resume back this fact up. If you're talking about quantity, then Ennio Morricone wins. Most here couldn't name 10 of Morricone's film composition without looking at IMDB. That doesn't mean they aren't great. He is one of the all-time greats, but Williams is better. But nobody, and I mean nobody has created better, more memorable music for the movies than John Williams has.

Fiddler On the Roof
The Poseidon Adventure
The Long Goodbye
The Paper Chase
Sugarland Express
Jaws
Star Wars
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
E.T.
Superman
The Big Chill
Empire of the Sun
Always
Hook
Schindler's List
Jurassic Park
A.I.
Catch Me If You Can

Those are just a few of his great scores.

This was roughly the same analogy that I made using Justin Timberlake and Bryn Terfel. You know, that one that was so bad it was self-explanatory as to why it was bad...

The ironic thing is that, if someone said to me, "quick - name a movie composer", my guess is that the first name to pop into my head would either be Morricone, Hermann, or Williams. But if someone asked me the same question for conducters, I'd pick von Karajan long before Fiedler. In fact, if not for your post, I might have gone the rest of my days having forgotten that the Boston Pops once employed a man named Arthur Fiedler as their conductor...

Listen to Bartok sometime. You'll hear John Williams' best stuff only it was composed 100 years ago by someone else.

I've felt the same way about nearly every Central European film composer that came to the US to escape the Nazis - they're all Bartok imitators.

I don't see the similarity to Bartok at all; IMO Williams’ work is more reminiscent of some of the overblown composers from late Romantic period.

Yeh, I knew it was a retread, but I couldn't resist trying it from a different angle. :-)

Totally agree.

I don't get it. How is Jerry Goldsmith a joke compared to John Williams? How is it a fact that John Williams is the best ever? In what ways is Williams superior to Morricone? Would you please elaborate on these assertions?

And why is "memorable music" considered good? Lots of people can hum the Macarena, but that doesn't mean it's good music.

I'm not so sure if jekbrown realized when he started this thread it would be so controversial.

Oh - and Williams is the Beethoven of the modern era.

There was a score in the Big Chill? All I remember is oldies. And I dunno what Williams did on Fiddler on the Roof, but the vast majority of the music there is by Jerry Bock.

Danny Elfman!!

Uh... there WERE movies made before the 1970s, you know.

As for the question, John Williams is absolutely NOT the best film composer of all time. The most popular, probably. The most well-known, probably. The most "hummable", possibly.

He's "the best of all time" for those who don't know any other film composer's name, and since that's probably a majority of people, we end up with threads like these.

There are many composers who are long forgotten to anyone but film score buffs, and then there are a select few whose names will live on forever as being among "the best" - Tiomkin, Herrmann, Steiner, Waxman, Korngold, Barry, Newman, Rózsa, Morricone among them. In forty years, there's no question that Williams' name will be included - it is (and should be) already. But to pick Williams as "the best of all time" without any knowledge of the works of those other names I mentioned is just wrong. Sure, list 20 Williams scores. Now, to be fair, go listen to 20 Tiomkins, 20 Herrmanns, 20 Steiners, and so on... THEN come back and say "Yep, I was right all along, Williams is the best" and maybe some of us will react a little less passionately.

(For the record, my favorites are Patrick Doyle and Franz Waxman.)

This is uncannily like a thread I participated in elsewhere not long ago: http://pub78.ezboard.com/ftimetalkfr...icID=102.topic

I just wanted to add my appreciation of Ryuichi Sakamoto. Is he the best composer ever? No. But he's great, and underappreciated.

I think John Williams has done memorable scores (and ripped off so many people it's ridiculous). He's certainly not the best. Listen to his score to A.I. It's pure drivel. And frankly, I find other movie scores by Danny Elfman (Batman), Ennio Morriconne (The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly), and others far more compulsively hummable than Williams' work. (Although the Indiana Jones theme does pop into my head fairly often).

Also, someone no one has mentioned here is Michael Nyman, whose score for The Draughtsman's Contract may be one of the best pieces of music written for a movie that I have ever heard.

So, to answer the initial question of this thread, no, John Williams is not the best composer ever. There can be no "best composer ever," as the arguments on this thread have clearly proven. To answer the other side question that has come up, yes, John Williams is the most famous film composer in the world today. He got that way by making big anthems for big movies. This is not an indicator of quality.

The argument of "John Williams is considered the best by the most people, therefore he is the best" is a ridiculous argument. That would be like saying, "McG is a better director than David Cronenberg because more people like Charlie's Angels than they like Crash." To say that his stuff is instantly recognizable, and therefore he is the best, is also a ridiculous argument. The theme to Halloween is instantly recognizable, does that make John Carpenter one of the best film composers ever? I would say no.

Also, I hate the score to E.T., even when it isn't directly stealing from Beethoven symphonies.

It's all there. Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Hans Zimmer.

You know it all boils down to one person's opinion. I like many composers. I like them for many different reasons too. I tend to look at each score individually instead of just the composer.

That being said I do hold high regards for Williams' music. If I see his name on a score then chances are it will be good. Sometimes his stuff doesn't hit to high with me, but overall he has given me more good than bad in the past. I really do enjoy his "Harry Potter" work and "Across the Stars" was beautiful!

Timmio

I haven't seen any of those movies in ages. But next time I do I'll listen for the Bartok influence. Any works in particular?

I'm sorry, but this is just a funny statement.

"If you ask 'who is the best,' and everybody says Williams is the best, then clearly he is not the best."

Gimme a break. &nbsp Did I say that the soundtrack to The Russia House is the end all be all of soundtracks? &nbsp No. &nbsp I just said it was an incredible soundtrack.

My point was that "best" is an indicator of quality, quality is measured by perception, and perception differs from person to person. Unless everyone in the world always agreed that Williams was the best, thus giving a unifying perspective on the matter, then he never will be. That is what I meant.

Then by this definition, NO ONE can ever be the Best at anything.

Is God the best god there is? Nope, someone named Lucifer isn't buying it...so it's lights out for the Almighty.

After mulling this over, it strikes me that the notion of a single best film composer (or novelist or other artist) borders on indefensible. It seems far more profitable to think in terms of a collection of great composers rather than to bicker over who is the best.

But bickering is fun.

BINGO! Give the man a prize! Unless you limit the definition of "best" to something quantifiable, there never will be a best. You might be able to quantify who is the best baseball player based on stats. It's all numbers. Whoever has higher numbers is the best, right? But if you tried to qualify which baseball has a better attitude, well, then, it all becomes a matter of opinion, doesn't it? Unless you have some way of quantifying one composer's body of work against another's, then I stand by my statement that there is no best composer, nor does there need to be.

Bad example, because you're arguing with a bonafide atheist here. In my opinion, polytheistic gods will always be more interesting than monotheistic ones. So, no, "God" isn't the best god there is, and it has nothing to do with Lucifer. However, this statement makes me think that you probably look at things in an absolute form. You, in fact, feel the need for there to be a "best" something, instead of just letting things be. That may be where our true argument lies, for I feel that everything is relative, and not much at all is absolute.

Sorry for bringing up an old thread (didn't see if first time round), but to me Nino Rota and John Williams are the most `hummable' composers of all-time... but Nino Rota takes the cake by a million-to-1... or roughly. Follow the link in my sig to hear just one of his scores that is not found on any compilation cds [Rota's or film music generally]. Hurricane is the most hummable tune, ever. He composed 35-40 classic scores that I know... how many has Williams composed? 10-15? Unlike Williams, Rota composed brilliant music from The Glass Mountain near the start of his career in film which would be 1942 (1949; which, by the way, was broadcast in its entirity on BBC Radio at scheduled times for 2 years!) to Hurricane (1979; the year of his death). Between that time: Lo Sciecco Bianco (1952), I Vitelloni (1953), La Strada (1954), War & Peace (1955), Le Notti di Cabiria (1957), Le Notti Bianche (1957), La Grande Guerra (1959), La Dolce Vita (1960), Plein Soleil (1960), Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli (1960), Boccaccio '70 (1962), 8 1/2 (1963), Il Gattopardo (1963), Giuiletta degli Spiriti (1965), The Taming of the Shrew (1967), Romeo & Juliet (1968), Tre Passi nel Delirio: Toby Dammit (1968), I Clowns (1970), Waterloo (1970), The Godfather (1972), Roma (1972), Amarcord (1973), Film d'Amore e d'Anarchia (1973), The Godfather Part 2 (1974), Il Casanova (1976), Alle Origini della Mafia (1976), Prova d'Orchestra (1978), Death on the Nile (1978), etc. All instantly hummable, and if you happen to be a foreign film fan, they are as instantly recognizable as John Williams' projects.

I don't buy this whole argument that puts Ennio Morricone ahead of Rota. Rota had no `baggage' with his music whatsoever. Composers such as Morricone, who emulates Rota a lot, no matter how hard they try cannot make a melody as simple yet unforgettable as Rota's. He was a genius! And he was equally as good in the classical field as he was in the film, successes which extended from the age of 11 to the his death at 68. It's sad that not even many Rota fans -- including myself -- know all of his great music. For instance, in 1951 he worked with director Terence Young on the film Valley of Eagles, which is very similar in plot to the directors later James Bond films. I would like to know what that music is like.

Rota was a genius; his potential staggers. John Williams reached his potential long ago.

Ask Ennio Morricone, Danny Elfman, Elmer Bernstein, James Horner (who was found guilty once for plagiarism of Rota), possibly Henry Mancini, Angelo Badalamenti, and especially John Barry (and pop artists such as Elvis Costello and Deborah Harry) who the best is of all time and they would say Nino.