Last Updated on 15 September 2023
I know this will be controversial among my composer friends, but the following list is the Official Definitive List of the 200 best movie composers ever. I averaged 27 different ranked lists of “best movie music composers of all time” to get this definitive compilation. See my Methodology page for the research process that was used, including links to all 27 lists that were averaged.
- John Williams
- Ennio Morricone
- Hans Zimmer
- Max Steiner
- Bernard Herrmann
- John Barry
- Jerry Goldsmith
- James Horner
- Danny Elfman
- Rachel Portman
- Alfred Newman
- Maurice Jarre
- Howard Shore
- Joe Hisaishi
- Erich Wolfgang Korngold
- Elmer Bernstein
- Alexandre Desplat
- Henry Mancini
- Alan Silvestri
- A.R. Rahman
- Thomas Newman
- Nino Rota
- Michael Giacchino
- James Newton Howard
- Vangelis
- Dimitri Tiomkin
- Miklós Rózsa
- Franz Waxman
- Randy Newman
- Brian Tyler
- Javier Navarrete
- Alan Menken
- Michel Legrand
- Alex North
- Bill Conti
- Henry Jackman
- Philip Glass
- Lalo Schifrin
- Mica Levi
- Aaron Copland
- Jonny Greenwood
- Ramin Djawadi
- Sergei Prokofiev
- Francis Lai
- Hugo Friedhofer
- David Raksin
- Tôru Takemitsu
- Ravi Shankar
- Ilayaraja
- Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
- Steve Jablonsky
- John Powell
- Fumio Hayasaka
- John Debney
- Randy Edelman
- Harry Gregson-Williams
- Leonard Rosenman
- Akira Ifukube
- Justin Hurwitz
- Charlie Chaplin
- Christophe Beck
- Basil Poledouris
- Quincy Jones
- Luis Bacalov
- John Carpenter
- Dmitri Shostakovich
- Ludwig Göransson
- Masaru Satô
- Patrick Doyle
- Jack Nitzsche
- Angelo Badalamenti
- Wojciech Kilar
- Clint Mansell
- Marco Beltrami
- Heitor Pereira
- Georges Delerue
- S.D. Burman
- Giorgio Moroder
- Anne Dudley
- Victor Young
- Herbert Stothart
- Monty Norman
- Tyler Bates
- Leslie Bricusse
- Naoki Satô
- Lesley Barber
- Ray Heindorf
- Dave Grusin
- Yôko Kanno
- Louis F. Gottschalk
- Murray Gold
- John Ottman
- Daft Punk
- Roy Webb
- André Previn
- Trevor Rabin
- Shankar Jaikishan
- Georgie Stoll
- Kenji Kawai
- Walter Scharf
- Benjamin Wallfisch
- Morris Stoloff
- Richard Bellis
- Georges Auric
- Alessandro Cicognini
- Klaus Badelt
- Malcolm Arnold
- Lennie Hayton
- Eduard Artemiev
- George Fenton
- Bronislau Kaper
- Takatsugu Muramatsu
- Hugo Riesenfeld
- George Duning
- Frank De Vol
- Roger Edens
- Adolph Deutsch
- Jerry Fielding
- Leigh Harline
- Johnny Green
- R.D. Burman
- Richard Rodney Bennett
- Ralph Burns
- Louis Silvers
- Oliver Wallace
- Edward Ward
- William Walton
- Gabriel Yared
- Michael Kamen
- Harris Jayaraj
- Friedrich Hollaender
- Ernest Gold
- Shigeru Umebayashi
- Werner R. Heymann
- Richard Hageman
- Heinz Roemheld
- Irwin Kostal
- Cyril J. Mockridge
- Lionel Newman
- Louis Gruenberg
- Giuseppe Becce
- Mikis Theodorakis
- Frank Churchill
- Charles Wolcott
- Marc Shaiman
- Frank Skinner
- Hans J. Salter
- Erik Satie
- Bruce Broughton
- George Bruns
- Brian Easdale
- Carter Burwell
- Werner Janssen
- Philippe Sarde
- Harold Faltermeyer
- Duke Ellington
- Alberto Iglesias
- Elliot Goldenthal
- Marvin Hamlisch
- Ron Goodwin
- Nicola Piovani
- Giovanni Fusco
- Bernhard Kaun
- Carl W. Stalling
- Trevor Jones
- Brad Fiedel
- David Arnold
- Jon Brion
- Riz Ortolani
- Piero Piccioni
- David Newman
- Edmund Meisel
- Laurence Rosenthal
- Nelson Riddle
- Leo Shuken
- William Alwyn
- John Addison
- Toshirô Mayuzumi
- Piero Umiliani
- Michael Nyman
- Erik Nordgren
- Edward H. Plumb
- Wolfgang Zeller
- Melvin Van Peebles
- Tangerine Dream
- Harry Sukman
- David Shire
- Paul Smith
- Hans Erdmann
- Jóhann Jóhannsson
- Arthur Honegger
- Gottfried Huppertz
- Burt Bacharach
- Terence Blanchard
- David Hirschfelder
- Miles Davis
- Isaac Hayes
- John Morris
- Virgil Thomson
- Ernst Toch
