Which sort of brings up the John Williams phenomena. John Williams who does anything Steven Spielberg or George Lucas (and also a personal favorite score,
Superman) is pretty much what most people in this country recognize as popular classical music. I've heard orchestral musicians tend to hate him. But it's fascinating how he took orchestral music and created hits within a pop music culture. Would we even care about his music if it didn't conjure up feelings from when we saw Luke blow up the Death Star, Superman jump into a phone booth, or Indy chase down the ark?
Incidentally, have you ever tried to hum the following John William's scores one after the other?
Star Wars
Superman
Raiders of the Lost ArkI find it very difficult. I get stuck on one and it blocks out the other two (maybe because they're so similar).
Anyway, Nino Rota with
The Godfather is my favorite soundtrack (especially the 5/4 piece when Woltz wakes with the dead horse).
Ennio Morricone's work for
The Mission really stands on its own.
The original
Get Carter theme is really great.
And
Un Coeur En Hiver is the reason I love Ravel (not that he scored that movie, but the music works like a great score).
Another great experiment: Listen to the soundtrack for
Un Coeur En Hiver while watching
The Mystery of Picasso. It's spooky how those two things go together.