The Greatest Film Score in the Universe Contest!!!

I definitely agree - my chorus and the orchestra at my school this past year performed the entire score for a concert. It has to be the most fun music I've ever sung, just for the pure emotion in the music. ohhhhhhhhhh, I loved it. ^_^ and the shouting in Latin didn't hurt, either.

Alexander Nevsky is up there with the best pieces ever written, and is BY FAR the greatest film score ever. I have two recordings of it, and both are breathtaking. Even the origional recording, as terrible as it is, shows the incredible genious of Prokofiev. No doubt in my mind, Alexander Nevsky, and especially the last three movements (Battle on the Ice, Field of the Dead, and Alexander's Entry into Pskov) is the GREATEST film score ever. John Williams is a very close second!

I've been saying this for years. No other score so perfectly matches every scene/action/mood/feeling/raison d'etre as does Serge Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevskiy".

I care and I glad we concur. But remember, good taste is hard to find.

Enrique Sanchez

Thomas:

I didn't read the other comments when I wrote my response to you. Now that I've read them, I should say how disappointing it is to see that so very few agreed with you...not one even mention Max Steiner an absolute monster in sheer volume of quality composition for the movies (in 1939 he composed 12 movie scores!), or Bernard Hermann, E.W. Korngold, M. Rosza, Maurice Jarre, Tiomkin, Rota, Waxman, North, L. Bernstein.

Enrique Sanchez

Anything by John Williams especially all of the Star Wars movies. Howard Shore's scores for LOTR were also fantastic. Prokofiev's Nevsky score is amazing. I am also very partial to Mark Mothersbaugh's scores for Wes Anderson's films, i.e. Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Life Aquatic. I don't know how other people feel about Mothersbaugh, but I think his scores are innovating and fit all of the films perfectly.

There should be more threads like this!

I also think that Alexander Nevski is the best score ever, with "Lawrence of Arabia" being a close second. Then, depending on the mood and the on the hour of the day, I would choose something from John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Jerry Goldsmith or John Barry.

Also to cite to some others that have been less mentioned, let´s not forget "The Big Country" from Jerome Moross, "To kill a Mockingbird" and "The Magnificent Seven" from Elmer Bernstein, "El Cid" and "King of Kings" from Miklos Rozsa or "Exodus" from Ernest Gold.

But, as some already stated, there is so much to choose from: Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Korngold, Waxmann, North, Rota, Mancini... among the classics, or Horner, Zimmer, Niehaus, Shore and Elfmann among the modern...oofff

I have no idea. But I wanted to send you a totally off-topic response to your original post. I just watched a PSA for the Philadelphia Orchestra and it brought me back to the time that I sang this score with the Orchestra. The chorus sat behind the screen while the film played to the audience. I absolutely adored that music, especially the Mezzo solo after the battle. Just amazing! I still hum that music to myself to this day.

Alexander Nevsky IS hands down one of the best film scores in the universe (of course it would be ignorant to say it is the best as I have not heard every film score).

I am shocked that on the main IMDB page for Alexander Nevsky there is not one mention of Prokofiev's name! Prokofiev is one of the most renowned, legendary composers of all time. Most of the modern era film score composers don't even have a chance of going down in history as such. My reasoning is that, like films themselves, great film scores must not consist simply of emotional substance, but also of artistic substance. Many film scores nowadays serve simply to enhance the emotional content of certain scenes. While this still accounts for many GOOD film scores like Gladiator (mentioned above), it takes more than emotion to make a film score GREAT.

The score to Alexander Nevsky takes tremendous artistic considerations. The Teutonic Knights are always represented by actual Latin, Gregorian Chants, as the Germans would have been Catholic at that point in history. Alexander has his own tunes or "leitmotifs" associated with his and his army's presence on screen. The music is also used to literally paint the action occurring, such as the slowly quickening, ominous advance of the armies across the ice.

Another factor that hands down makes this one of the best film scores is that it was not written purely for profit. It is foreseeable that even one of the greatest composers could create an artistically lacking work if they were just doing it for a quick paycheck. This is evident, for example, in Wellington's March by Beethoven. However, Prokofiev devoted just as much detailed attention to this as any of his great works, making it more about an artistic than profitable product. The score is so good, it is still performed in concert halls today as a stand alone suite! The few other scores that still receive such treatment and renown were either musicals (like West Side Story) or scores made up of pre-existing pieces that had already been tried and tested (like 2001: A Space Odyssey).

If Hans Zimmer had to orchestrate one of his own scores (or do any more than simply play a melody on the piano and have his assistants write it down), I'm sure he would consider the effort not worth the profit. Prokofiev has written and orchestrated not only one of the best film scores of all time, but one of the greatest pieces of music.