Hans Zimmer and the greatest movie music ever

I'm one of those people that need music in the background in order to study, otherwise I just lose my mind. Which means I"m always looking for the best study-music. Well, just a moment ago, I came across this amazing compilation.

It contains all music composed by Hans Zimmer. You have probably heard his epic work in movies such as Gladiator, Inception, The Dark Knight, Sherlock Holmes and Da Vinci Code.

I just wanted to take the time to thank Hans Zimmer for giving movies (and studying lol) an epic feel.

Here's the link, enjoy the awesomeness

Greatest movie music ever? No. No contest. WAYYYY too repetitive between scores for that.

Yeah, although I really enjoy Zimmer, I have to agree with WT in that it's all very samey, and his bag of tricks is fairly small.

__________________

I really like Hans Zimmer, but as far as popular composers go I think John Williams gets the edge easily. I mean come on: Jaws, Jurassic Park, the Star Wars films, the Indiana Jones films, etc. Those are each among the most best and most memorable scores in movie history.

Bernard Herman also gets some consideration for his work with Hitchcock, especially his simply terrifying screeching few notes in Psycho. As far as individual film scores (removing musical and animated films from contention), I think I'd give the nod to Clint Mansell for Requiem for a Dream. Anytime I hear that string quartet I immediately slip into an entirely different world.

was gonna start a new thread, but i think more appropriate to rez this thread as it's relevant.

totally disagree with samey comments, i think i have give the edge to zimmer over any other scorer at this point. I listen to many of his scores pretty regularly, and they are vastly different from each other. I'm not sure I can even name someone with greater musical variety. Zimmer switches instruments and themes between his movies.

what do you guys think Zimmer's best scoring work is? , I think i have to hand it to man of steel. Inception and Interstellar had great scores, but I think they are both a bit on the short side. MoS had a greater variety of songs.

I absolutely LOVE his score for Driving Miss Daisy.

There's a few. One part I like was in Batman v Superman. When Batman was chasing Lex's men and Superman popped up. That slow motion scene when he turned the corner and they looked at each other before Superman kicked the bat mobile. That song at that moment is my favorite moment in film history.

I'm more of a Jerry Goldsmith fan, but Zimmer has done some great work. Gladiator comes to mind

It's hard to argue about the excellence and popularity of Williams and Zimmer. They've both written many powerhouse scores, and deserve all the accolades they receive. They're like modern day Miklos Rozsa's or Alfred Newman's. Zimmer is practically a composing corporation, with many people contributing. They're both most well known for their large orchestral type scores to superhero and popular action movies. You can be sure that if Mozart and Beethoven were alive today, they would be in Hollywood writing for films.

But there are several up and coming film/series composers who are writing fantastic music which is diverse, fresh, and very intuitive. Two of my favorites are, 1. Jóhann Jóhannsson, an Icelandic composer who wrote for The Theory of Everything, Sicario, and Arrival. And, 2. Cristobal de Veer, a Chilean/Canadian composer heard on The Girl With All the Gifts, National Treasure, and the wacky Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective agency. You're going to hear a lot more from these men.

To the poster who pointed out the legendary Bernard Herrmann, I couldn't agree more. No one could set a theme better than he, and Hitchcock owes a huge debt of gratitude for Herrmann's unforgettable scores to some of Hitch's greatest films (not to mention Scorcese's Taxi Driver).

~Cheers

Reading the comments so far reminds me that my background of hearing music in film and TV comes with a long appreciation of found or specially manufactured sounds. Hans Zimmer is the best recent example of that with his work on The Dark Knight's Joker theme, but I was actually even more fascinated by Man of Steel in that he'd made the connection from the "infinity" of America to steel instruments, including steel sculptures that can be played, with amazing sounds produced for the film. Maybe his music can sound repetitive, or just because of his famous back catalogue, recognisable. John Williams is also extremely repetitive for the same reasons, but what marks Zimmer out is that extra layer of creativity and his attempts to renew himself, as he had to do in particular for each superhero franchise that came his way.

I class Bernard Herrmann as second only to John Barry as the best ever film score composer. His Hitchcock films and Taxi Driver have been mentioned but you've also got to take into account his science fiction and fantasy music – Jason and the Argonauts being my favourite. Incidentally, Herrmann also dabbled with alternative sounds with the theremin on The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Jerry Goldsmith is excellent but his one weakness I think was always that there was an indelibly American flavour to his music, even in something unrelated like The 13th Warrior. My favourite of his pieces is The Mountain from the beginning of Star Trek V but Alien's a great score. Once again, sourced, unusual sounds crop up with his use of a conch shell for the alien, and it's interesting that Marc Streitenfeld returned to that creative thinking for Prometheus, having some of the music written to be played backwards, establishing a strange tone.

As good a composer as Zimmer is, and John Williams etc - they make music that is set to swashbuckling action scenes. So they tend to be very similar all the time. I was listening to a podcast last week which explained about how it is the same structure all the time that leads to the rising 5th chord. Because this chord progression is found in nature so much. So we as humans relate emotionally and primordially to it. The most famous example is used in the ET theme track.

Therefore I prefer composers that do things a bit out of the ordinary and a bit more ethereal. Like:

Clint Mansell
Cliff Martinez
Jan Tiersen
David Wingo
Max Richter
Olafur Arnaluds
Cave and Ellis
Michael Nyman
Phillip Glass

Ethereal is how I would describe certain parts of Thomas Newman's Skyfall score – parts of it reminded me of Blade Runner.