In the golden age of Hollywood film scores, cues were often borrowed and re-arranged from music of the baroque, classical, romantic, impressionistic and contemporary styles. Today, many film scores are simply collages of quick cuts of popular music with incidental music added by a composer who often scores and "performs" the music with computer software and synthesizers in a recording studio where the music is synched with the video. In some cases, live performers are recorded playing from music scores in the traditional manner - often with as few live musicians as possible who double parts and are over-dubbed in the recording studio. But, that is the most costly way of doing it. Music editors and supervisors are replacing the traditional film composer. An increasing number of film and tv scores are done by pop and rock musicians.

There are a number of names among the best film and television composers.
Here are just a few favorites along with some of their filmscores and TV cues.

Alfred Newman (The Greatest Story Ever Told)
Frank Cordell (Khartoum, Cromwell)
Alex North (The Agony and The Ecstacy)
Ennio Morricone (A Fistful of Dynamite, Once Upon a Time In the West, My Name Is Nobody, many more Italian westerns and many more films.)
Marvin Hamlisch (The Swimmer, Something Big)
Elmer Bernstein (To Kill A Mockingbird, True Grit, The Great Escape, The Age of Innocence, How the West Was Won)
Bill Conti (FX, Split Image, Rocky)
Dave Grusin (On Golden Pond, Seven Days of the Condor)
Earle Hagen (The Andy Griffith Show)
Lalo Schifrin (Brubaker)
and a number of others (especially those whose prime time was in the 1940s-1980s period.)

Just to cover a very wide base, the tv and film "westerns" and adventure series from the 1950s through the mid 1970s into the early 1980s have a lot of fine scores and cues by many composers.


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