October 17, 2006

News | The Greatest Film Composer of All Time? |

Who is the greatest film composer of all time? Over at Slate, Jan Swafford has been pondering this and he's come up with an intriguing answer:

"My new champion is a composer who's scored nearly 100 films, from thriller to arty, who had an encyclopedic command of style as well as a singular voice of his own, and who is numbered in the highest rank of modern concert-hall composers—something many film composers aspired to but only one achieved: Toru Takemitsu.

Takemitsu was an amazing figure: a first-rate straight composer, detective novelist, and fanatic of film and pop music. ("My teachers," he said, "are Duke Ellington and nature.") Despite his success in the concert hall, he's not properly recognized in the United States for his movie work simply because many of his movies never made it here. But there's enough that can be found in your video store to show what he could do, including Woman in the Dunes and, near the end of his life, Akira Kurosawa's Ran."