Oomoog the Ecstatic

"I love all music. Even the old fashioned stuff sometimes, you know, like 90s R&B." -Professional artists

The main character is like a miniature Harrison Ford, that's why the movie is so good.

My favorite Christmas Carol actually isn't We Three Kings, it's the one at 1:06 here. Williams is a genius.

My Top 5 is We Three Kings I guess, published 1857. We three kings of orient are, Bearing gifts we traverse afar Field and fountain, moor and mountain, Following yonder star. Oh, star of wonder, star of night, Star with royal beauty bright. Westward leading, still proceeding, Guide us with thy perfect light.

What's it about

An Oscar for Jurassic Park instead of Schindler's List

And I tabulated and ranked our forum participants' Top 10s from a 16 year old JWFan thread. A pretty good representative sample actually. Here is JWFan's Top 30 Composers 1. Williams 2. Beethoven 3. Mahler 4. Prokofiev 5. Mozart 6. Wagner 7. Stravinsky 8. Debussy 9. Holst 10. Shostakovich 11. Dvorak 12. Bach 13. Strauss, R 14. Bernstein 15. Grieg 16. Bruckner 17. Tchaikovsky 18. Vaughan Williams 19. Elgar 20. Rachmaninoff 21. Ravel 22. Haydn 23. Mendelssohn 24. Adams 25. Rimsky-Korsakov 26. Mussorgsky 27. Sibelius 28. Copland 29. Chopin 30. Barber

I'm inducing more bias in an internet poll. Yay! At least what's shown above is the poll after about a year+.

Just posting this here in case the webpage gets deleted. John Williams is in 24th place on the biggest online poll I've seen. It allows you to choose all or any amount.

You know that one guy, Jeffy?

That one, and this one too Mmm. I'd like this text-to-speech mod for my Alexa:

Interesting! We both put this on our lists, though not in my Top 10. Perhaps it's Williams's greatest melody. A great tune!

The big moment! Definitely Tchaik's best symphony:

4:58 to the end is such a harmonic delight. This version's a little too slow though: Yes, gorgeous! So much good stuff:

So much memorable leitmotif. Not exactly a new 'recommendation'

This one's rly good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzRt3FrFuWA And then:

When I saw this thread, my body was ready.

Here I'll post the video.

I swear, most composers, including Powell, including calm ambient composers, are overly-dramatic in place of proper evocation. But aside from that fault, this was not terrible.

There are styles similar to this in earlier film, but none as so powerful and legendary. Princess Mononoke's is definitely my favorite intro moment in music. The 90s brought a lot of purity of sound to film, with new composers and a lot of forgotten gems. Then your more obvious ones:

I agree with you there about the importance of ranking nuance. Though I wonder if they might've believed asking for ranks would give too much societal pressure, ie. "What? you think x composer is better than Bach and Beethoven?" so the composer being polled would just put these two 1st as to not cause embarassment or overthink it, having this fake/societal fear of being viewed incompetent. Even better would be to make their ranks unknown/anonymous to the public, so they might stay true to their personal rankings. Non-rank didn't seem to make the list more true/interesting anyway, it still yields popular composers in the top: Bach, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Mozart. Many of us have a tendency to want to put the popular go-to choices higher than our own favorites, to sound "objective." I'm openly honest about my praise of Borodin and John Williams over other composers. That's why I'm on this forum, because music is subjective and based in evolutionary biology. If we wanted Beethoven's opinion on the best composer, he wouldn't say "Beethoven," so why would Williams do the same; it's up to every individual to decide their favorites. Hopefully others think a similar way about their favorites, making ranking preferable in gaining a better overall census. Even within John Williams, we can't all agree on the best pieces.

Like I said, polling for Top 10 or 20 is pointless, because that information is (a) unknown to composers, even if they can come up with a mainstream answer it would not be accurate to them personally, (b) their favorite 3-5 composers has way more personal weight, making the result actually something accurate. You're asking for a more nonsensical list than before, with simply more societal weight in the results. Nothing to do with their personal analysis and taste. To say "most lists have Tchaikovsky or Liszt higher" wouldn't be a claim about these composers' opinions. Most lists don't have John Williams as #51, where as this one does. I don't see how you can make a claim like the bold there, it seems like just a farfetched assumption: plenty of people have those 6, 7, 8 place composers in their top 5, I don't see how you can claim otherwise: It fits the logic of diversification, it fits the article results if you view the results, someone's 6 will definitely be another's 4, someone's 7 will be another's 3. You would have to have proof against this logic of diversification, as a special case. The initial cut-off has to be reasonable. 5. The results gained from that can be any number, they can go all the way to listing 250 if they want to because the initial measure was accurate. It's only obvious that the lower down on any survey you go, it will always be less accurate. I don't think anyone is arguing that.

Nah. It only makes sense to ask for peoples' favorites in any list: People give much more personal weight/accuracy towards just their favorites, and Top 10-20 would be way too much to expect composers to quantify, as most composers don't even think about Top 10 or have that information handy or care about it. It would be inaccurate to poll that information. Most people know for sure their personal favorites and that's it. It would be silly to assume a composer in someone's 6 7 8 spots would not be represented, because lots of people already chose that composer for their top 5: Wagner, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, some may go with Mozart or Beethoven as their #6, all good choices for modern composers, and they are all definitely here on this list. To recommend polling for 6, 7, 8 spots, is only recommending that you want it less accurate, asking for unknowns that composers haven't clearly thought about. Making a Top 50 out of top 5s is perfectly fine as a demographic, showing which composers were nominated more. As much as everyone has a criticism towards this list, by logic everyone in the world disagrees with any list because it's not their own list, so there's no argument here. Just because you find a few people who sometimes agree with you about your criticisms, doesn't mean you're objectively right. In reality this list is fine, for the purpose it accomplishes: showing all the highest recommendations of professional composers. Everyone, including the polled composers, is going to personally disagree with the list because it's not their own personal list, it doesn't mean it's flawed.