Score

... if only!

Good, but not great.

Well, the OP is asking about thematic/leitmotiv handling, so I don't think he is looking just for examples of the academic definition of leitmotiv. In Alien, there are definitely some recurring themes which can be associated either with the Alien itself, or with the desolation of the alien planet, or with the loneliness and mistery of space travel (that woodwind figuration appearing mostly in the initial cues that was also reprised by Horner in his score for Aliens), so I think the score fits the request.

Well, excluding a large part of JW's output and LOTR, and some Powell scores that were already mentioned, Korngold (e.g., Adventures of Robin Hood) and Goldsmith (e.g., The Mummy and, to a certain extent, Alien) come to my mind.

In no particular order, I would go with the following. Places 1-10: A.I. Artificial Intelligence Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back The Phantom Menace Return of the Jedi Schindler's List Close Encounters of the Third Kind E. T. Places 11-20: Dracula Jaws Hook Angela's Ashes Raiders of the Lost Ark Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Jurassic Park The Lost World Saving Private Ry

From the Williams-Goldsmith generation, I'd say that Morricone is comparable or even superior to Herrmann in terms of innovative ideas. They both were keen on using unusual orchestrations to give each movie its own "color", and I think it can be said that Morricone experimented with a broader variety of compositional techniques. In Morricone's output, you find anything from the lush Romantic melody (e.g. Deborah's theme and other analogue pieces) to minimalism, to 12-tone, to avant-garde. Herrmann was more repetitive with respect to this aspect (to be fair, he also died much younger).

"Man with a harmonica" from "Once Upon a Time in the West", by Morricone: Man with a harmonica It features a distorted electric guitar starting around 1:05 .

I'm a big Beatles fan and Sgt. Pepper is my favourite album. Literally every song in it is great, in large part due to the imaginative and immediately recognizable arrangements (mostly done by George Martin, who was as relevant as any of the Fab Four to their success).

That cue was not intended to be in the movie, in the initial stage. Herrmann's manuscript score does not include it: after "The Road", there is "Finale", and there is a clear indication on how to connect the two pieces into a single one (probably this was added later as an instruction to assemble the suite). "First Snows of Winter" is tracked from the second part of the cue "The Monorail", also included in the Tribute recording, so it was probably a request by Truffaut which took place after Herrmann had finished the composition of the score, and not planned to be there initially. Moreover, th

I have a similar top 5, but with Mysterious Island in the place of The Kentuckian (although I don't know the latter yet; just received the Stromberg CD and planning to listen to it in the weekend). Fahrenheit 451 is truly gorgeous, comparable to Psycho under many aspects. Some cues got a bit butchered in the final cut of the movie, but fortunately we have an almost perfect re-recording.

I'm not at all surprised that JW is protective about his themes and wants them presented in his own way. We should never, ever forget THIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRrm59Z_0w4

My personal priority list would be: Universal > Sequels > Prequels > Oliver Stone > Indiana Jones > Original SW trilogy

In principle, it is possible. If the same question had been asked in a poll in 1971, about the 1970s, I doubt many people would have answered affirmatively, and even less would have anticipated who, among the working composers of the time, would have been able to deliver a score worthy of that title (*). Surprises are always around the corner! (*) I'm thinking of "The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing" (1973), of course.

This poll made me reflect on the fact that I went to see several of these movies only because I knew in advance that they had been scored by JW, and probably I would have overlooked them otherwise. In some cases (Empire of the Sun, Angela's Ashes) the movies turned out to be really good, in some others (The Terminal) not at all!

The clip is just perfect!