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Put six film composers in a room with a bottle of wine and camaraderie is sure to develop quickly. That’s exactly what happened on Dec. 5 at Acabar in Los Angeles when THR’s composer roundtable got underway. While actors, directors and producers routinely get all the filmmaking glory, composers are, as one prominent agent said before the roundtable, the “red- headed stepchild” of Hollywood. Frequently working in isolation, facing punishing deadlines and often tasked with “fixing” problematic material, film composers certainly have their fair share of angst — but they also love to discuss the minutiae of a craft that...

French composer Maurice Jarre, best known for his music on classic Hollywood films, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 84. Jarre, who had been suffering from cancer, rose to prominence relatively late in life. His breakthrough came in 1962 when he wrote the score for Lawrence of Arabia, for he was awarded an Oscar. He won two further Oscars for Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India, and composed music for more than 150 films. His scores enhanced the work of some of the film industry's greatest directors - among others David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston...

Schubert died at 31. How much music did his early death deprive us of? Not a lot. Rossini died at 76, but give or take a few interesting items at the end of his life, posterity could just as well have cut him off at 37, when he stopped writing operas to concentrate on the more important tasks of eating and drinking. Life, long or short, looks to be simple addition. Factor in the matter of velocity, however, and we have a law of motion that might make Isaac Newton smile. Life spans measured in years don’t take into account...

Sir Malcolm Arnold, the composer, conductor and trumpeter who died on Saturday aged 84, blew like a fresh keen wind through British music when his compositions were first performed in the early 1950s.At a time when critical opinion was becoming restless about Vaughan Williams, Walton and others and was hankering after serialist composers and Schoenberg followers, Arnold’s melodic music, full of diatonic gusto, unafraid of the occasional emotional cliché and standing aloof from “trends”, came as a disconcerting complication. A tendency to underrate him, to regard him as lightweight, began then and was never wholly corrected.When the first of his...

MOSCOW, September 22, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Russian audiences next week will get the chance to rediscover Dmitry Shostakovich and his music with a series of new recordings, concerts, and films to mark the centenary of his birth. Born in St. Petersburg in 1906 to a family of Polish origin, Shostakovich remains one of the 20th century's most popular composers -- and also one of the most prolific. He composed 15 symphonies, two operas, six concertos, 15 string quartets, three ballets, as well as film music. Oksana Dvornichenko met Shostakovich in 1974, one year before his death, while shooting a documentary...

I was sitting here tonight listening to Mozart's Requiem and I got to thinking: what do I consider to be the best work of music ever? For my part, Mozart's work really does the trick for me when I need to be re-energized. Therefore, I believe that his Requiem is the greatest work of all time. There just isn't another work that is as powerful and passionate. When the chorus sings the final "Amen" at the end of "Lacrimosa" I get the feeling that he knew it was the last thing he would ever write. It gives me chills at...

LINARES, Spain - Fifteen years after his death, master classical guitarist Andres Segovia finally was brought back to his hometown as he wished. Segovia's remains were exhumed from the Madrid cemetery where he originally was buried and brought to Linares in Jaen province, the heart of Spain's olive-growing region. Segovia, widely considered the greatest classical guitarist of the 20th century, died in 1987 at the age of 94. He is credited with elevating the guitar from a lowly bar instrument to one played on classical concert stages around the world, garnering as much respect as the violin or piano. Segovia...