Yes Korngold and Steiner, thats a given. I actually wrote a paper on them in college. Did you know Steiner was taught piano by Brahms! Insane!
An interesting life and career...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Steiner But the reason I didnt mention them is because there is a formula to their music. The style of the "Golden Age" of Hollywood remained stagnant. Scores all sounded the same-Lush strings and grandiose crsecendos etc. (I'm not complaining it's just what these films called for).
Every good composer of any kind of music has a formula. American crime movie scores from the late 1960's all kind of sound the same (altered jazz chords, neo-Bartok rhythmic patterns, percussive low register piano writing) as does any other style of film music from a certain period or style film. It's what those films call for, the same way the psychological films of the 50's and 60's call for Hermann's style, which was imitated in certain instances by Leonard Rosenman and Jerry Goldsmith among others(although these two remarkable composers have their own unique styles and skills). Hermann had his imitators which led to a style of film music composition that also became stagnant by the late 1970's. Everything becomes tired and cliche evantually.
It was really Bernard Hermann who started to change the cliche film scores to something more avante garde that expressed deeper emotions that cannot be put into words in a film.
Why does the "avant garde" mode of expression express deeper emotion than the "cliche" style that you do not define? And is Bernard Hermann's music (divorced from the cinema) avant garde for it's time? I don't think so. It's just more modern compared to other film scores of the time. Musical depth is not simply a matter of a more modern style.
He showed us melody isn't always necessary and creating an atmosphere or aura that surrounds a film is what is most important.
That's what Steiner, Korngold. Rosza and Newman did. Their music is melodic only when it needs to be. Listen to Steiner's scores to "The Letter", "White Heat" and "Caged" to hear how effectively his music can convey the feelings of insanity and violence without romantic melody. It is not less valid because the music is "tonal", although in these instances the tonality is extended, disguised and altered as it needs to be to fit the on-screen action. And very little "big tune" or memorable melody. Steiner in particular has been stigmatized as a "cliche" composer owing to his extraordinary ability to write great melodic scores and themes like "Gone With the Wind", "Now Voyager" and "A Summer Place". These themes that caught on with the general public and became hits in their own right overshadow his skill as one of the great composers of incidental music of all time.
The thing that annoys me most about this period of movie music is the use of musical cliches or devices, particularly ethnic ones such as the use of cheesy "chinese" or (american) "indian" music when a junk sails by on the screen or the Apaches charge the cavalry, etc.. Quite trite, and Steiner was one of the main perpetrators of this sort of drivel.
But the love and adventure themes are incredible...
Ennio Morricone did this as well by putting Ligeti type timbres together that created a psychological association with each genre of film. Especially Sergio Leons westerns.
Different sounds for different times. As Morricone adapted Ligeti'smusical language so Steiner and Korngold adapted the styles of Mahler and Brahms.
If you like Hermann, you'll like Rosenman, is you're not familiar with his work, here it is....
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006260/He's definitely underappreciated.
Topic: Favourite piece of movie music?