Academy Award® Winning Scores

And the winner is . . . all of these scores, each one selected above stiff competition by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as the best of its year. James Horner's "Hymn to the Sea" from Titanic heads our golden selection, followed by Gustavo Santaolalla's delicate but tense "Deportation/Iguazu" section from 2006 winner, Babel. Incidentally, Santaolalla had won the previous year for his Brokeback Mountain score. Pioneering electronica features among our Oscar®-laden Next Steps.

Several Oscar®-winning scores stand out from the pack here — Giorgio Moroder's distinctive use of synths for the Alan Parker-directed prison drama Midnight Express earned him a statuette in 1978, and Bernard Herrmann's intense interpretation of the fantasy movie The Devil and Daniel Webster (aka All That Money Can Buy) beat out another of his scores — for Citizen Kane, no less — to take the honours in 1941. Scores for movie musicals feature heavily among our Deep Cuts.

Back in the days when movie musicals were ten-a-penny, there was a separate Oscar® category to distinguish the song 'n' dance spectaculars from the "Dramatic or Comedy Picture" contenders. André Previn's movie score based on the Gershwin stage musical Porgy and Bess triumphed in 1959, while Seven Brides for Seven Brothers — from which we've selected the "Main Title" — ran out victorious in '54.

Even though many of the scores sampled here have a symbiotic relationship with the movies that spawned them, their Academy-sanctioned seal of approval is an indication that — when required — they stand proud alone, separate from any visual context. While it's almost impossible to listen to John Williams' "First Victim" segment from Jaws without picturing a naked girl in a spot of shark trouble, Victor Young's rousing accompaniment to Around the World in Eighty Days makes for great listening in its own right. Ditto John Barry's Out of Africa score. So kick back and enjoy one of the movie industry's great secondary pleasures.