WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - Going to the trouble of making a list such as this may seem trivial to some, but, in fact, the tradition of musical scoring for cinema should be considered the 'classical music' you've liked but didn't know it was 'classical.'

Let me explain.  I will assume you, like I, enjoy an immediately rapport with great film music, that the main themes to movies like 'Jurassic Park,' 'Gone With the Wind,' and 'Lawrence of Arabia,' I will assume you find them 'beautiful' and that, if you have given it any thought, that you know they are composed for and played by a full symphony orchestra.  In other words, the same orchestra that plays Beethoven at Carnegie Hall on Friday night may be in the studio the next day recording the next John Williams soundtrack. 

Let's go even further: Not only does the film composer employ all the potencies of the modern symphony orchestra, and often vocal soloists and a chorus, the composer draws upon the entire development of Western music (and sometimes non-Western) in creating a 90 to 120 musical narrative to accompany the action and dialogue on the screen. 

But here there's an even more important point to make: At the very time that film music was emerging as a developed art form, the mainstream of classical music took a wrong turn towards atonal and twelve-tone compositions.  The late Romantic musical tradition, as represented by Mahler, Bruckner, and Richard Strauss, was carried forward by film composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman,  Miklos Rozsa, and Bernard Herrmann.  Both Korngold and Rozsa had been established classical composers before arriving in Hollywood, so they literally embodied the bridge I am describing. 

As chronicled superbly in Robert R. Reilly's Surprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music (Morley 2002), the rejection of traditional tonality dominated the concert hall well into the 1980s before composers like George Rochberg and David Del Tredici began to realize the mistake.

If my argument holds, the list below represents a classical music tradition that never broke with the development of tonality in the Western music tradition.  In other words, an appreciation for film music is, necessarily, an appreciation for 'classical music,' that is, music reflecting the legacy of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner, and Strauss.
 
As Robert Reilly shows, there were many American composers who never took that atonal turn, such as David Diamond, Paul Creston, Howard Hanson, Vittorio Giannini, Nicolas Flagello, but for decades their compositions were rarely played or even mentioned in surveys of contemporary music. Conductors like Gerard Schwartz and Leonard Slatkin have been at the forefront of rediscovering their music as well as other composers who refused the break with tonality.

It's not too far-fetched to say that film music has been the 'classical music' for far more listeners than the music played symphony halls around the world for the past fifty years. The time has come to claim to not merely admit it, but to celebrate the music and musicians who have continued to minister to the human ear, and the human heart.  

-1.  City Lights, Charles Chaplin (1931)
-2.  King Kong, Max Steiner (1933)
-3.    She, Max Steiner (1935)
-4.    Modern Times, Charles Chaplin (1936)
-5.    The Charge of the Light Brigade, Max Steiner (1936)
-6.    Anthony Adverse, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1936)
-7.    Alexander Nevsky, Sergei Prokofiev (1938)
-8.    Gone With the Wind, Max Steiner (1939)
-9.    Sea Hawk, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1940)
-10.    Thief of Bagdad, Miklos Rozsa (1940)
-11.    49th Parallel, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1941)
-12.    Citizen Kane, Bernard Herrmann (1941)
-13.    The Uninvited, Victor Young (1941)
-14.    That Hamilton Woman, Miklos Rozsa (1941)
-15.    Now, Voyager, Max Steiner (1942)
-16.    Kings Row, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1942)
-17.    The Song of Bernadette, Alfred Newman (1943)
-18.    Mr. Skeffington, Franz Waxman (1944)
-19.    Henry V, William Walton (1944)
-20.    Laura, David Raksin (1944)
-21.    Spellbound, Miklos Rozsa (1945)
-22.    Forever Amber, David Raksin (1947)
-23.    Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Bernard Herrmann (1947)
-24.    Red River, Dimitri Tiomkin (1948)
-25.    Scott of the Antarctic, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1948)
-26.    The Red Pony, Aaron Copland ...