Why not? Beats the hell out of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March for the ten thousandth freaking time … I know someone who used the Imperial March from Star Wars.
I love Isao Tomita, got hooked into him back when I was reading Stranger in a Strange Land, and the only version I could find of The Planets was the Tomita version.
The William Tell Overture will never be the same after seeing *A Clockwork Orange *.
It depends on what you call Fantasy.
I like:
The theme to The Tomorrow People by Dudley Simpson.
The Imperial March by John Williams, from a little-known movie called The Empire Strikes Back.
The western theme to Back to the Future Part III by Alan Silvestri.
The theme song for Peter Rabbit and Friends (by Perfect Day sung by Miriam Stockley).
Both the Tenth Doctor’s and Eleventh Doctor’s action themes by Murray Gold.
Ride of the Fire Mares from Krull by James Horner.
Hans Zimmer’s Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack.
The theme to Knight Rider by Stu Phillips.
Requiem for a Tower, a special remix of Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna theme in Requiem for a Dream, as first used on the trailer for LOTR: The Two Towers.
He really is the man.
A low level Horde quest in WoW ends with Lament of the Highborne. It’s so pretty and it comes as such a surprise the first time. It is one of my favorite moments in WoW.
Hard to choose, but I think I’d have to go with a double-play of Pixies’ Planet of Sound and B52s’ Planet Claire for SF, and Led Zeppelin’s Ramble On and Bauhaus’ Hollow Hills for Fantasy.
Battle in the Mutara Nebula from Star Trek II has already been mentioned, but it was my first thought when I saw the thread title.
Jeff Wayne’s war of the Worlds
Does Portal count as fantasy? If so, Still Alive.
One song was already mentioned from it, but Basil Poledouris’s entire soundtrack for Conan the Barbarian is amazing.
Tank! by Seat Belts - the theme for Cowboy Bebop! Love that - I call that type of music “crime jazz” because I found a great collection of old 50’s/60’s TV theme songs from old US shows - Peter Gunn, Legs Diamond, etc… Tank! fits in perfectly - what a great song…
Oh, the Dr. Who theme, and that lovely “There’s A Light (Over At The Frankenstein Place)” from RHPS, I suppose.
Several that have already been mentioned, notably LOTR and Conan the Barbarian but I’ll add the main theme for The Incredibles by Michael Giacchino.
The Right Stuff used Jupiter.
Thanks for reminding me the classical music canon has great fantasy pieces, too. Love the Grieg but if I had to select my favorite work with a supernatural theme, I’d go with Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
My favorite piece of music from an SF/Fantasy film would have to be the Second Movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony from the end of Zardoz – not because I loved Zardoz, but because I love Beethoven symphonies. I think they even got the Van Karajan/berlin Philharmonik version.
I’ll second my love of John Williams music – the various Star Wars film, Indiana Jones films, Superman, Jurassic Park, and others.
But even more, I love the music of Bernard Hermann, who scored the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, and other Harryhausen films. He was also one of Hitchcock’s favorite composers, doing North by Northwest. Psycho, The Man Who Knew Too Much (the second version, and that’s him conducting the orchestra on-screen in Albert Hall), and others. He’s the guy who wrote the score for the Day the Earth Stood still cited above, and, although a theremin is certainly prominent in the score, it’s not ALL theremin music.
I also really like the “electronic tonalities” of Louis and Bebe Barron in Forbidden Planet (which does NOT use a theremin). I have an album of the film score, which contains some of their other compositions, and they ALL sound like that. In fact, they seem to have “mined” their own work for the FP score.
One album I haven’t heard was the original score Alex North came up with for 2001. Most people don’t realize this, but Kubrick originally planned to have an original score for that film, which North composed. The classical pieces he used were “placeholders” for the workprint. Kubrick eventually decided he liked the classical score better, and kept it. North’s score WAS recorded, but not used, and eventually lost or destroyed. it has since been re-recorded, and is commercially available.
And all those people saying they liked Also Sprach Zarathustra have, I suspect, not heard the whole piece. It doesn’t resemble that famous 1:57 opening fanfare at all. I own it and have listened to it a great many times, but I can’t say I really like it.
In addition to many already mentioned:
Der Maschinemensch and Im Laboratorium from the original score of Metropolis.
In Time from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
This is the one I came to mention.
The film Sunshine has some outstanding music in it (by John Murphy, who also wrote for 28 Days Later), but unfortunately the soundtrack was never released properly.
A sample of Murphy’s work from Sunshine:
From 28 Days Later:
The original Solaris (1972) soundtrack. The main theme is actually a Bach choral that is used very effectively in the film.
More Horror/Action than Scifi, I am a big John Carpenter, Pina Dinaggio, Tangerine Dream fan. These artists have put out some incredible soundtracks.