The 1970's were a great decade for blockbusters that had epic scores. These contrasted with the more avant-garde compositions for smaller pictures. Neil Norman said all these film scores "had a growing sophistication". The movies described are just those that were released during the second half of that decade.
John Williams was called the "King of Composers". He came from a musical family, attended the University of California, had classical piano lessons and attended Juilliard School in New York. He played jazz piano in clubs as well as classical performances. From New York he travelled to LA to work as a session musician with some of the great composers there.
His first compositions were for TV but his breakthrough feature film was 1967's Valley of the Dolls for which he earned an Oscar nomination for the score. !969's Goodbye Mister Chips gained Williams another such nomination.He then gained notoriety for his scores to some big blockbusters starting with The Poseidon Adventure followed by The Towering Inferno.
He went on to work many times with Steven Spielberg starting with The Sugarland Express and then in 1975 with perhaps his most famous score for Jaws. For that summer hit, he gave the shark that spooky two note coda. For Close Encounters of the Third Kind it was those repeating five notes that were memorable. Then 1977's Star Wars was called "one of the most loved film scores of all time" and "an immense Wagnerian score". There was something "magisterial" in his composing.
David Shire also came from a musical family. (I didn't know the name). He was a devotee of jazz and was writing music for TV when he married Talia Rose Coppola, the sister of Francis Ford. The director commissioned him to write the music for 1974's The Conversation. Bonnie Greer called it an "incredible piano score" that Shire actually composed before the movie was shot. The same year he composed that jazzy theme for The Taking of Pelham 123. It was called "a new kind of score" that featured that off key brass sound. Shire nearly didn't get the job to score All the President's Men when he said it didn't need music for a story everyone knew. But he was convinced to compose that quiet subtle brass soundtrack.
Bernard Herrmann's career was described in earlier series so it was just left for him to compose the score for Taxi Driver before he died in 1975.
In 1976, Gerry Goldsmith composed the choral score for The Omen. Those gregorian chants were a big feature of the unsettling, ecclesiastical feel of the movie.
The music that Stanley Myers wrote for The Deer Hunter in 1978 included the guitar piece Cavatina that is now a classic.
Jack Nitzsche had a background in popular music, working with Phil Spector as an arranger and with The Rolling Stones. As an expert keyboard player, he contributed to many of their albums. In the mid 1970's he began to concentrate more on film work, notably the score for The Peformance. In 1973 he composed the score for The Exorcist, another unsettling score, and in 1975 for One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest .
Dave Grusin was yet another composer who came from a musical family. His 1975 score for 3 Days of the Condor was called "full tilt jazz, just right for a modern thriller. In 1977 he wrote the music for The Goodbye Girl and then for Heaven Can Wait in 1978. It reminded me of those lush orchestral soundtracks from old movie classics. Grusin gave 1979's The Champ a real emotional score.
Bill Conti's big success was his score for Rocky in 1976. A big popular soundtrack.
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