The Most Famous
COMPOSERS from Canada
Top 8
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Canadian Composers of all time. This list of famous Canadian Composers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Howard Shore (b. 1946)
With an HPI of 62.69, Howard Shore is the most famous Canadian Composer. His biography has been translated into 49 different languages on wikipedia.
Howard Leslie Shore (born October 18, 1946) is a Canadian composer, conductor and orchestrator noted for his film scores. He has composed the scores for over 80 films, most notably the scores for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies. He won three Academy Awards for his work on The Lord of the Rings, with one being for the song "Into the West", an award he shared with Eurythmics lead vocalist Annie Lennox and writer/producer Fran Walsh, who wrote the lyrics. He is a consistent collaborator with director David Cronenberg, having scored all but one of his films since 1979, and collaborated with Martin Scorsese on six of his films. Shore has also composed concert works including one opera, The Fly, based on the plot of Cronenberg's 1986 film, which premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on July 2, 2008; a short piece named Fanfare for the Wanamaker Organ and the Philadelphia Orchestra; and a short overture for the Swiss 21st Century Symphony Orchestra. Shore has also composed for television, including serving as the original musical director for the American sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980. In addition to his three Oscars, Shore has also won three Golden Globe Awards, four Grammy Awards, three Genie Awards, and nine Canadian Screen Awards.
2. R. Murray Schafer (1933 - 2021)
With an HPI of 51.13, R. Murray Schafer is the 2nd most famous Canadian Composer. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Raymond Murray Schafer (18 July 1933 – 14 August 2021) was a Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World (1977). He was the first recipient of the Jules Léger Prize in 1978.
3. Percy Faith (1908 - 1976)
With an HPI of 50.39, Percy Faith is the 3rd most famous Canadian Composer. Her biography has been translated into 21 different languages.
Percy Faith (April 7, 1908 – February 9, 1976) was a Canadian–American bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of instrumental ballads and Christmas standards. He is often credited with popularizing the "easy listening" or "mood music" format. He became a staple of American popular music in the 1950s and continued well into the 1960s. Although his professional orchestra-leading career began at the height of the swing era, he refined and rethought orchestration techniques, including use of large string sections, to soften and fill out the brass-dominated popular music of the 1940s.
4. Mychael Danna (b. 1958)
With an HPI of 47.29, Mychael Danna is the 4th most famous Canadian Composer. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.
Mychael Danna (born September 20, 1958) is a Canadian composer of film and television scores. He won both the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Original Score for Life of Pi. He has also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Original Dramatic Score) in his work on the miniseries World Without End.
5. Claude Vivier (1948 - 1983)
With an HPI of 43.64, Claude Vivier is the 5th most famous Canadian Composer. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Claude Vivier (French: [klod 'vivje] VEEV-yay; baptised as Claude Roger; 14 April 1948 – 7 March 1983) was a Canadian composer, pianist, poet and ethnomusicologist of Québécois origin. After studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne, Vivier became an innovative member of the "German Feedback" movement, a subset of what is now known as spectral music. Between 1976 and 1977, Vivier traveled to Egypt, Japan, Iran, Thailand, Singapore, and Bali, where he came under the influence of aspects of their respective traditional musics. Despite working at a slow pace and leaving behind a small oeuvre, Vivier's musical language is vast and diverse. His place in the spectral movement of Europe allowed for manipulations of the harmonic series, and led to music that incorporated microtones to replicate these frequencies; a compositional technique he would later refer to as the jeux de couleurs. He is also known for incorporating elements of serialism and dodecaphony, musique concrète, extended techniques, surrealism, traditional Québécois folk songs, and more. The themes of Vivier's pieces are largely seen as autobiographical – often centering around loneliness and ostracization, the search for love and companionship, and the voyaging of foreign lands. He used his personal experiences to advance an avant-garde style, having written multilingual vocal music and devising his so-called langues inventées (invented languages). He is considered to be among the greatest composers in Canada's history – György Ligeti would revere Vivier as, "the most important and original composer of his generation". Vivier was openly gay. After ending his relationship with Christopher Coe, his long-term partner, Vivier frequented Parisian gay bars from where he solicited male prostitutes, one of whom violently attacked him in January 1983. Despite warnings from friends and his own increasing paranoia over his safety, Vivier continued to engage in the same behavior. On the night of 7 March, Vivier was killed by a serial murderer who routinely deceived gay men in The Marais in order to rob and assault them.
6. Christophe Beck (b. 1972)
With an HPI of 41.07, Christophe Beck is the 6th most famous Canadian Composer. His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.
Jean-Christophe Beck (born in 1968 in Montreal) is a Canadian television and film score composer and conductor. He is best known for his collaborations with Disney and its subsidiaries, which include composing the soundtracks of The Muppets (2011) and Muppets Most Wanted (2014), Frozen (2013) and Frozen 2 (2019), the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Ant-Man (2015), Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) as well as the TV miniseries WandaVision (2021), Hawkeye (2021), and Agatha All Along (2024) for Marvel Studios, and Free Guy (2021) for 20th Century Studios, as well as Disney’s 100th anniversary logo. He composed the scores for several of Shawn Levy's films, including Big Fat Liar (2002), Just Married (2003), Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), The Pink Panther (2006), The Internship (2013), and Free Guy (2021). Notably, he won an Emmy Award in 1998 for his work on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He is also known for composing the scores of the film series The Hangover (2009-2013). He is the older brother of composer, pianist and rapper Chilly Gonzales.
7. Erik Mongrain (b. 1980)
With an HPI of 40.33, Erik Mongrain is the 7th most famous Canadian Composer. His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.
Erik Mongrain (born April 12, 1980) is a Canadian composer and guitarist. He has a unique and dark acoustic style, with a wide array of different techniques, approaches and textures reminiscent of Michael Hedges. He is widely considered to be one of the best acoustic guitarists of the 2000s.
8. Venetian Snares (b. 1975)
With an HPI of 33.11, Venetian Snares is the 8th most famous Canadian Composer. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.
Aaron Funk (born January 11, 1975), known as Venetian Snares, is a Canadian electronic musician based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is widely known for innovating and popularising the breakcore genre, and is one of the most recognisable artists to be signed to Planet Mu, an experimental electronic music label. His signature style involves meticulously complex drums, eclectic use of samples, and odd time signatures, in particular, 74. His 2005 release Rossz Csillag Alatt Született combined breakbeats with orchestral samples, and was released to critical acclaim, helping bring the artist and genre into popularity within the experimental electronic music community. Funk is a very prolific musician, often releasing several records each year, sometimes on several different record labels, including Planet Mu, Hymen, Sublight, and his own imprint Timesig, and also under different aliases, including Last Step, Snares Man!, Snares, and Speed Dealer Moms. He has also explored other electronic genres such as glitch, IDM, modern classical and acid techno.
People
Pantheon has 8 people classified as Canadian composers born between 1908 and 1980. Of these 8, 5 (62.50%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Canadian composers include Howard Shore, Mychael Danna, and Christophe Beck. The most famous deceased Canadian composers include R. Murray Schafer, Percy Faith, and Claude Vivier. As of April 2024, 2 new Canadian composers have been added to Pantheon including R. Murray Schafer, and Claude Vivier.
Living Canadian Composers
Go to all Rankings
Howard Shore
1946 - Present
HPI: 62.69
Mychael Danna
1958 - Present
HPI: 47.29
Christophe Beck
1972 - Present
HPI: 41.07
Erik Mongrain
1980 - Present
HPI: 40.33
Venetian Snares
1975 - Present
HPI: 33.11
Deceased Canadian Composers
Go to all RankingsR. Murray Schafer
1933 - 2021
HPI: 51.13
Percy Faith
1908 - 1976
HPI: 50.39
Claude Vivier
1948 - 1983
HPI: 43.64
