Can composers like Hans Zimmer and John Williams be considered as classical composers?

Let me put it this way. While John Williams has had some formal musical training, both composers started as musicians in nonclassical areas of music--jazz for Williams and Euro-pop for Zimmer. Zimmer still relies heavily on his computers and synthesizers and electronic keyboards to compose his film scores.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002354/bio

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001877/bio

I'm not saying this music is bad, but it is what it is. Even a classical composer's score for a movie--say Aaron Copland's soundtrack for "Of Mice and Men" or Dmitri Shostakovich's music for "Shame" is still soundtrack music. Some soundtrack composers are better than others, but just because music might use orchestration or even choruses in them (and are often performed by prestigious symphony orchestras), it still doesn't make it classical.

On the other hand, classical music is constantly being used in films, but the music was never originally composed for that purpose. Some famous examples would be the ever-present "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" (usually illustrating some scene that has nothing to do with what the chorus is actually singing about). Another is Richard Strauss' "Also sprach Zarathustra" or "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"--otherwise known as the main theme to the film "2001: A Space Odyssey". And the final movement to the William Tell Overture by Giacomo Rossini (William Tell being an opera of course)--known to many people growing up in the 20th century as the theme from "The Lone Ranger" television program. Of course, there are many more examples I could give as well as a nod to the good taste of early Warner Brother cartoons that incorporated so many classical themes to punctuate the antics of their characters like Bugs Bunny.

Of course, Walt Disney studios purposely used classical music in their 1940 film "Fantasia".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasia_(film)

I'll leave you with this. Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hMjxnwig0o&feature...

Composers Like Hans Zimmer

This is not as straight forward as a yes or no. You have to take it on a case by case basis.

The music that Williams or Zimmer write for film is not classical. It is film music or soundtrack.

Williams and Zimmer have written some works for the concert stage that are classical.

John Williams' Tuba Concerto would be classical, his score to Star Wars is sound track or film music.

Well the way I look at it is that even though film music is there to support the film, that's not much different than ballet music which is meant to "support" the dance. The music in films work symbiotically to create an experience which is the same for ballet.

Let's look at the dictionary definition of classical music:

Serious or conventional music following long-established principles rather than a folk, jazz, or popular tradition.

It definitely seems to me that film music could fall under that description. But that description is pretty vague and would actually exclude a lot of classical music including Copland, Dougherty, and post-tonal composers or otherwise any composers modern or post-modern who actively defy those "long-established principles". You can't seriously say that any composer that defies the European common-practice tradition is not a classical composer.

We must remember we are talking about labels here. Labels that are useful but don't always necessarily help for music that doesn't neatly fall into one category or another. Don't let ideologues tell you otherwise.

Not in a strict sense. Their musics purpose is to reinforce visuals of film. I suppose that all have composed works that are not centered around film, but I don't know what those works are.

... Williams' Air and Simple Gifts notwithstanding, that isn't an original work.

No, Paul McCartney has in his career composed a Symphony but that doesn't make him a symphonic artist

there are many great film score composers that they can be in a "peer group" with: Max Steiner, Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini, Bernard Hermann

Yes, they can. Classical composers like Mozart and Beethoven wrote music for operas, which were the movies of their day, and we think nothing of that anymore. Mozart also wrote music for his Masonic lodge, for friends, for dancing, for students. Composers have always written music for reasons besides just being inspired. After all, they have bills to pay too!

No. They are not classical composers simply because the music they create is not classical. They write music in a completely separate genre.

No, I don't think it can. Play the music on its own and it becomes meaningless - unless you happen to have seen the film(s) and you remember where each piece belongs. Classical composers have written some fine film scores but it doesn't seem to work both ways.

No I don't think so. Their music is like a genre of its own.