Alexandre Desplat Wins Film Composer of the Year at World Soundtrack Awards

1:29 AM PDT 10/24/2011 by Scott Roxborough

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Matt Dames/Courtesy of Chasen PR

The French composer wrote the scores for "The King’s Speech," "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" and "The Tree of Life."

COLOGNE, Germany – Prolific French composer Alexandre Desplat has won the World Soundtrack Academy’s film composer of the year honor from the third straight year. Desplat’s output this included the scores for Oscar-winner The King’s Speech, box office juggernaut Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Parts 1 & 2 and Cannes Palme d’Or winner The Tree of Life. More recently, the four-time Oscar-nominee penned the music to Roman Polanski’s Carnage and George Clooney-starrer The Ides of March.

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Oscar-winning German composer Hans Zimmer beat out Desplat for the Best Original Film Score honor, taking the prize for his work on Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Veteran songsmith Randy Newman nabbed the Academy’s Best Original Song prize for his tune We Belong Together, written for Toy Story 3.

Other winners at the 2011 World Soundtrack Awards, which closed the Ghent International Film Festival this weekend, included Alex Heffes, who won Discovery of the Year for his scores to The First Grader and The Rite; the Public Choice Award for A.R. Rahman’s score to 127 Hours and the Best Young European Composer honor, which went to Gabriel Heinrich.

This year’s lifetime achievement award was presented to three-time Oscar winning Italian composer Giorgio Moroder, whose credits include songs for Scarface, Flashdance and Top Gun.