James Horner

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James Horner (2010)

James Roy Horner (born August 14, 1953 in Los Angeles , California - † June 22, 2015 in Los Padres National Forest , California) was an American film composer and two-time Oscar winner. He was best known for the music for the films Braveheart , Titanic , Avatar - Aufbruch nach Pandora and Apollo 13 . Horner composed in a style that was largely based on tonality , although elements from modern times and world music were occasionally used .

The early years

James Horner was the son of the Austrian immigrant Harry Horner , who won two Oscar awards as a production designer in Hollywood . The family moved to London in the mid-1950s . James Horner first studied there at the Royal College of Music . He later moved to the University of Southern California , where he did his M.A. Afterwards he began to work on his doctoral thesis at the University of California in Los Angeles, which he did not complete. He studied a. a. also in Hamburg with György Ligeti .

In 1978 he composed a work for the concert hall called Spectral Shimmers , which was played only once by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in front of about 400 listeners . Further performances failed due to lack of money.

James Horner as a film composer

The beginnings

After doing some work for the American Film Institute (AFI) in the late 1970s, James Horner devoted himself to composing film music . He started first for the prolific B-movie - producer Roger Corman to work. The first movie was The Woman in Red (The Lady in Red) 1979. This was followed by films like Battle Beyond - ruler in space (Battle Beyond The Stars) or The Lurker Below (Humanoids from the Deep) (both 1980). The music budget for these films was so small that the music was recorded by non- AFM orchestras and James Horner personally signed the checks with the salaries for the musicians.

Breakthrough in Hollywood

Horner's breakthrough came in 1982 with the music for the second Star Trek film . Because of the film's much smaller budget, the composer of the first Star Trek cinema adventure, Jerry Goldsmith , did not return. For Der Zorn des Khan, director Nicholas Meyer asked for a film music that was clearly different from that of part one and should express a certain seafaring mentality. Today, Horner's musical contributions to Star Trek films two and three, along with Goldsmith's score to Star Trek: The Film, are considered to be the most successful in the film series.

A year later, the soundtracks for Krull and Projekt Brainstorm (Brainstorm) (both 1983) followed. In the latter, Horner resorted to atonal stylistic devices. The new recording for the soundtrack release was done by the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). In 1985 he worked with director Ron Howard for the first time on the film Cocoon , for which he has repeatedly dubbed films since then ( Willow 1988, Apollo 13 1995, Bounty - One Will Pay (Ransom) 1996, The Grinch ( How The Grinch Stole Christmas 2000), A Beautiful Mind - Genie und Wahnsinn 2001, The Missing 2003).

In 1986, James Horner received his first Oscar nominations for James Cameron's Aliens - The Return and the animated film Feivel the Mouse Walker (An American Tail) (Best Song Category). Between 1986 and 1995 Horner set numerous cartoons to music : In addition to Feivel, the mouse wanderer , Feivel, the mouse wanderer in the Wild West (An American Tail: Fievel Goes West) , In a Land Before Time (The Land Before Time) , Master Dachs and his friends (Once Upon A Forest) , Vier Dinos in New York (We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story) , Pagemaster (The Pagemaster) and Balto . Many of them were produced by Steven Spielberg .

When he traveled to London in 1986 to start writing the music for James Cameron's Aliens: The Return , he found that Cameron was still shooting and re-editing the film. As long as that was the case, Horner could not start composing, as this film music is far too image-related to be written without a finished film. This meant that he had to write the music for the final scene the night before the LSO was recorded. Ultimately, large parts of the music were either used elsewhere than originally intended or replaced by music from the first part. Horner wrote 97 minutes of music for the film in less than two weeks.

1989 Horner received another Oscar nomination for Field of Dreams (Field of Dreams) . The Glory , composed in the same year , surprisingly received no nomination. 1993 James Horner had a very active year, appeared in the ten set to music by him films, such as The Pelican Brief (The Pelican Brief) and The Man Without a Face (The Man Without A Face) . In 1994 he worked on Edward Zwick's Legends of the Fall (Legends of The Fall) and 1995 to Mel Gibson's Braveheart , which were not only artistically but also commercially very successful. He received two Oscar nominations for Apollo 13 and Braveheart , but could not prevail against Luis Bacalov's The Postman (Il Postino) .

Oscars for Titanic

His best-known work is the soundtrack to the film Titanic , which was made in 1997 under the direction of James Cameron. For this, Horner was awarded an Oscar in 1998 for the best original music. He received a second Oscar for My Heart Will Go On as Best Original Song , which he had written with Will Jennings and which, when interpreted by Celine Dion, became a worldwide hit. He also received three Grammys and two Golden Globes for the Titanic soundtrack . With nearly 30 million copies sold, Titanic is one of the most successful soundtracks in film history.

He first worked with Wolfgang Petersen on the films Der Sturm (The Perfect Storm) (2000) and Troja (Troy) (2004) . In the latter, he replaced Gabriel Yared at short notice after his music had been heavily criticized in some test demonstrations and was perceived as annoying. Horner managed to write a whole new film score in less than ten days. 2001 and 2003 came Oscar nominations for A Beautiful Mind - Genius and Madness (A Beautiful Mind) and House of Sand and Fog (House of Sand and Fog) added.

Horner spent eight months on the music for Terrence Malick's film The New World . After turbulence in post-production, larger parts of the music were not used in the final film version and were replaced by compositions by Mozart ( 23rd Piano Concerto in A major, KV 488 ) and Wagner (" Das Rheingold "). The soundtrack album released at the start of the film only contains James Horner's original score.

In 2013 Horner won the Max Steiner Award at the Hollywood in Vienna event . Film composers such as Lalo Schifrin , Howard Shore and John Barry have previously received this award .

style

In addition to Titanic, there are a few other scores with music in the Irish style, for example Braveheart , Vertrauter Feind (The Devil's Own) or Bobby Jones - Die Golflegende (Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius) . Even more common Horner orchestral combined with electronic music in The Legend of the Black River (Where the River Runs Black) , Vibes - The psychic hunt for the glowing pyramid or Beyond Borders (Beyond Borders) . In addition to numerous large-scale productions such as Duell - Enemy at the Gates (Enemy At The Gates) (2001) or Die Maske des Zorro (The Mask of Zorro) (1998), James Horner was repeatedly involved in smaller film projects such as Die Geschichte vom Spitfire Grill (The Spitfire Grill) (1996) or Happiness in Small Doses (The Chumscrubber) (2005).

He often worked with well-known singers such as Annie Lennox (Apollo 13) , Sissel Kyrkjebø (Titanic) , Charlotte Church (A Beautiful Mind) , Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (The Four Feathers, Apocalypto) , Caseline Kunene (Beyond All Limits) , Tanja Tzarovska (Troy) , Hayley Westenra (The New World) together. The musicians Tony Hinnigan (folk instruments) and Kazu Matsui ( shakuhachi ) also played for him on a regular basis .

A sipsi made of bamboo. Along with many others, this instrument was also used in the film music for Apocalypto .

In order to do justice to the rough tone of the film with the score for Apocalypto , he did without a classical orchestra and instead wrote the music for a variety of folk musical instruments (including Trumscheit , Fujara , Sipsi and Zurna ).

In the music for The Secrets of the Spiderwicks , a bass accordion , a bass harmonica and a harpsichord were used in addition to a large orchestra .

For James Cameron's Avatar - Departure for Pandora , Horner worked with a music ethnologist to create a musical culture of its own for the extraterrestrial race featured in the film. Individual pieces of music for this film were recorded in the summer of 2007 and 2008.

One accusation that has been expressed against Horner's compositional style is that of plagiarism . So Horner was accused of repeating his own musical dramaturgical patterns too strongly, but also regularly used motifs or entire music passages from the classical period. Particularly blatant examples are Star Trek III: Looking for Mr. Spock , track "Stealing the Enterprise" - from: Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofjew , Romeo and Juliet , "Tybalts Tod" / Aliens , track "Prologue" - from: Aram Chatschaturjan , Gayaneh , "Adagio" (used by Horner again in Die hour der Patrioten ) / Red Heat , track " Main Title “- from: Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofjew, cantata for the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution op. 74 , in it The Philosophers . However, such accusations also hit other well-known composers such as Hans Zimmer , John Williams or Bill Conti .

Horner commented on the matter as follows:

“In Mozart's era, Mozart was the best of all. However, if one looks at any fifteen other composers of the time, their music was basically identical to that of Mozart. If you listen to his father or Michael Haydn , they all spoke the same musical language. Film music is this weird thing where every score has to be different from the other, at least that's what the lawyers say. But that's impossible for an artist. [...] For me, classical music - serious music - is a wonderful world from which I draw. "

- James Horner, 1995

death

On June 22, 2015, a Horner-registered single-engine aircraft crashed in the Los Padres National Forest in Southern California . The pilot was the only person on board and also the only person killed. Although the body could not be identified at first, Horner's lawyer said: "We know that it is his plane, and we also know that we have not heard from him since then." The US magazine Variety shortly afterwards confirmed Horner's death. The investigation report by the National Transportation Safety Board cited a possible impairment of Horners by the barbiturate butalbital and codeine (a combination of active ingredients common in the USA that is used in drugs for tension headache) as the cause of the Short Tucano's crash .

Awards

James Horner has been nominated ten times for an Oscar and a Golden Globe . However, he could only win for the film music and the title track for Titanic .

Further awards (bold) and nominations:

Oscars

  • 1987: Aliens
  • 1987: Somewhere Out There (from Feivel, der Mauswanderer )
  • 1990: Field of Dreams
  • 1996: Apollo 13
  • 1996: Braveheart
  • 1998: Titanic
  • 1998: My Heart Will Go On (from Titanic )
  • 2002: A Beautiful Mind
  • 2004: House made of sand and fog
  • 2010: Avatar - Departure for Pandora

Grammys

  • 1988: Feivel, the mouse wanderer
  • 1988: Somewhere Out There (from Feivel, the Mouse Wanderer )
  • 1990: Field of Dreams
  • 1991: Glory
  • 1996: Whatever You Imagine (from The Pagemaster )
  • 1999: My Heart Will Go On (from Titanic )
  • 2003: A Beautiful Mind
  • 2010: Avatar - Departure for Pandora
  • 2010: I See You (from Avatar )

Golden Globes

  • 1987: Somewhere Out There (from Feivel, der Mauswanderer )
  • 1990: Glory
  • 1992: Dreams To Dream (from Feivel, the mouse wanderer in the Wild West )
  • 1995: Legends of Passion
  • 1996: Braveheart
  • 1998: Titanic
  • 1998: My Heart Will Go On (from Titanic )
  • 2002: A Beautiful Mind
  • 2010: Avatar - Departure for Pandora
  • 2010: I See You (from Avatar )

Satellite Awards

  • 1998: Titanic
  • 1998: My Heart Will Go On (from Titanic )
  • 2002: A Beautiful Mind
  • 2002: All Love Can Be (from A Beautiful Mind )
  • 2004: The Missing

Works (selection)

Filmography

movie theater

Rejected film scores

Working for television

  • 1981: A Few Days in Weasel Creek
  • 1982: A Piano for Mrs. Cimino
  • 1983: Between Friends
  • 1985: Incredible Stories ( Amazing Stories , episode: Alamo Jobe )
  • 1985: Faerie Tale Theater (episode: The Pied Piper of Hamelin )
  • 1985: ... and found no way out (surviving)
  • 1990: Tales from the Crypt ( Tales from the Crypt , a row: Cutting Cards )
  • 1990: Extreme Close-Up
  • 1992: Crossroads (subject)
  • 1992: Fish Police (subject)
  • 2000: Freedom Song
  • 2006: CBS News

Short films and documentaries

  • 1985: Let's Go
  • 1986: Captain EO (Epcot Center)
  • 1989: Tummy Trouble (Roger in distress)
  • 1991: Norman and the Killer
  • 2012: First in Flight
  • 2015: Living in the Age of Airplanes
  • 2015: Auschwitz - 70 years later (One Day in Auschwitz)

Concert works

  • 1976: Conversations
  • 1977: Spectral Shimmers
  • 2000: A Forest Passage
  • 2014: Pas de Deux
  • 2015: Collage: A Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra

Other works

Trivia

  • James Horner can be seen briefly as a member of the crew in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan .
  • Horner wrote new music for the newscast CBS Evening News, which started with a new host on September 5, 2006 in the United States. The broadcaster later decided to use music composed by Horner for all other news programs.
  • To two films, whose predecessors Jerry Goldsmith composed the music, namely Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Aliens - The Return , Horner wrote the music. In return, Jerry Goldsmith set the attack - a Jack Ryan film, of which Horner had previously accompanied two ( The Hour of the Patriots , The Cartel ) with music. Goldsmith also composed a new fanfare for Universal Pictures in 1997 after Horner (1990) .
  • His brother Christopher is also a director in the film industry.

Quotes

“I really appreciate Jerry Goldsmith , but I hope my music doesn't look too much like his. Those who are particularly valued influence you the most, and some classical composers, whose works I admire very much, also influenced me. That's why some people try to pigeonhole me and say it is this or that kind of music. However, most of my films are actually adventure or horror films - exactly the kind of films that Jerry Goldsmith mainly makes. "

- James Horner, 1982

literature

  • James Horner and Star Trek II , Randall D. Larson, in: CinemaScore . # 10, fall 1982
  • A Conversation With James Horner , Randall D. Larson, in: CinemaScore . # 11/12, fall / winter 1983
  • James Horner on scoring Star Trek III , Steven Simak, in: CinemaScore . # 13/14, fall 1984 / summer 1985
  • James Horner - "I was and am a loner ..." , Interview with Armin Amler, in: Filmharmonische Blätter . Issue 1 / Fall 1985, pp. 24-30
  • He Makes the Backgrounds Sing , Steven Smith, in: The Los Angeles Times . February 13, 1995
  • Scoring, Not Sinking , Daniel Schweiger, in: Soundtrack! . Vol. 16 / No. 64, December 1997
  • Q&A With James Horner , Ray Bennett, in: The Hollywood Reporter . Vol. CCCL / No. 41, January 1998
  • Sea Me, Hear Me , Dan Snierson, in: Entertainment Weekly . # 417, February 6, 1998

Web links

Commons : James Horner  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ^ "James Horner AFTRS" , Michael J. Middleton, in: Dreams to Dreams
  3. ↑ UCLA newsletter, autumn 2007 ( memento of the original from January 17, 2010 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu
  4. ↑ Tany Ling's MySpace blog
  5. ↑ MarketSaw blog
  6. ↑ Music from the Movies: Review of “Deep Impact” ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musicfromthemovies.com
  7. ↑ Cinemusic.de: Review of "The Four Feathers"
  8. ↑ Thomas Müthing: Whom it concerns , in Der Deutsche Filmmusik-Dienst , No. 30, April 1995
  9. ↑ Music from the Movies: Report about Holst plagiarism in Hans Zimmer's “Gladiator” ( memento of the original from June 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musicfromthemovies.com
  10. ^ Film Score Monthly: Article about a copyright lawsuit against John Williams
  11. ↑ Soundtrack Express: Review of "The Right Stuff" ( Memento from August 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ^ "He Makes The Background Sing," in: LA Times, February 13, 1995
  13. ↑ The Associated Press: James Horner, Titanic composer, dead in plane crash. CBC, June 22, 2015, accessed August 17, 2016 .
  14. ↑ Ryan Gajewski: 'Titanic' composer James Horner Missing and Feared Dead in Plane Crash, Says Attorney. The Hollywood Reporter , June 22, 2015, accessed August 17, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Jon Burlingame: James Horner, 'Titanic' Composer, Dies in Plane Crash. Variety, June 22, 2015, accessed August 17, 2016 .
  16. ^ Andrew L Swick: Aviation Accident Final Report. (PDF) In: WPR15FA195. National Transportation Safety Board, July 20, 2017, accessed on June 25, 2018 (English): "Contributing to the accident was the pilot's impairment from the combined effects of butalbital and codeine."
  17. ↑ [2] , news item at 'James Horner Film Music'.
  18. ↑ [3] , news item at 'Film Music Reporter'.
  19. ↑ [4] , homepage of the production company '.
  20. ↑ [5] , article at Classic FM '.
  21. ↑ http://www.lpo.org.uk/whats-on-and-tickets/258-evocative-russian-classics.html
  22. ↑ Interview by Randall D. Larson in CinemaScore # 10 (1982), # 11 (1983).
personal data
SURNAME Horner, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Horner, James Roy (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film composer
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Los Angeles , California , United States
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 2015
Place of death Los Padres National Forest , California , United States