James Horner

• Born: August 14, 1953
• Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
• Died: June 22, 2015
• Place of death: Los Padres National Forest, California

American film-score composer

A prolific scorer for motion pictures and television, Horner began his career composing for low-budget science-fiction films. He went on to write scores for films in every genre, adding to his sound tracks new approaches, such as utilizing choirs and solo voices and mixing voices with synthesizers.

The Life

Born in Los Angeles, James Horner was the son of Hollywood set designer and art director Harry Horner. He began studying piano at age five. The family moved to London when James was ten, and he studied at the Royal College of Music. Returning to Los Angeles in the 1970’s, he earned a degree in composition from the University of Southern California. He later earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in musical composition and theory at the University of California, Los Angeles, and he taught music theory there for several years.

Horner composed a classical concert piece, Spectral Shimmers, which was performed by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He began scoring student films for the American Film Institute, which brought him into contact with low-budget film producer Roger Corman. Horner scored some of Corman’s films, which gave him enough exposure to land jobs on bigger-budget productions.

Horner rose in Hollywood’s music echelons, scoring nearly one hundred motion pictures and becoming a composer who had to turn down more assignments than he accepted. He developed relationships with directors ranging from James Cameron to Ron Howard, and he was noted for his continued innovations in his scores, such as mixing voices and synthesizers.

In June 2015, Horner died at age sixty-one when the small plane he was piloting crashed in Los Padres National Forest in Southern California. He was survived by his wife, Sara, and their two daughters. Unusually for the industry, Horner's unfinished score for Antoine Fuqua's 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven was completed by a longtime colleague, music producer Simon Franglen.

The Music

Horner had his first successes with science-fiction films, with both large and low budgets, and he went on to score in nearly every motion-picture genre: cop and buddy films (Forty-Eight Hours; Another Forty-Eight Hours), swashbucklers (The Mask of Zorro; The Legend of Zorro), biopics (A Beautiful Mind; Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius), children’s films (How the Grinch Stole Christmas), and many more.

Battle beyond the Stars.Horner scored two 1980 films for Corman (the other was Humanoids from the Deep), who was known as an innovative but low-budget producer of unusual films, many science fiction or horror. With Battle beyond the Stars, an outer-space version of The Magnificent Seven (1960), Corman was trying for a bigger-budget look and sound, more in line with the Star Trek and Star Wars films, and Horner gave it to him.

Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.The recognition from his work on the Corman films helped Horner get the assignment for the second Star Trek motion picture, the first having been a disappointment. Horner developed a rousing score for this 1982 sequel, emphasizing the kind of action and interplay among the characters that had made the Star Trek television series so popular. (Horner is seen briefly onscreen in a cameo as one of the starship’s crew.) He was called back to score the next film in the series, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, two years later.

Aliens.This 1986 film, a sequel to the popular Alien (1979), marked the first teaming of Horner with director James Cameron. This sequel emphasized space-marines-style action over the horror mood of the first one. It was also Cameron’s first big film, and the director agonized over every frame. For the composer, however, it was a rush job; Horner had only ten days to come up with the score. Although friction developed between the composer and director, the job was done on time, and the score received Academy Award and Grammy Award nominations.

Braveheart.Even critics of Mel Gibson’s 1995 blockbuster about a hero from Scottish history gave its musical score credit for emphasizing the action and the background of Scotland. Another Horner-Gibson collaboration followed a year later with Ransom.

Titanic.Horner and Cameron patched up their differences after working on Aliens, and they reunited for what would prove a huge success for Horner. The 1997 film about the tragic sinking of the passenger ship Titanic in 1912, surrounded by a fictional love story dramatized through a flashback, prompted Horner to generate a score ranging from a full orchestra to a solo voice for “My Heart Will Go On,” sung by Céline Dion. The soundtrack from the motion picture stayed at the top of the Billboard chart for sixteen weeks. The thirty million–plus copies it sold make it one of the best-selling sound tracks in motion-picture history. It won two Academy Awards, for Original Song (in collaboration with lyricist Will Jennings) and for Best Original Music, along with three Grammy Awards and a Golden Globe Award.

The Legend of Zorro.Horner scored The Mask of Zorro in 1998, and seven years later he got the assignment to provide the music for an even more lavish take on the pulp-magazine character dating back nearly a century. Thanks to special effects, this version of the character is even more extravagant than his previous cinema incarnations. As Horner had done to achieve the Scottish flavor of Braveheart, the composer worked up a Spanish-style soundtrack for the Zorro features, punching up the action scenes throughout the picture and using an almost laid-back musical sequence for the final twelve-minute climax of the picture.

Avatar. Horner worked with director James Cameron yet again for the 2009 film Avatar, set on an imperiled planet in an alien culture. For Avatar, Horner digitally adapted the sounds of indigenous flutes and gamelan-type instruments, in addition to creating some instruments of his own, to produce the otherworldly soundscape that Cameron sought for the film. Avatar proved a box-office smash hit, becoming one of the highest-grossing films ever, and Horner's score was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and two Grammy Awards. Horner later signed on to score additional installments in the Avatar franchise.

Musical Legacy

Horner won a Golden Globe Award, two Academy Awards, and six Grammy Awards, plus dozens of other awards and award nominations. His music is heard almost every evening on television: He composed the theme for the CBS Evening News, which debuted when Katie Couric began anchoring the program on September 5, 2006. It is now used by other CBS News programs. His music can be heard in motion pictures he has not even scored. For example, his end-title music for Battle beyond the Stars and for Glory are often heard in film trailers. Horner will be remembered for his unexpected, yet strangely congruous musical pieces and his fidelity to the story being told onscreen.

Principal Works

film scores:The Watchers, 1978; The Lady in Red, 1979; Battle beyond the Stars, 1980; Humanoids from the Deep, 1980; The Hand, 1981; Wolfen, 1981; Forty-Eight Hours, 1982; Krull, 1982; Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, 1982; Space Invaders, 1983; Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, 1984; Cocoon, 1985; Commando, 1985; Heaven Help Us, 1985; Aliens, 1986; An American Tail, 1986; Batteries Not Included, 1987; Project X, 1987; Cocoon: The Return, 1988; The Land before Time, 1988; Red Heat, 1988; Willow, 1988; Field of Dreams, 1989; Glory, 1989; Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, 1989; Another Forty-Eight Hours, 1990; I Love You to Death, 1990; An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, 1991; The Rocketeer, 1991; Patriot Games, 1992; Unlawful Entry, 1992; The Man without a Face, 1993; The Pelican Brief, 1993; Swing Kids, 1993; Clear and Present Danger, 1994; Legends of the Fall, 1994; Apollo 13, 1995; Braveheart, 1995; Casper, 1995; Jumanji, 1995; Ransom, 1996; The Spitfire Grill, 1996; Titanic, 1997; Deep Impact, 1998; The Mask of Zorro, 1998; Bringing Down the House, 1999; How the Grinch Stole Christmas, 2000; The Perfect Storm, 2000; A Beautiful Mind, 2001; House of Sand and Fog, 2003; Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius, 2004; The Forgotten, 2004; Troy, 2004; The Chumscrubber, 2005; Flightplan, 2005; The Legend of Zorro, 2005; Apocalypto, 2006; The Spiderwick Chronicles, 2008; Avatar, 2009; The Magnificent Seven, 2016.

orchestral work:Spectral Shimmers, 1978; Collage, 2015.

Bibliography

Burlingame, Jon. Sound and Vision: Sixty Years of Motion Picture Sound Tracks. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2000. Covers notable soundtrack composers and offers a history of film sound tracks. Specifically, it recounts the Cameron-Horner dissension over Aliens, and how they smoothed over their differences to make the award-winning Titanic.

Hickman, Roger. Reel Music: Exploring One Hundred Years of Film Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. A historical survey of the role of music in film, outlining its development over the past century. Includes profiles of composers, including Horner.

Horner, James. "James Horner Searches for the Sound of Pandora." Interview by Geoff Boucher. Hero Complex, Los Angeles Times, 30 Nov. 2009, herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/james-horner-searches-for-the-sound-of-pandora. Accessed 27 Dec. 2017.

McArthur, Colin. Brigadoon, Braveheart, and the Scots: Distortions of Scotland in Hollywood Cinema. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003. Critiques these film depictions of Scotland, and discusses Horner’s score and its contribution to the emotional impact of Braveheart.

Morgan, David. Knowing the Score: Film Composers Talk About the Art, Craft, Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Writing Music for Cinema. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2000. A collection of interviews with some of the top composers in Hollywood, covering how they got their start, how they developed their musical styles, and how they collaborate with their directors.

Roberts, Sam. "James Horner, Film Composer, Dies at 61; His Score for ‘Titanic’ Was a Hit, Too." The New York Times, 23 June 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/us/james-horner-whose-soaring-film-scores-included-titanic-dies-at-61.html. Accessed 27 Dec. 2017.