James Horner
James Roy Horner (August 14, 1953 – June 22, 2015) was an American film composer. He worked on over 160 film and television productions between 1978 and 2015. He was known for the integration of choral and electronic elements alongside traditional orchestrations, and for his use of motifs associated with Celtic music.[1][2]
For other people named James Horner, see James Horner (disambiguation).
James Horner
August 14, 1953
June 22, 2015 (aged 61)
Sara Nelson
2
- Harry Horner (father)
Christopher Horner (brother)
- Composer
- conductor
- orchestrator
- music producer
- songwriter
1978–2015
Horner won two Academy Awards for James Cameron's Titanic (1997), which became the best-selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time.[3][4] He also wrote the score for the highest-grossing film of all time, Cameron's Avatar.[5] Horner's other Oscar-nominated scores were for Aliens (1986), An American Tail (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Apollo 13 (1995), Braveheart (1995), A Beautiful Mind (2001), and House of Sand and Fog (2003). Horner's other notable scores include Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982),[6] Willow (1988), The Land Before Time (1988), Glory (1989), The Rocketeer (1991), Legends of the Fall (1994), Jumanji (1995), Balto (1995), The Mask of Zorro (1998), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Troy (2004), The New World (2005), The Legend of Zorro (2005), Apocalypto (2006), The Karate Kid (2010), and The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).
Horner collaborated on multiple projects with directors including James Cameron, Don Bluth, Ron Howard, Joe Johnston, Edward Zwick, Walter Hill, Mel Gibson, Vadim Perelman, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Nicholas Meyer, Wolfgang Petersen, Martin Campbell, Phil Nibbelink and Simon Wells; producers including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, David Kirschner, Brian Grazer, Jon Landau, and Lawrence Gordon; and songwriters including Will Jennings, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Adding to his two Academy Awards win, Horner also won six Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, and was nominated for three BAFTA Awards.
Horner, who was an avid pilot, was killed in a single-fatality crash while flying his Short Tucano turboprop aircraft. He was 61 years old.[7] The scores for his final three films, Southpaw (2015), The 33 (2015) and The Magnificent Seven (2016), were all completed and released posthumously.
Early and personal life[edit]
Horner was born on August 14, 1953, in Los Angeles, California, to Jewish immigrant parents.[8][9][10][11]
His father, Harry Horner, was born in Holice, Czech Republic, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He emigrated to the United States in 1935 and worked as a set designer and art director.[12][13] His mother, Joan Ruth (née Frankel), was born to a Canadian family. His brother Christopher is a writer and documentary filmmaker.[11]
Horner started playing piano at the age of five. He also played violin. He spent his early years in London, where he attended the Royal College of Music, where he studied with György Ligeti.[14] He returned to America, where he attended Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona, and later received his bachelor's degree in music from the University of Southern California. After earning a master's degree, he started work on his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he studied with Paul Chihara, among others. After several scoring assignments with the American Film Institute in the 1970s, he finished teaching a course in music theory at UCLA, then turned to film scoring.[15]
Horner was also a qualified private pilot and owned several small airplanes.[16][17] His studio was filled with small automatons and objects which he purchased and collected over time.[18] In a documentary produced after his death, Horner's wife Sara stated that he described himself as having Asperger syndrome; according to Sara "He would say himself, and did at the end of his life, that he had Asperger's, and he definitely had a different kind of neurological wiring."[19]
Musical "borrowing"[edit]
Horner was criticized on many occasions for reusing passages from his earlier compositions and for featuring brief excerpts and reworked themes from classical composers.[4] For example, his scores from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock include excerpts from Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky and Romeo and Juliet, respectively;[45][46] the action ostinato from Aliens is originally from Wolfen,[47] and the film's main title is almost identical to Aram Khachaturian's Gayane Ballet Suite (Adagio) (already used in an outer-space context in 2001: A Space Odyssey) and would be used again within the score of Patriot Games; the heroic theme from Willow is based on that of Robert Schumann's Rhenish Symphony; Field of Dreams includes cues from the "Saturday Night Waltz" portion of Aaron Copland's ballet Rodeo and Copland's score from Our Town; Horner blended part of an early theme from the third movement of Shostakovich's Symphony no. 5 into an action scene in Patriot Games; musical motifs from 48 Hrs. are recycled into Commando, Red Heat, and Another 48 Hrs.;[48] and the climactic battle scene in Glory includes excerpts from Wagner and Orff.[49] Some critics felt these propensities made Horner's compositions inauthentic or unoriginal.[50][51][52] In a 1997 issue of Film Score Monthly, an editorial review of Titanic said Horner was "skilled in the adaptation of existing music into films with just enough variation to avoid legal troubles".[4]
Several critics have noted stark similarities between Braveheart's "Main Theme" and an earlier theme song, Kaoru Wada's "Pai Longing" from the 1991 Japanese anime series 3×3 Eyes.[53][54][55]
On at least one occasion, Horner's musical "borrowing" almost led to litigation. Horner's main title for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) incorporates cues from the score by Nino Rota from Federico Fellini's film Amarcord (1973) and Raymond Scott's piece "Powerhouse B" (1937), the latter often referenced in Carl Stalling's Warner Bros. cartoon scores. Scott's piece was used without payment or credit, leading his estate to threaten legal action against Disney. Disney paid an undisclosed sum in an out-of-court settlement and changed the film's cue sheets to credit Scott.[56][57]
Legacy[edit]
Horner's extensive papers and archives are preserved and available for researchers at the UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Special Collections and Archives.[72] The film, The World of James Horner – Hollywood in Vienna (2013), directed by Sandra Tomek was dedicated to Horner.[73]