James Horner

Infobox musical artist
Name = James Horner


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Background = non_performing_personnel
Birth_name = James Roy Horner
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Born = birth date and age|1953|8|14
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Origin = Los Angeles, California
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Genre = film score
Occupation = Composer
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James Roy Horner (born August 14 1953) is an American composer of orchestral and film music. He is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for frequent use of Celtic musical elements. Horner won two Academy Awards for his score and song compositions for the film "Titanic" in 1997.

Early life

Horner was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Joan (née Fraenkel) and Harry Horner, who was a production designer, set designer and occasional film director. [ [http://www.filmreference.com/Writers-and-Production-Artists-Ha-Ja/Horner-Harry.html Harry Horner - Films as art director:, Films as director: ] ] He started playing piano at the age of five. Horner's early years were spent in London, where he attended the Royal College of Music and studied under György Ligeti. He received his bachelor's degree in music from the University of Southern California, and eventually earned a masters and started working on his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles where he studied with Paul Chihara and others. After several scoring assignments with the American Film Institute in the 1970s, he ended his teaching of music theory at the UCLA and turned to film scoring.

In his youth Horner was acquainted with Carrie Goldsmith, daughter of famous composer Jerry Goldsmith. [Carrie Goldsmith, [http://www.jerrygoldsmithonline.com/spotlight_biography_preview.htm "Deconstructing Dad: The Unfinished Life and Times of Jerry Goldsmith," Chapter 1] , "Jerry Goldsmith Online", 2 February 2004.]

Film and television scoring

Horner began his film scoring career by working for B-movie director and producer Roger Corman, with his first composer credit for Corman's big-budget "Battle Beyond the Stars". His works steadily gained notice in Hollywood, which led him to take on larger projects. Horner made a breakthrough in 1982, when he had the chance to score for ', establishing himself as a mainstream composer. Horner continued composing music for high-profile releases in the 1980s, including "48 Hrs." (1981), "Krull" (1983), ' (1984), "Commando" (1985), "Cocoon" (1985), "Aliens" (1986, earning his first Academy Award nomination), "Willow" (1988), "Glory" and "Field of Dreams" (both 1989).

Horner's scores also began to see a secondary life with their usage in film trailers for other movies. Excerpts from his score for "Aliens" rank second in the most commonly-used soundtrack cues for film trailers. [cite web |url=http://www.soundtrack.net/trailers/frequent|title= Top 100 Frequently Used Cues |publisher=soundtrack.net|accessdate=2007-12-19] Several films whose scores were composed by Michael Kamen have had Horner music for the trailers; most notably, the music from "Willow" is substituted for the theme Kamen wrote for the 1993 remake of "The Three Musketeers".Or|date=September 2008

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Horner also displayed a talent for writing orchestral scores for children's films (particularly those produced by Amblin Entertainment), with credits for "An American Tail" (1986), "The Land Before Time" (1988), "" (1991), "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story" (1993), and "Casper" and "Balto" (both 1995).

The year 1995 saw Horner produce no fewer than six scores, including his commercially successful and critically-acclaimed works for "Braveheart" and "Apollo 13". Horner's greatest financial success would come in 1997 with an enormously popular score to "Titanic", which was greatly influenced by the music of Clannad. [ [http://www.mdm.ie/artists/clannad.html MDM artist management - Clannad ] ] The album became the best-selling instrumental soundtrack in history with over 24 million copies sold worldwide, and is the third best-selling soundtrack album ever, trailing only Whitney Houston's "The Bodyguard" soundtrack (over 37 million) and the Bee Gees "Saturday Night Fever" (40 million). In 1997 he won Academy Awards for Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Song for "My Heart Will Go On" (which he co-wrote with Will Jennings), in addition to three Grammy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.

Since "Titanic", Horner has continued to score for major productions (including "The Perfect Storm", "A Beautiful Mind", "The Legend of Zorro" and "Radio"). Aside from the major projects, Horner periodically tackles smaller projects as well (such as "Iris" and ""). He frequently scores for the films of director Ron Howard, a partnership that began with "Cocoon" in 1985. Coincidentally, Horner's end title music from "Glory" can be heard in the trailer for Howard's "Backdraft".

Horner composed the current theme music for the "CBS Evening News". The theme was introduced as part of the debut of Katie Couric as anchor on September 5, 2006. It has since been adopted by most other CBS News programs, as well.

Recently, Horner finished the scores for "The Spiderwick Chronicles", directed by Mark Waters, and "Life Before Her Eyes", directed by Vadim Perelman.

Controversy

Horner has been accused of (perhaps unintentionally, perhaps as an homage) transposing hooks and orchestral motifs from other scores, both his and those of other composers. [ [http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/James_Horner_-_Criticism/id/5177224 "James Horner Criticism"] at "Encyclopedia II."] The most notorious was his borrowing of the work "Powerhouse" by Raymond Scott for the opening credits of "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," which resulted in a lawsuit against Disney for not crediting the work's original composer. The suit was ultimately settled to all parties' satisfaction. [James E. Winner, [http://raymondscott.com/FAQ.htm "Frequently asked questions about Raymond Scott"] at "RaymondScott.com."] [Tom Hudson, [http://www.hornershrine.com/features/everything.html "The James Horner Everything Page"] at "HornerShrine.com."] [Michael Heilemann, [http://binarybonsai.com/archives/2006/10/11/score-plagiarism/ "Score Plagiarism"] at "Binary Bonsai," 11 October 2006.] Portions of his score to "Patriot Games" bear considerable resemblence to Aram Khachaturian's ballet "Gayaneh," while parts of Star Trek III echo Sergei Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet;" furthermore, "Battle Beyond the Stars" and "Troy" lift cues from the cantata from Prokofiev's score for Alexander Nevsky: [Alex Ross, [http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/oscar_scores.html "Oscar Scores"] , in "The New Yorker," 9 March 1998.]

Horner has also been accused of self-plagiarism—reusing elements of his previous scores in another: For example, sections of Horner's score for the aforementioned "Battle Beyond the Stars" reappear in near-identical form throughout his other scores of the 1980s. The signature themes for the Klingons in "Star Trek III" and the Xenomorphs in the film "Aliens" are identical. Many of the melodies from "A Beautiful Mind" are similar to those from "Bicentennial Man," which in turn are very similar to those from "Braveheart."

These contentions are points of fierce debates between proponents of Horner and his detractors. [Lukas Kendall & Jeff Bond, [http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/features/titanic.asp "Letters about James Horner's "Titanic,"] in "Film Score Monthly," 1997.] While they generally acknowledge that Horner has a tendency to reuse musical ideas, opinions on the issue vary greatly: Some believe it truly compromises the merits of Horner's music, while others feel it is a minor problem that has been exaggerated, and a common practice generally inclusive of other composers.

List of film scores

Concert works

* "Conversations" (1976)
* "Spectral Shimmers" (1977)
* "A Forest Passage" (2000)

Miscellaneous works

* Logo music for Universal Pictures and Icon Productions
* THX trailer "Cimarron"

Awards and Nominations

Trivia

Horner can be seen briefly in a cameo appearance as a crewman in "".

References

External links

* [http://www.james-horner.com Website by Sony Classical]
*imdb name|0000035 at the Internet Movie Database
* [http://www.jameshorner.de JamesHorner.de - Fansite (in German)]