{"id":22186,"date":"2015-06-30T13:22:57","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T20:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/?p=22186"},"modified":"2022-03-04T17:31:18","modified_gmt":"2022-03-05T01:31:18","slug":"james-horner-leaves-listeners-a-lifetime-of-music-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/james-horner-leaves-listeners-a-lifetime-of-music-2\/","title":{"rendered":"James Horner Leaves Listeners a Lifetime of Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American composer James Horner, who composed more than 100 film scores, including \u201cTitanic<\/a>,\u201d \u201cApollo 13<\/a>,\u201d \u201cBraveheart\u201d<\/a> and \u201cAvatar<\/a>\u201d passed away June 22 at the age of 61.<\/p>\n

Horner was a classically trained musician and scholar, who began playing the piano at age 5. He attended the Royal College of Music in London as a youth and later went on to earn his bachelor\u2019s degree in music at the University of Southern California and his master\u2019s and doctorate at the University of California Los Angeles, where he taught music theory.<\/p>\n

Alex Harwood, an American composer, is quoted in an article from The Guardian, stating that \u201cJames was one of the last of that old school of composers, like John Williams, with proper classical training and unbelievable music knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horner told the New York Times in an interview in 2000 that, \u201cI [write] it at a desk with pen and paper \u2026 I don\u2019t use a computer in writing at all. I\u2019m sort of old-fashioned about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horner notes that many of his scores were influenced by classical composers including Benjamin Britten, Sergei Prokofiev and Thomas Tallis, many of which are often heard on All Classical Portland.<\/p>\n

Horner won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes and received 10 Oscar nominations during his lifetime. His first full length score was for the 1979 film \u201cThe Lady in Red\u201d and his first major breakout score came from \u201cStar Trek II: The Wrath of Khan<\/a>\u201d in 1982.<\/p>\n

The success of Horner\u2019s score for \u201cTitanic\u201d as well as his original song \u201cMy Heart Will Go On<\/a>\u201d performed by Celine Dion, for both of which he won an Academy Award, has not been forgotten in the 20 years since he composed it. Many orchestras and vocalists have done recordings of Horner\u2019s work because of its richness and popularity.<\/p>\n

His music for \u201cTitanic\u201d focused on Celtic instrumentation in order to reflect the ship\u2019s origins, which was built in Belfast and carried hundreds of Irish natives.<\/p>\n

Horner\u2019s music is known and critiqued as music on an \u201cepic scale\u201d with \u201cbolder and more contemporary sounds\u201d and a \u201csubtle and contemplative flare\u201d as critiqued by the New York Times.<\/p>\n

The Atlantic also noted that Horner\u2019s scores \u201ctended to be more delicate things; rummaging through musical history and diverse cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n

James Cameron said jointly with producer Jon Landau from \u201cAvatar\u201d in a BBC News article that, \u201cJames\u2019s music affected the heart because his heart was so big.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cameron is also quoted in an article from the Hollywood Reporter saying that Horner totally committed himself to \u201cTitanic.\u201d \u201cHe blocked out his schedule and sat down and watched maybe 30 hours of raw dailies to absorb the feeling of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cameron also mentioned that the orchestra loved Horner and that he worked with a lot of the same musicians and also conducted his own music, which not all composers do.<\/p>\n

Horner\u2019s score for Cameron\u2019s 2009 film \u201cAvatar\u201d showcased his experimentation and dedication to providing listeners with exotic sounds that resonated deeply.<\/p>\n

Horner said that Avatar was one of the most difficult films he has worked on and the biggest job he has undertaken.<\/p>\n

Spencer Kornhaber writes in his article about Horner in The Atlantic that the best film music does two things: \u201cIt emphasizes the story on screen and it creates its own parallel story.\u201d Horner\u2019s scores did just that as he was ambitiously driven to produce the highest quality of sounds for film.<\/p>\n

Though the world may never again see a composer as gifted, dedicated and thoughtful as Horner, it is left with more than 100 scores for listeners to track down and authors to curate, as many of the great artists who leave us leave with them an astonishing lifetime of work.<\/p>\n

Tune in Saturday, July 11, at 2 p.m. for a tribute program to James Horner on The Score with Edmund Stone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American composer James Horner, who composed more than 100 film scores, including \u201cTitanic,\u201d \u201cApollo 13,\u201d \u201cBraveheart\u201d and \u201cAvatar\u201d passed away June 22 at the age of 61. Horner was a classically trained musician and scholar, who began playing the piano at age 5. He attended the Royal College of Music in London as a … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4095],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 04:17:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}