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Description

Ponyfied James Horner is standing in front of the Grand staircase on the Titanic with Littlefoot and his friends, while Jake and Neytiri stand by his side.

Film Scores: Avatar, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Titanic, The Land Before Time,

James Horner (1953-2015) was one of the greatest film score composers of all time. He was know for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores and for his frequent use of leitmotifs associated with Celtic music.

James Horner was born in Los Angeles California in 1953 to Jewish Immigrants, his father Harry Horner was born in Holic, then part of Austria-Hungary, he emigrated to the United States in 1935 and worked as a set designer and art director. His mother Joan Ruth was born into a prominent Canadian family.

James Horner started playing the piano at the age of five. He attended the Royal college of Music in London and then returned to America to receive his bachelors degree. He began his career scoring films by working for B film director and producer Rodger Corman and his major breakthrough came in 1982 when he was hired to score Star Trek II the Wrath of Kahn, Then he composed the scores for Willow, Aliens, Cocoon, An American Tail, Glory, Field of Dreams and the Land Before Time.

One of his most famous scores is the score for James Cameron's Titanic. For the vocals heard throughout the film he chose a Norwegian singer named Sissel Kyrkjebo Horner knew Sissel from her album Innerst i sjelen, and he particularly liked how she sang "Eg veit i himmerik ei borg" ("I Know in Heaven There Is a Castle"). He had tried twenty-five or thirty singers before he finally chose Sissel as the voice to create specific moods within the film.Horner additionally wrote the song "My Heart Will Go On" in secret with Will Jennings because Cameron did not want any songs with singing in the film. Céline Dion agreed to record a demo with the persuasion of her husband René Angélil. Horner waited until Cameron was in an appropriate mood before presenting him with the song. After playing it several times, Cameron declared his approval, although worried that he would have been criticized for "going commercial at the end of the movie". Cameron also wanted to appease anxious studio executives and "saw that a hit song from his movie could only be a positive factor in guaranteeing its completion". James Horner used leitmotifs in his score of Titanic, like in the scene when the Titanic is sailing out at sea, the scene where Jack is sketching Rose and in the scenes when the Titanic hit the iceberg and sank. In his Hymn of the Sea he used the sound of an Irish instrument called Uilleann Pipes, representing the Irish nature of the Titanic. Uilleann Pipes are kind of like Scottish Bagpipes except you pump air into the bag with bellows strapped to your arm and you force the air through the bag into the chanter with your other arm, just like how you would play the bagpipes except you blow air into the bag with a blowpipe and force the air into the chanter.

After Titanic, Horner composed The Perfect Storm, a Beautiful Mind, The Mask of Zorro, THe Legend of Zorro and House of sand and fog.

Horner then re-collaborated with James Cameron on the 2009 silence fiction film Avatar wich became one of the highest grossing films of all time surpassing Titanic (also directed by Cameron and scored by Horner). Horner spent over two years working on the score for Avatar, and did not take on any other projects during that time. His work on Avatar earned him numerous award nominations, including his tenth Academy Award nomination as well as Golden Globe Award, British Academy Film Award, and Grammy Award nominations, all of which he lost to Michael Giacchino for Up. Regarding the experience of scoring Avatar, Horner said, "Avatar has been the most difficult film I have worked on and the biggest job I have undertaken ... I work from four in the morning to about ten at night and that’s been my way of life since March. That's the world I'm in now and it makes you feel estranged from everything. I'll have to recover from that and get my head out of Avatar."

Horner also composed the score for the 2010 version of The Karate Kid, replacing Atli Örvarsson. This film—the first that Horner worked on after Avatar was released in 2010. In 2011, Horner scored Cristiada (also known as For Greater Glory), which was released a year later, and Black Gold. In 2012 Horner scored The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Andrew Garfield. In a recent interview on his website, Horner revealed why he didn't return to compose the second movie; that he didn't like how the movie resulted in comparison to the first movie, and even called the movie "dreadful." Upon his departure, he was replaced by Hans Zimmer.

At the beginning of 2015, Horner wrote the music for Jean-Jacques Annaud's adventure film Wolf Totem, which marked his fourth collaboration with Annaud and also Horner's first film score in nearly three years. James Horner was an avid pilot and he owned his own planes, On June 22 2015 he was flying his S312 Tucano turboprop airplane when he crached into the Los Padres National Forest near Ventucopa, Calicornia and died at the age of 61

Description

Ponyfied James Horner is standing in front of the Grand staircase on the Titanic with Littlefoot and his friends, while Jake and Neytiri stand by his side.

Film Scores: Avatar, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Titanic, The Land Before Time,

James Horner (1953-2015) was one of the greatest film score composers of all time. He was know for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores and for his frequent use of leitmotifs associated with Celtic music.

James Horner was born in Los Angeles California in 1953 to Jewish Immigrants, his father Harry Horner was born in Holic, then part of Austria-Hungary, he emigrated to the United States in 1935 and worked as a set designer and art director. His mother Joan Ruth was born into a prominent Canadian family.

James Horner started playing the piano at the age of five. He attended the Royal college of Music in London and then returned to America to receive his bachelors degree. He began his career scoring films by working for B film director and producer Rodger Corman and his major breakthrough came in 1982 when he was hired to score Star Trek II the Wrath of Kahn, Then he composed the scores for Willow, Aliens, Cocoon, An American Tail, Glory, Field of Dreams and the Land Before Time.

One of his most famous scores is the score for James Cameron's Titanic. For the vocals heard throughout the film he chose a Norwegian singer named Sissel Kyrkjebo Horner knew Sissel from her album Innerst i sjelen, and he particularly liked how she sang "Eg veit i himmerik ei borg" ("I Know in Heaven There Is a Castle"). He had tried twenty-five or thirty singers before he finally chose Sissel as the voice to create specific moods within the film.Horner additionally wrote the song "My Heart Will Go On" in secret with Will Jennings because Cameron did not want any songs with singing in the film. Céline Dion agreed to record a demo with the persuasion of her husband René Angélil. Horner waited until Cameron was in an appropriate mood before presenting him with the song. After playing it several times, Cameron declared his approval, although worried that he would have been criticized for "going commercial at the end of the movie". Cameron also wanted to appease anxious studio executives and "saw that a hit song from his movie could only be a positive factor in guaranteeing its completion". James Horner used leitmotifs in his score of Titanic, like in the scene when the Titanic is sailing out at sea, the scene where Jack is sketching Rose and in the scenes when the Titanic hit the iceberg and sank. In his Hymn of the Sea he used the sound of an Irish instrument called Uilleann Pipes, representing the Irish nature of the Titanic. Uilleann Pipes are kind of like Scottish Bagpipes except you pump air into the bag with bellows strapped to your arm and you force the air through the bag into the chanter with your other arm, just like how you would play the bagpipes except you blow air into the bag with a blowpipe and force the air into the chanter.

After Titanic, Horner composed The Perfect Storm, a Beautiful Mind, The Mask of Zorro, THe Legend of Zorro and House of sand and fog.

Horner then re-collaborated with James Cameron on the 2009 silence fiction film Avatar wich became one of the highest grossing films of all time surpassing Titanic (also directed by Cameron and scored by Horner). Horner spent over two years working on the score for Avatar, and did not take on any other projects during that time. His work on Avatar earned him numerous award nominations, including his tenth Academy Award nomination as well as Golden Globe Award, British Academy Film Award, and Grammy Award nominations, all of which he lost to Michael Giacchino for Up. Regarding the experience of scoring Avatar, Horner said, "Avatar has been the most difficult film I have worked on and the biggest job I have undertaken ... I work from four in the morning to about ten at night and that’s been my way of life since March. That's the world I'm in now and it makes you feel estranged from everything. I'll have to recover from that and get my head out of Avatar."

Horner also composed the score for the 2010 version of The Karate Kid, replacing Atli Örvarsson. This film—the first that Horner worked on after Avatar was released in 2010. In 2011, Horner scored Cristiada (also known as For Greater Glory), which was released a year later, and Black Gold. In 2012 Horner scored The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Andrew Garfield. In a recent interview on his website, Horner revealed why he didn't return to compose the second movie; that he didn't like how the movie resulted in comparison to the first movie, and even called the movie "dreadful." Upon his departure, he was replaced by Hans Zimmer.

At the beginning of 2015, Horner wrote the music for Jean-Jacques Annaud's adventure film Wolf Totem, which marked his fourth collaboration with Annaud and also Horner's first film score in nearly three years. James Horner was an avid pilot and he owned his own planes, On June 22 2015 he was flying his S312 Tucano turboprop airplane when he crached into the Los Padres National Forest near Ventucopa, Calicornia and died at the age of 61