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James Horner
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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.
er was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Austrian immigrants Joan (née Fraenkel) and Harry Horner, who was a production designer, set designer and occasional film director.
Horner started playing piano at the age of five.

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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 Austrian immigrants Joan (née Fraenkel) and Harry Horner, who was a production designer, set designer and occasional film director.
Horner started playing piano at the age of five. His 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, among others. After several scoring assignments with the American Film Institute in the 1970s, he finished his teaching of music theory at UCLA and turned to film scoring.
In his youth Horner was acquainted with Carrie Goldsmith, daughter of the famous composer and peer Jerry Goldsmith.
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 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, establishing himself as a mainstream composer. Horner continued composing music for high-profile releases in the 1980s, including 48 Hrs. (1981), Krull (1983), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (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. Also, an unused fragment from Aliens was featured in a scene from Die Hard. 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.
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), An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), and Casper and Balto (both 1995).
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. 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 early 1998, Horner 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 Mask of Zorro, The Legend of Zorro and Radio). Aside from the major projects, Horner periodically tackles smaller projects as well (such as Iris and Bobby Jones: A Stroke of Genius). 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 score for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
Controversy
Horner has been accused of transposing hooks and orchestral motifs, sometimes entire passages from other scores, both his and those of other composers, most notably Sergey Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten. The Adagio from the ballet Gayaneh by Khachaturian, for example, turns up almost bar for bar in Horner's music for Aliens; the same is true of the Main Title music from Red Heat, which is lifted wholesale from Prokofiev's Cantata for the Anniversary of the October Revolution. The most notorious issue arose with 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. Meanwhile, portions of Horner's score to Patriot Games bear considerable resemblance 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: Finally, one of the themes from Enemy at the Gates uses eight notes from John Williams' theme for Schindler's List.
Horner has also been accused of self-plagiarism—reusing elements of his own 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 Braveheart background theme uses the same chord progression of the main theme from Glory. Several cues from Titanic sound very similar to cues written for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan notably the score for the ship leaving Southampton closley resembles the section 'Enterprise Clears Moorings', and the sequence leading upto Titanic's collision with the iceberg borrow elements from the 'Kirk's Explosive Reply' motif. The signature theme for the alien Klingons in Star Trek III resembles Khan's motif previously used by Horner for the human villain and his cohorts in the previous Star Trek film, but this was identical to that for the Xenomorphs in the film Aliens; this particular sound is also used in the Widow sequences from Krull. Many of the melodies from A Beautiful Mind are similar to those from Bicentennial Man, which in turn are very similar to those from Sneakers. A key theme in Casper is also repeated at the end of The Spiderwick Chronicles. Also noted is a slight motif that has been referred to as "the danger theme" , an eerie progression of four notes mostly played by brass instruments, that Horner has relied on in several films, including Willow and most notoriously (and repeatedly), Enemy at the Gates and Troy
These contentions are points of fierce debate between proponents of Horner and his detractors. 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
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
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1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
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1988
1987
1986
1985
1984
1983
1982
1981
1980
1979
1978 (for the AFI)
- The Drought
- Fantasies
- Gist and Evans
- Landscapes
- Just for a Laugh
- The Watcher
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Television scores
2006
2000
1992
- Crossroads (Theme)
- Fish Police (Theme)
1990
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1985
1983
1982
1981
- A Few Days in Weasel Creek
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Short films
Concert works
- "Conversations" (1976)
- "Spectral Shimmers" (1977)
- "A Forest Passage" (2000)
Miscellaneous works
Awards and Nominations
Academy Award
- 2004: House Of Sand And Fog (best original score)
- 2002: A Beautiful Mind (best original score)
- 1998: Titanic (best original drama score, Winner)
- 1998: "My Heart Will Go On" (from: Titanic, best original song, Winner)
- 1996: Braveheart (best original drama score)
- 1996: Apollo 13 (best original drama score)
- 1990: Field of Dreams (best original drama score)
- 1987: "Somewhere Out There" (from: An American Tail, best original song)
- 1987: Aliens (best original score)
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Golden Globe
- 2002: A Beautiful Mind (best original score)
- 1998: Titanic (best original score, Winner)
- 1998: "My Heart Will Go On" (from: Titanic, best original song, Winner)
- 1996: Braveheart (best original score)
- 1995: Legends of the Fall (best original score)
- 1992: "Dreams To Dream" (from: An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, best original song)
- 1990: Glory (best original score)
- 1987: "Somewhere Out There" (from: An American Tail, best original song)
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Grammy
- 2003: A Beautiful Mind
- 1999: "My Heart Will Go On" (from: Titanic, Winner)
- 1996: "Whatever You Imagine" (from: The Pagemaster)
- 1991: Glory (Winner)
- 1990: Field of Dreams
- 1988: "Somewhere Out There" (from: An American Tail, Winner)
- 1988: An American Tail
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Satellite Awards
- 2004: The Missing
- 2002: A Beautiful Mind
- 2002: "All Love Can Be" (from: A Beautiful Mind, Winner)
- 1998: Titanic (Winner)
- 1998: "My Heart Will Go On" (from: Titanic, Winner)
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Trivia
Horner can be seen briefly in a cameo appearance as a crewman in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
External links
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