Opinion of James Horner.

[Delorean90 42]

Horner certainly did find some of his best musical ideas with Apollo 13, Braveheart, Titanic, Zorro ; works composed between 1995 and 1999. Was this his "prime" ?

1982 to 1989.

1982 to 1990. The Rocketeer.

[Jeshopk 8]

Horner so often writes blatant variations (just a few notes or note lengths changed) on Nevsky whenever action music is needed, I can't imagine his creative process is very - er - "creative." Also, his Danger motif is just a sign of idiocy. It's not even his in the first place, but even if it was, why must it appear in almost all action music? I think the man lacks some grey matter.

But he can be pretty good at times, though I don't trust that the stuff I like isn't near verbatim from a symphony I've not yet heard.

[Hlao-roo 389]

In one of the most striking examples of self-plagiarism, the motif first introduced in Searching for Bobby Fischer is reconfigured as the main theme in three later films: Sneakers, Bicentennial Man, and A Beautiful Mind. Of course, Williams himself is not immune from this sort of pattern (see Amistad, The Patriot, and The Unfinished Journey). But I think Horner regurgitates his previous work more regularly, artlessly, matter-of-factly than other composers do theirs.

[GoodMusician 56]

There are many scores of Horner's that I absolutely enjoy... but looking at them... for the most art they all sound the same.

His ability to interweave different instruments and parts together complexly but yet very matter of fact is something I've always found very interesting...

He doesn't venture far when it comes to orchestration or sound mixing... and a lot of what he composes does sound the same...

I actually said to someone the other day "I miss James Horner... where did he go?... What happened to the great 80-90's scores by him?"

And I kinda stand by that. MOst of my favourite scores of his are from that time... Land Before Time, Krull, Titanic, Honey I shrunk the Kids, etc...

To put it in manner of fact terms he's not brilliantly gifted, he just can write good, solid scores that work with the film. He has only a few true "sounds" that he can master and he doesn't travel too far from them. I want to say he perhaps doesn't push himself too hard but rather allows himself to settle into a certain niche that when a film wants a certain sounding score, they say "Get me James Horner."

His music can be very elegant and melodic. It's not complex, but it can be beautiful at the same time.

I guess the best way is what was said in a few other posts here... his music is very "matter of fact," which John Williams states is required in a film score... I don't hold much animosity towards him... You just can KNOW a score by him by hearing it.

And Hla-roo put it best I think about the re-using of melodic material.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Jerry Goldsmith's action music becomes highly derivative after a while, except for a few outstanding cues.

Ohhhh you were doing so well, and now you've blown it.

Kevin, you are new here, don't bash Maestro Goldsmith, please!

[Datameister 2,042]

I got nothing new to add to this. I own a few of the guy's scores, I mostly like what I hear, but I get tired of hearing the same things repeated again and again. TheListener, I fully realize that John Williams has techniques that he reuses frequently, and he sometimes even quotes himself rather directly. But it usually comes off as if he simply he forgot he's already written a passage based on that motif, and it popped up again in his head as he was scoring a similar scene in a different movie, and he took a somewhat different approach to a very similar idea. With Horner...well, half the time, it sounds like James Horner is a very studious, devoted, intense, interested, reverent pupil of James Horner. To the point where he can't imagine doing anything differently. Don't mistake me for insulting the guy; he's written great stuff. I'm just saying that I don't think it's fair to compare Williams' occasional re-use of ideas and sounds over the many decades to Horner's insistent, frequent, note-for-note self-plagiarism. It really ain't the same thing.

[Ray Barnsbury 8]

I enjoy a lot of Horner's music, but most of it is from over a decade ago. An exception is The New World from last year, which isn't very original, but is Horner at his most Horner-ific (in a good way). In general, he can write wonderful themes, uses lush, sartisfying orchestrations, and has written great action music from time to time. My favorites:

Glory

The Land Before Time

The Rocketeer

Legends of the Fall

The New World

Ray Barnsbury

[Quintus 5,399]

Echoing what a lot of others have said, I used to really love Horner's music, but he faded into "meh"sville a good few years ago. His last great score was Titanic, which I absolutely hammered to death for more than a year after its release. Before that I loved his themes to stuff like Willow and Cocoon. Indeed the latter remains one of the most charming themes I've ever heard.

And he got an AMAZING performance out of the LSO for Aliens, possibly my fave Horner score.

[Joni Wiljami 1,206]

I like two of his 80' scores : An American Tail and Willow.

Later I lost interest cause it's all the same.

Not very versatile fellow.

[Luke Skywalker 1,795]

I have yet to hear a Horner score not to feature the 'danger motif' at least once. Williams does not use imperial march for all his villains.

I dont have that many Horner scores though.

Love theme from braveheart is lifted from one of Holt's Planets. Second movement i think.

[Morlock 11]

Well on Troy he had 3.5 weeks to work.

Goldsmith's Airforce One is hailed as brilliant work in a short amount of time, yet it only contains uh...enough lifts from his other scores to fill an orchestral hall twice over.

See the double standard?

No.....because at least three themes in the score were stolen from other composers. I quite like Troy. Good action music, and I love the Achiles theme. Air Force One has the leg up for me because of the choral writing, and it's better tan most other JG action music (even if some of it is written by McNeely). Hell, I prefer it for 'Redek's Death' alone.

[Jarbas 1]

I´d heard Battle Beyond the Stars, and I don't like the way of Horner in it, using Goldsmith's music from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

My favorite Horner score is Krull. Simply fantastic!!!

About his recent works, I´ve liked All the King's Men.

And, yes he is a great composer!

[Morlock 11]

All The King's Men kind of crystalizes my dissapointment in Horner. I love his scores....but he is so consistantly disspointing in his lack of originality. He doesn't even pretend, or try. With All The King's Men, I heard the main titles, thought, 'wow, a new James Horner theme! it fits, it sounds nice....wow!'.

Than I found out he took it from Brahms, verbatim.

[King Mark 3,631]

At least he never sounds like Williams

[Jarbas 1]

All The King's Men kind of crystalizes my dissapointment in Horner. I love his scores....but he is so consistantly disspointing in his lack of originality. He doesn't even pretend, or try. With All The King's Men, I heard the main titles, thought, 'wow, a new James Horner theme! it fits, it sounds nice....wow!'.

Than I found out he took it from Brahms, verbatim.

Which specific music of Brahms? I love the Main Titles...

[Morlock 11]

Except for the second Zorro score. No idea what happened there.

[Ollie 1,059]

Well on Troy he had 3.5 weeks to work.

Goldsmith's Airforce One is hailed as brilliant work in a short amount of time, yet it only contains uh...enough lifts from his other scores to fill an orchestral hall twice over.

See the double standard?

Not really, Goldsmith was a much better composer that Horner. He still managed to make his music interesting, regardless of whether or not his action music became repetative. As simple as some of the writing was in AFO it still packs a punch.

There are many scores of Horner's that I absolutely enjoy... but looking at them... for the most art they all sound the same.

His ability to interweave different instruments and parts together complexly but yet very matter of fact is something I've always found very interesting...

He doesn't venture far when it comes to orchestration or sound mixing... and a lot of what he composes does sound the same...

I actually said to someone the other day "I miss James Horner... where did he go?... What happened to the great 80-90's scores by him?"

And I kinda stand by that. MOst of my favourite scores of his are from that time... Land Before Time, Krull, Titanic, Honey I shrunk the Kids, etc...

To put it in manner of fact terms he's not brilliantly gifted, he just can write good, solid scores that work with the film. He has only a few true "sounds" that he can master and he doesn't travel too far from them. I want to say he perhaps doesn't push himself too hard but rather allows himself to settle into a certain niche that when a film wants a certain sounding score, they say "Get me James Horner."

His music can be very elegant and melodic. It's not complex, but it can be beautiful at the same time.

I guess the best way is what was said in a few other posts here... his music is very "matter of fact," which John Williams states is required in a film score... I don't hold much animosity towards him... You just can KNOW a score by him by hearing it.

And Hla-roo put it best I think about the re-using of melodic material.

Well said. Like I said I really don't mind the borrowing but I agree with your statement.

[Morlock 11]

Not really, Goldsmith was a much better composer that Horner. He still managed to make his music interesting, regardless of whether or not his action music became repetative. As simple as some of the writing was in AFO it still packs a punch.

I think Horner did a fine job with Troy nonetheless. But I've got a soft spot for AFO (even though Randy's is far more interesting)....it's one of the first scores I noticed. And 'Radek's Death' was probably the first Goldsmith cue I went ape-shit for, and it's still one of my favorites. Such a brilliant cue.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,068]

He still managed to make his music interesting, regardless of whether or not his action music became repetative.

The same holds true for Horner.

[Morlock 11]

I agree. Troy's score was excellent in the film, and it was the first time in a long time that I liked the use of the four notes.

[QMM 4]

In one of the most striking examples of self-plagiarism, the motif first introduced in Searching for Bobby Fischer is reconfigured as the main theme in three later films: Sneakers, Bicentennial Man, and A Beautiful Mind. Of course, Williams himself is not immune from this sort of pattern (see Amistad, The Patriot, and The Unfinished Journey). But I think Horner regurgitates his previous work more regularly, artlessly, matter-of-factly than other composers do theirs.

Sneakers was made a year before Bobby Fisher

[Morlock 11]

Same difference.

[Ollie 1,059]

Horner certainly did find some of his best musical ideas with Apollo 13, Braveheart, Titanic, Zorro ; works composed between 1995 and 1999. Was this his "prime" ?

1982 to 1989.

1982 to 1990. The Rocketeer.

Allright I'll stretch it to 1990 cause I like The Rocketeer.

[Delorean90 42]

[Goldsmithfan 6]

There is also the part of the director which we don't know about. He could say "you know that motif that Williams does, could you replicate that somehow in your music in this part?"

Goldsmith said in an interview that he had to mimck Williams's Jaws theme in The Omen.

Actually Goldsmith said that Donner liked the ostinato that Williams used for Jaws and thought it was very effective so he requested a forceful rhythm for "Broken Vows". Not quite the same thing, but your point is 100% valid. Like when Goldsmith was asked to take the first few notes of "Anvil of Crom" and stick them in Total Recall. Hell, Ron Jones said that directors have told him outright that "This should sound like John Williams".

[Morlock 11]

Who on earth is Ron Jones?

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

Ron Jones, composer for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Family Guy and American Dad!, among others.

[Red 75]

I like two of his 80' scores : An American Tail and Willow.

Later I lost interest cause it's all the same.

Not very versatile fellow.

You lost interest because the guy's name is not John Williams.

[Joni Wiljami 1,206]

BS

[Morlock 11]

Ron Jones, composer for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Family Guy and American Dad!, among others.

Phew! I thought there was someone important I was not aware of.

[Red 75]

BS

You said yourself that you only care about Williams.

[Joni Wiljami 1,206]

I said I don't buy anything else, not care.

[tuneman_21 0]

I personally consider James Horner to be one of the top two composers in Hollywood (Top Three when Goldsmith was still alive).

I am much more fond of Horner's pre-The Rocketeer scores than he's post - Rocketeer scores. The Zorro scores are some of his better current stuff. I personally thought the Star Trek scores he did were brilliant, especially considering how young he was at the time, they have a really mature sound. Braveheart was brilliant.

I think the Titanic score gets a bad wrap because of some of the people involved in it - Leonardo DiCrapio, et al. It also gets a bad wrap because of that song, which every male on earth was sick of by the 12,000,000 playing of it on the radio. The song was overkilled and the score unnecessarily suffered for that. That score also suffered from some horrible post-production editing.

What I don't like about Horner is the occasional blattant klepto-composing he does: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, the Mars rhythm in Mask of Zorro. To me, its one thing to use a folk song, like in Braveheart, or when he lifts some cues he wrote for another movie - I don't think there's a Hollywood composer that hasn't done that. But its another to take someone's work and not credit the guy who wrote it, especially when the guy is still alive!

I also think that he is sometimes way too married to that airy, New Age, Enya type music. He can be almost overly atmospheric.

Horner does the same thing well that JW and JG did well - finding that untangable something about the movie and bring it forward musically. Like with Williams and Goldsmith, his music always seems like it always belonged. I've never heard a Horner score that I thought "Wow, that really doesn't work."

[nightscape94 965]

I found it amusing that, almost immediately after this thread started, people began bashing Williams in order defend Horner. Honestly, I like quite a bit of Horner's music, so I'm not going to bash him.

Thankfully, at the beginning and end of the day, Williams is a class-A composer, and I'm not speaking about "film composing", I'm talking about COMOSING. Period. The man is on the list with the greats, so let's stop acting like a bunch of children, sinking down to a low point, and performing a load of name-calling and complaining.

My favorite Horner scores are (in no particular order)

The Land Before Time

The Legends of the Fall

Apollo 13

Willow

The Rocketeer

Tim

[Ollie 1,059]

Hmmm methinks this thread was started by a troll.

May be wrong but it fits the pattern if you look back thru out the history of the message board.

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

I think this thread is quite harmless.

[tuneman_21 0]

Hmmm methinks this thread was started by a troll.

May be wrong but it fits the pattern if you look back thru out the history of the message board.

Yeah. What's so wrong with this discussion? We've talked about other composers here, why should Horner - and the defense or bashing of him - be any different?

Shoot, if it wasn't for Horner, and Williams and Goldsmith, I probably wouldn't give a hoot about the only really good "classical" music being written in modern times.

[Ollie 1,059]

Who said anything was wrong with this discussion?

Let me word it this way so you can understand, will the author of this thread return for further message board discussions or will he/she be like previous people who register and post a thread about Horner and then disappear?

[John Crichton 4]

The coyote has a point. And history is on his side.

[Ollie 1,059]

Well I am a super genius....

[John Crichton 4]

Then why the teeny tiny umbrella when it's obvious a rock the size of a small sperm whale is about to fall on top of you?

[Red 75]

Who said anything was wrong with this discussion?

Let me word it this way so you can understand, will the author of this thread return for further message board discussions or will he/she be like previous people who register and post a thread about Horner and then disappear?

Well, he is called The Listener.

[Ollie 1,059]

Then why the teeny tiny umbrella when it's obvious a rock the size of a small sperm whale is about to fall on top of you?

Well my ex-wife always said I lacked common sense.

Either that or some ACME product backfired as usual.

[John Crichton 4]

If they made that cartoon nowadays ol' Wile E. Coyote could sue the pants off ACME for defective products.

[Luke Skywalker 1,795]

Well, i just heard my first non danger motif score from James Horner. The New World.

Bullcrap of score though. Jarring annoying main theme (repeated 3 times, equally in the score). All my family complained about it. And they dont give a damn about scores.

[Ray Barnsbury 8]

I think it's a lovely score, if hardly original.

Ray Barnsbury

[Romão 2,274]

One of my all time favorite movies, made even better by Mallick's masterful use of classical pieces.

[nightscape94 965]

Especially the Wagner at the beginning and end of the film.

Tim

[Morlock 11]

The Wagner was the only noticably good music in the film for me, and the movie was not really a movie.

[Luke Skywalker 1,795]

Especially the Wagner at the beginning and end of the film.

Tim

mmm-- is that the music that opens and closes the movie?

Then, i suppose i must say my compliments.

Wagner's music is the crap annoying one....

Unless it is a hack by Horner, then he has no redemption...