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James Horner 1953-2015


Not Mr. Big

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This is truly horrible news to wake up to.

I started listening to Horner's music very early in my score collecting days. He quickly became one of my "top tier" of film composers together with Williams, Goldsmith and Barry. His 80s action music and his subsequent dramatic scores represent some of the best music ever composed for film. To die suddenly at the relatively young age of 61 in a plane crash is simply heartbreaking, as he otherwise would have continued to write amazing and beautiful music for many many years to come.

It genuinely feels strange and surreal that there will be no new Horner scores. Times like this really do showcase how much we take for granted at times.

RIP

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My favourite Horner song.

I think that while someone talked earlier about an effeminate side in Horner's music, I would call it a "child-like" side.

Horner's melodies had a child-like simplicity and directness..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTc03M4lPXU

Really sad..

Horner was like a father and mother to me, when I cried listening to his music in my teens and was thinking about my problems, something that I couldn't do with my real parents..

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LOL I should have caught that!

They call it the parabará here.

When I saw the title of the thread, I thought it was a joke thread.

Then I entered and I thought "this is the typical dark JWFAN joke about a pilot who's casually named James Horner, like John Williams the guitarist".

Then I thought oh so maybe some relative of friend of his died in a plane registered to him.

Then I was like "what, James Horner just died piloting a WW2 plane? What?" I had no idea he flew those things...

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Thinking of watching Willow tonight, although I had something else in mind.

I'd like to watch Braveheart, but I don't think i could stand another night in a row crying, after A.I. yesterday.

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Every other day on here there is another bloody R.I.P + (sad face) thread to the point that it has little effect anymore, but this news truly came as a shock to me. Unfortuantely, I learned of it on BBC news website which had misspelled the headline as - "Titanic composer Homer dies"

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I'm very sad about this. It was because of him and Williams that my passion for film music grew and my love for music in general, setting me on the path for music education.

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I heard about this late last night, and I'm heartbroken. Music is so deeply personal, and I'm shocked and also saddened that this just doesn't seem to be news today what with everything being about racism, police violence or Confederate flags. Sigh. I wish we could set aside the politics just for a few hours and have a day to remember a fine composer who added countless hours of magic to the films of our child and adulthood. I'll miss Mr. Horner's work immensely...as I'm sure will all of you. It's just sad that I have to seek out a niche of a niche forum to find people who actually care about this. But - and as corny as I'm sure it sounds - I'm very glad we have each other.

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Celebrity deaths happen every day, but none have hit me as hard as this. Horner was as influential on my teenage years as John Williams. The soundtracks to Star Trek 2, Aliens, and The Rocketeer are among the earliest film score CDs I ever bought, and still among my favorite of all time. Horner has had highs and lows throughout his career, but had been in a recent resurgence of strong output with 5 freaking scores in the can so far this year! He surely had many great scores left in him and we'll never know what they would have been like.

Now he can grab a drink with Jerry, Michael, Basil, John, and Elmer.

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I don't think there is any film composer in the past thirty years who has affected the people who don't give a rip about film score than James Horner - all thanks to that Celine Dion song. He was an undeniable talent, and quite a few of his scores are "classics" to me. Bye, Mr. Horner.

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It is probably a perfect occasion to mention that I got a chance to meet quite a few JWFans (ChrisAfonso, Marian, pub, Thor, Tim Burden) thanks to James Horner's visit in Vienna (in October 2013). Had a really good time back then. He entire concert was recorded and it can be viewed here:

Karol

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What an awful week. Horner was one of the first composers whose music started my interest in film scores, shortly after Williams... that was around the time of Titanic. I loved the scores I directly experienced coming out those years, not knowing much of his older works. In the early 00ies I grew disillusioned with him after discovering that many cues I loved were relatively blatant rip-offs from classical works, and hearing that Troy interview. Then recently, when he was in Vienna, I warmed up to him (and his music) again, after experiencing that he was perhaps a bit socially awkward, but genuinely passionate about his work (and could tell some entertaining stories about it), and rediscovered some classics of his I hadn't really known well yet. Some of his compositional traits may continue to baffle me, but he left a tremendous amount of incredible music. A shame to see him go too soon.

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I'll be going home tonight after work tonight and having a few beers just sitting and listening to my favorite Horner scores. If anyone's in Georgia, you're welcome to join me.

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Too bad he liked planes, he could have chosen something safer like JW (trees)

Don't jinx it. Tomorrow we might hear that a tree fell on Williams as he was admiring it.

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From Hans Zimmer:

What a sad day for all of us. A great composer gone - and with him the world will be a little less beautiful, less soulful. We lost an artist that everyday created music that touched our hearts and souls, invented memories for us to share and who's music brought us closer together.

James, we miss you.
Hans

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From Jeff Bond:

I think I talked to James Horner twice for the Hollywood Reporter--both lengthy conversations. He was fascinating to talk to--articulate, generous with his time, highly knowledgable, sometimes cagy, often opinionated and sometimes prideful--but he earned that: he wrote the best-selling movie score of all time.

So many of the composers we loved worked, and created great music, up to the last moments it was physically possible for them as they aged and sickened--Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann (who died the night he finished his brilliant score to Taxi Driver). Horner's death is stunning for how unexpected it was--he was only 61--and especially because he was a composer in his prime and seemed to be entering a whole new period of creativity. His score for Jean Jacques Annaud's "Le Dernier Loup" sounds like one of the best in years, he was embarking on a series of concert works and he had other major projects like the Avatar sequels in front of him. I've spent the past month working on an album of his music--a score with a big profile that I'd never fully appreciated. Rewatching the film and going over the music again and again, I came to realize what a marvelously elegant, subtle and brilliantly interwoven masterpiece it is. We had tried to wrangle Horner for an interview for the project and I had a ton of questions about the work I was dying to have answered--for various reasons the interview didn't happen, and I'm ambivalent about that for purely selfish reasons because talking to him and having his death follow a week or two later would have redoubled the shock of his passing for me at least. But it's heartening to see the outpouring of thoughts on his work from everyone. Horner did something I think most film composers only dream of--he truly reached the public with his music in a way that only the most popular recording artists do. Film music is to most people an arcane, under-the-radar discipline—but it's the only way most people ever experience the power and unique, expressive capability of a symphonic orchestra. Losing one of the finest practitioners of that art, and the decades' worth of music he could have, and probably would have produced going forward, is just a massive blow to film music culture.

https://www.facebook.com/jeffc.bond/posts/10205819892069975

Well, that's at least one expanded Horner release hopefully coming soon. And "a score with a big profile" too. Fingers crossed for The Rocketeer!

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Sigh...I'm sitting here listening to this cue in my headphones while I work...

...and I have just the oddest feeling, like I've lost a dear friend...whom I never knew personally...with no way to express how personally I feel the loss to anyone in the "real" world, because I know it'll sound stupid. Yet the feeling is very real. Does anyone else feel this way right now? :-\ I just...it's different than a random celebrity dying, because music is so deeply personal. I feel that I *did* know JH...through music...and he knew me. Sorry for the rambling. I don't know where else to externalize it. Thanks, guys.

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Part of me still doesn't believe this. The lack of official press release turns it into a torture.

Plus, experiencing his new score next month is going to be painful.

Karol

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