James Horner RIP (1953 – 2015)

Staying in the world of music for a rather more solemn reason, I was quite shocked to open up the browser window at lunchtime and hear of the sad death of James Horner, one of the highest profile movie composers of the last thirty years. As well as carving out a list of collaborations with James Cameron (famously furiously throwing together the Aliens score in a ridiculous 48 hours after arriving in Pinewood) he also worked with the likes of Ron Howard and Jean-Jacques Annaud multiple times, as well as scoring cult favorites Field Of Dreams, Battle Beyond The Stars, Krull and Brainstorm. His breakthrough score was probably this;

I’m not a soundtrack specialist who can analyse tempo and arrangement, symphony and melody, but I do know a soundtrack I like when I like it, and I personally always raised an eyebrow of appreciation when his name cropped up in the credits. 61 is alarmingly young, and I guess going while piloting your own plane beats slowly expiring of a protracted cancer battle in a sterile ward or something. Normally I’m going with the Malick, the ending of which always makes me wistfully aware of our tragically brief sojourn in this dimension, but that wouldn’ be appropriate as apparently Terry butchered score and threw in Wagner and Mozart to orchestrate certain scenes instead. No, I think we’ll have to go with the obvious, from one of the great action movie music mechanics;

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