詹姆斯·霍纳

James Roy Horner (August 14, 1953 – June 22, 2015) was an American film composer and conductor. He is known for the integration of choral and electronic elements alongside traditional orchestrations, and for his use of motifs associated with Celtic music.

Horner worked on more than 160 films and television productions between 1978 and 2015. He won two Academy Awards for his musical composition to James Cameron's Titanic (1997), which became the best-selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time. He also wrote the score for the highest-grossing film of all time, Cameron's Avatar (2009). Horner's other Oscar-nominated scores were for Aliens (1986), An American Tail (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Apollo 13 (1995), Braveheart (1995), A Beautiful Mind (2001), and House of Sand and Fog (2003). Horner's other notable scores include Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Willow (1988), The Land Before Time (1988), Glory (1989), The Rocketeer (1991), Legends of the Fall (1994), Jumanji (1995), Casper (1995), Balto (1995), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Deep Impact (1998), The Perfect Storm (2000), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Troy (2004), The New World (2005), The Legend of Zorro (2005), Apocalypto (2006), The Karate Kid (2010), and The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).

Horner collaborated on multiple projects with directors including James Cameron, Don Bluth, Ron Howard, Joe Johnston, Edward Zwick, Walter Hill, Mel Gibson, Vadim Perelman, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Nicholas Meyer, Wolfgang Petersen, Martin Campbell, Phil Nibbelink and Simon Wells; producers including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, David Kirschner, Brian Grazer, Jon Landau, and Lawrence Gordon; and songwriters including Will Jennings, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Adding to his two Academy Awards win, Horner also won six Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, and was nominated for three BAFTA Awards.

An avid pilot, Horner died in a single-fatality crash in 2015 while flying his Short Tucano turboprop aircraft. He was 61 years old. The scores for his final three films, Southpaw (2015), The 33 (2015) and The Magnificent Seven (2016), were all completed and released posthumously.

Early life and education

Horner was born on August 14, 1953, in Los Angeles, California, to Jewish immigrant parents. His father, Harry Horner, was a set designer and art director who emigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His mother, Joan Ruth (née Frankel), was born to a Canadian family. His brother Christopher is a writer and documentary filmmaker.

Horner started playing piano at the age of five. He also played violin. He spent his early years in London, where he attended the Royal College of Music, where he studied with György Ligeti. He returned to America, where he attended Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona, and later received his bachelor's degree in music from the University of Southern California. After earning a master's degree, he started work on his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he studied with Paul Chihara, among others. After several scoring assignments with the American Film Institute in the 1970s, he finished teaching a course in music theory at UCLA, then turned to film scoring.

Career

Horner's first credits as a feature-film composer were for B-movie director and producer Roger Corman. 1979's The Lady in Red was followed by 1980's Humanoids from the Deep and Battle Beyond the Stars. As his work gained notice in Hollywood, Horner was invited to take on larger projects.