Composer scored Titanic
Two-time Oscar winner found working on movies ‘liberating’
James Horner, an Academy Award-winning composer best known for scoring the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, has died after one of his planes crashed in Southern California. He was 61.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said the crash occurred Monday near Los Padres National Forest about 80 kilometres north of Santa Barbara. Medical authorities had not confirmed the identity of the crash victim, but several Hollywood sources including his assistant confirmed his death.
“It was his plane, and if he wasn’t in it, he would’ve called,” his lawyer Jay Cooper said after learning of the crash.
“A great tragedy has struck my family today, and I will not be around for a while,” the composer’s assistant Sylvia Patrycja posted on Facebook. “I would like some privacy and time to heal. We have lost an amazing person with a huge heart, and unbelievable talent. He died doing what he loved. Thank you for all your support and love and see you down the road.”
“He was a composer of great stature,” said Cooper, adding Horner owned five aircraft, including three planes and two helicopters. “He was an experienced pilot and he flew all the time.”
Horner won two Oscars for writing the soundtrack to Titanic, which included the hit song My Heart Will Go On, cowritten with Will Jennings and sung by Celine Dion.
He was one of Hollywood’s leading composers, and scored such other blockbusters as Braveheart, A Beautiful Mind, Avatar, Apollo 13, Field of Dreams and Aliens, for which he received his first Oscar nomination in 1987. Actors, directors and fellow composers took to social media to express their sadness at the news.
“Brilliant Composer James Horner, friend & collaborator on 7 movies has tragically died in a plane crash. My heart aches for his loved ones,” actor-director Ron Howard posted on Twitter. Howard worked with Horner on movies including A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13 and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
“My sincere condolences to the family, loved ones and friends of James Horner,” tweeted Russell Crowe, star of A Beautiful Mind.
“He will always remain a great composer in our hearts,” Dion posted on her website.
“James played an important part in my career. We will miss him. We offer his family and friends our deepest sympathy.”
Horner described his composing process during a 2009 interview about the movie Avatar with the Los Angeles Times.
“To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colours and brushes,” he said. “I don’t use a computer when I write and I don’t use a piano. I’m at a desk writing and it’s very broad strokes and notes as colours on a palette. I think very abstractly when I’m writing. Then as the project moves on, it becomes more like sculpting. My job — and it’s something I discuss with (director James Cameron) all the time — is to make sure at every turn of the film it’s something the audience can feel with their heart.”
Born Aug. 14, 1953 in Los Angeles, Horner was born into the movie business. His father, Harry Horner, was a Hollywood production designer. But James grew up wanting to be a classical music composer and wrote several concert works before turning to movies.
“I had no interest in movies at all,” he said in a video interview on YouTube. Instead, he attended the Royal College of Music in London before receiving a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Southern California. He later earned a master’s degree and completed some work toward a doctoral degree in music composition.
“When I first did my movie … it was by accident,” he said in the 2010 video interview, part of an oral history of Hollywood. “I was having a piece performed and in attendance was the director of the American Film Institute and he asked if I had ever done a movie before … I said sure, I’ll give it a try.”
To his surprise, he found composing for movies to be “liberating.”
Horner said he preferred the sweeping soundtracks of classic movies, like Star Wars.
“It was very operatic,” he said of John Williams’ famous Star Wars score. “You had a theme for bravery, you had Luke’s theme, you had the empire’s theme, you had Leia’s theme, and then maybe more, and they were all intertwined. They were really significant themes and you could tell what was going on. That type of writing is gone.
“I think that the stories being written don’t subscribe themselves to something quite that operatic. But the filmmakers don’t want that. They find it oldfashioned.”
“To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colours and brushes.
JAMES HORNER LATE COMPOSER WHO SCORED TITANIC, BRAVEHEART AND A BEAUTIFUL MIND