James Horner reveals the sto­ry behind five of his clas­sic film scores

James Horner’s back cat­a­logue of film scores is ridicu­lous. Among his 158 IMDb cred­its are, most famous­ly, James Cameron’s box-office smash­ers Titan­ic and Avatar, but his reper­toire is much broad­er and deep­er. Horner has worked with­in just about every genre you might care to name. Fan­ta­sy? Wil­low. Amer­i­can his­to­ry dra­ma? Glo­ry. Fam­i­ly film? Hon­ey, I Shrunk the Kids. Ani­ma­tion? The Land Before Time. And so it goes on… He’s worked with giant direc­tors like Steven Spiel­berg, and reclu­sive ones, like Ter­rence Malick.

Horner rarely gives inter­views, but for the first-time in 30 years, the Eng­lish-born, US resid­ing com­pos­er is strik­ing out on his own, releas­ing a con­cer­to enti­tled ​‘Pas De Deux’. The day after con­duct­ing the live score to Titan­ic at the Roy­al Albert Hall, LWLies was grant­ed an audi­ence with Horner in an airy, art-adorned room named after some kind of Prince.

“In film score work I have a mas­ter and despite my best wish­es or best con­ceived plans it all has to go to my employ­er for approval. The great things about writ­ing con­cert music is I don’t have a mas­ter. It’s just myself,” he said, while also mak­ing it clear that his career in film scor­ing was not about to be usurped by a new out­let. ​“There’s a mag­ic of cin­e­ma in terms of who I can reach and sto­ry­telling that writ­ing seri­ous music does not afford. I’ve a pas­sion for sto­ry­telling. It’s real­ly what I do best and cin­e­ma allows me to do that.” With that in mind, we asked him to share his mem­o­ries of work­ing on five very dif­fer­ent types of story.

“Star Trek has a built-in audi­ence expect­ing a cer­tain rela­tion­ship between char­ac­ters. This was very ear­ly on in my career and I was not inter­est­ed, I knew noth­ing about Star Trek. I don’t watch TV so I knew noth­ing about the series. I had seen the first Star Trek and wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed, although I did love the visu­als and the effects, but emo­tion­al­ly it didn’t do much for me. So, here comes Star Trek II. What was most impor­tant to me as a sto­ry­teller was the rela­tion­ship between Cap­tain Kirk and Mr Spock. There was no plan for Star Trek III at the time I got hired. It was some­thing that end­ed up hold­ing me in very good stead because I set up this rela­tion­ship, this bond between these two char­ac­ters and that was the key to Star Trek II.

“The vil­lain stuff, the big effects stuff, the chas­es, all of that takes care of itself because it’s all visu­al­ly stun­ning. What has to be brought to the sur­face more in the sto­ry­telling is the deep affec­tion that occurs between these two char­ac­ters, Spock and Kirk, and that’s real­ly what I focussed on. It end­ed up for­tu­itous­ly work­ing to set it up that way because it cement­ed some­thing that wasn’t in the first movie, it cement­ed some­thing on a big scale that wasn’t in the tele­vi­sion series. It was always implied. I tried to nail it in the movie and then it turned out a script appeared for Star Trek III which end­ed up also being very suc­cess­ful in the same way. It was all about that relationship.”

“Glo­ry was a sto­ry that on the sur­face is Civ­il War film which in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma is so unex­plored for some rea­son. Audi­ences don’t respond to that sto­ry. It’s like a World War One sto­ry, I’m dying to do a great World War One sto­ry. Peo­ple don’t go to those kind of movies. Maybe it’s because of scripts, what­ev­er. But Glo­ry was an excep­tion and it did very well and it was very emo­tion­al. Again, to me the sto­ry in Glo­ry was about the rela­tion­ships of Den­zel Wash­ing­ton – who brought it all to life. It was one of his best roles and there are some won­der­ful scenes in that movie, the whole clos­ing sequence on the beach was very mov­ing. Again the sto­ry­telling is all about the rela­tion­ships, to me.

“It’s the inti­ma­cies of the sto­ry­telling that make it come alive. I had a very spe­cif­ic colour in mind. I want­ed to use a boy’s choir. Not an Eng­lish boy’s choir, an Amer­i­can boy’s choir. There were sev­er­al black children’s choir pos­si­bil­i­ties. There’s a unique sound that they make. It’s not the pure Eng­lish thing that you think about. I thought it would be mag­i­cal to use a sound like that in the film to nar­rate the film rather than it being all orches­tral, so I wrote this thing for the boys and they sing it dur­ing the film and sing at the end cred­its and it makes it all much more emo­tion­al. I remem­ber it and it was very emo­tion­al at the ses­sions — all these kids singing against these sequences so the colours are very impor­tant, how I do some of the paint­ing that I do.”

“What I do is move from project to project, and I pur­pose­ful­ly try to do things that are absolute­ly opposed to the pre­vi­ous one so that there’s no crossover and no resid­ual ideas appear­ing in the next one. Hon­ey, I Shrunk the Kids had to be a sort of quirky, sort of comedic score, which I’d nev­er done before. It was more light­weight. It wasn’t this kind of sto­ry­telling that I nor­mal­ly like to do but I knew the film­mak­er [Joe John­ston] very well and I want­ed to have a go at it. So we did this score. I don’t know if I’d do anoth­er light com­e­dy like that. I’m not a com­e­dy per­son, for some rea­son. I tend to go deep­er. I’m a dark­er per­son, but it was fun while I did it and it had a weird, jazzy, almost car­toony feel to it, as it should do, actu­al­ly, for the sto­ry… What­ev­er hap­pened to Rick Moranis?”

“These were all Steven’s movies, Steven Spiel­berg. I did a whole slew of Steven Spiel­berg ani­mat­ed movies and they were all ani­mat­ed in the old Dis­ney style by Don Bluth who was a clas­sic ani­ma­tor – not the cur­rent style of ani­ma­tion you see from Dis­ney and Pixar, of course. Though ani­ma­tion, I treat it seri­ous­ly. Ani­ma­tion is unique. It’s all con­tin­u­ous music. There’s very lit­tle of the movie that works with­out music and it all has to be very tight­ly timed to what the char­ac­ters are doing. It has to be very exact, and in this sto­ry, even though it’s ani­mat­ed, it had to have emo­tions in it. It had to do all the cin­e­ma things that I have to do in every movie.

“It was designed for kids but I want­ed it to appeal to a wider audi­ence. Peo­ple still come up to me and say, ​‘You know one of my favourite scores is The Land Before Time?’ and I can’t believe that they even saw it, but they did. There were some real­ly nice scenes in that. I don’t respond to ani­ma­tion quite like I do live action. It doesn’t hit me the same way. There’s a sus­pen­sion of real­i­ty. Writ­ing for some­thing real and writ­ing for some­thing that’s not real and pre­tend­ing is a lit­tle different.”

“Oh my gol­ly. This is tricky so I have to give you a real­ly good answer. Ter­rence Mal­ick is an enig­mat­ic film­mak­er. He’s a bril­liant pho­tog­ra­ph­er. He’s a bril­liant cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er. In a way, though, he doesn’t know how to coa­lesce a sto­ry from begin­ning to end. When I first saw this movie it was an ear­ly edit. There was no rea­son this movie couldn’t have been as suc­cess­ful as Titan­ic. It was cut that way. It was a sto­ry of this Native Amer­i­can girl meet­ing this guy and it was real­ly roman­tic. In edit­ing, Ter­ry, as he does in his film­mak­ing, made much more of a dream­world and he dis­as­so­ci­at­ed the scenes. There was no through-line any more. He lost the love sto­ry. He wasn’t inter­est­ed in that. He start­ed telling a sto­ry about images and it didn’t hold togeth­er. The movie didn’t hold togeth­er for me, or for an audience.

“I think that Terry’s bril­liant but he is an abstract painter. You have to know going in that what you ini­tial­ly see – which is a real sto­ry – ends up look­ing more like a Picas­so or an abstract painter and it’s bro­ken up and musi­cal­ly that doesn’t work. You can’t tell a lin­ear sto­ry any more and he ends up cut­ting stuff and for an audi­ence, emo­tion­al­ly, I just don’t think that holds togeth­er. Visu­al­ly, it’s stun­ning but the sto­ry­telling – it’s a book that can’t be read.”

James Horner’s new con­cert work ​‘Pas de Deux’ is released on Mer­cury Clas­sics on Mon­day 25 May. Find out more about film screen­ings with live music at roy​alal​berthall​.com