STANDOUT SET PIECES #8: BUILDING TENSION

James Horner always focused on story and especially character. Famously (within the Horner community at least), he once stated in the context of his two Star Trek scores that it was always about Spock and Kirk and that “the action would take care of itself”. It should come as no surprise that this focus on characters and their humanity has been the obvious guideline for a series of articles such as this. I have always selected music cues I believe James Horner would have wanted to see discussed. For this episode, however, the reader’s attention is directed toward three cues[...]

IT’S LOGICAL – EPISODE 3: MAGICAL ENCOUNTERS

"It's logical" is a series of articles about the logical construction, the coherence, the visual, narrative, symbolic and emotional dimensions of the many and significant allusions and quotes that James Horner always peppered his work with. Beyond the colors of the piano, Sally Stevens and Darlene Koldenhoven’s ethereal vocals and Branford Marsalis’s warm saxophone, Sneakers (1992) features a mysterious and captivating theme. All of its statements accompany interactions between the movie’s two antagonists, Bishop (Robert Redford) and Cosmo (Ben Kinsley). This theme first appears in a particularly high-speed statement four seconds into the Main Title, where it returns twice (at 1:22 and[...]

BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE AND SENSITIVITY: TWO DISSECTED UNTRUTHS

Everybody has a right to judge James Horner's music and not to like it. Generally this disenchantment is reflected in terribly pejorative verbs such as dig up, borrow, pump, copy, plagiarize ... The kind of actions the composer is accused of, putting forward the idea of ‌‌a lazy craftsman's poor and sloppy work: the pickaxe as an unsubtle tool, borrowing as a sign of weakness, pumping for large quantities, copying for the lack of creativity, plagiarism as a lack of respect towards the other composers. It is difficult to go against this phenomenon because the allegations are undeniable: Indeed, it is indisputable[...]

JAMES HORNER FILM MUSIC

Special Recent Posts

STANDOUT SET PIECES #8: BUILDING TENSION

IT’S LOGICAL – EPISODE 3: MAGICAL ENCOUNTERS

BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE AND SENSITIVITY: TWO DISSECTED UNTRUTHS

SALLY STEVENS

BRANFORD MARSALIS

LIST OF ALBUMS