Marc Webb's film is now available. On both Blu-Ray editions James Horner makes an appearance in the documentary ‘Rite of Passage’, in the chapter entitled ‘The Greatest Responsibility: Post-Production and Release’.
Firstly, Marc Webb goes back on the creation of the main theme:
"James Horner would always excel about creating a very specific, simple theme that he could play with one hand on a keyboard. James was walking in the studio one day and he came up and he said “I’ve got something for you” and there was that “tin tin tin” (singing the Spider-Man theme). And I got chills. With the producers we had always wanted since the first meetings this simple recognizable theme when Spider-Man is coming to town, and James cracked it in about an hour and a half."
Then we can see James Horner conducting a part of the track Becoming Spider-Man. He comments:
"It's a very important cue because obviously it’s the transformation of him from being civilian to becoming Spider-Man. And what I’m listening to, in the headphones, is vocal tracks, electronic tracks and pre-layered, and then the orchestra – we hear it in our headset – and the orchestra plays on top of that, overdubs that. I’ve used all kind of interesting electronic colors and weird sort of ethnic instruments and there’s a lot of solo piano music that I played. That’s another reason why we wear headsets to try to sort of follow my crazy piano performances."
Moreover, he speaks about the piano motif, which is heard throughout the album:
"It doesn’t even matter what the notes are, you already cast a certain mood and a spell with just hearing that. And just putting that kind of music in a film like this says realms about the approach of the filmmaker and the approach of the composer, because it’s not a fraud thing. It just works on you in a different way."
Finally the two men conclude by recalling the two main components of the film: the dramatic and intimate sides of it.
Marc Webb:
"I wanted to protect the simplicity of the love story. I wanted it to feel delicate and a little bit fragile despite all the massive spectacle and the intensity of some of the action stuff. It was important to creating a feeling of smallness. And the best thing was to keep it feeling like there was this little kid. I think what James was able to do was really unify the film and create that vast polish that felt both emotional and exciting."
James Horner:
"The action stuff will take care of itself. It’s gonna look great and it’s gonna sound great. But part that is really important, are the in-between bits. What Peter is thinking, when he gets pensive, when he loses a family member, when he’s developing this relationship with Gwen… It’s really important to bring out the under story, the human story, for me. That’s just the way I like to write scores."
