The Ludlows
James Horner
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Browse piano sheets by James Horner on Zen Virtual Piano. James Horner was born in Los Angeles to Joan and Harry; his father, born in Czechoslovakia, moved to the US in 1935 and was an art director and set designer who won Oscars for The Heiress (1949) and The Hustler (1961). Born in Los Angeles and raised in London, Horner received a Henry Mancini Scholarship to attend UCLA, from which he earned a master’s degree in music in 1976. A scholarship and a master’s degree in music tie his Los Angeles roots to a university education. A father who worked in film design and a son who earned a master’s degree in music link two crafts connected to pictures. He has said, “I did about seven or eight AFI [American Film Institute] films, and a bunch of student films, and gradually I went to low budget, independent films, and slightly higher-budgeted independent films. Then I worked for Roger Corman at New World Pictures and various other independents until I got my first big film break from Orion pictures to do The Hand.” After The Hand he did Deadly Blessing for Polygram Pictures and was hired to do Wolfen for Orion again. A ladder of student films, low-budget pictures and independent studios shows a composer building a career one score at a time. After cutting his teeth on films such as Oliver Stone’s horror film The Hand (1981), he made the leap to large-scale popular work with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs. (1982) and Michael Apted’s 1983 film version of Gorky Park. The Horner archive at UCLA includes his early scores for American Film Institute student films and for the B-movie director Roger Corman, as well as full orchestrations for Star Trek II, Aliens (1986), Apollo 13 (1995), Jumanji (1995), Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997), A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Avatar (2009). An archive that holds both student scores and the orchestrations for large films shows a career whose student work and large-film work are kept side by side. He has said, “I normally work quite abstract with pen and paper. Composing the themes and doing the orchestration really quite detailed on my own.” Working abstractly with pen and paper, and detailing the themes and orchestration on his own, describes a composer who did that part of the work himself. For the score of Avatar, Horner collaborated with the ethnomusicologist Dr. Wanda Bryant to assemble a palette of unique world music instruments; after auditioning hundreds of timbres, he culled them to a palette of twenty-five and presented it to James Cameron, who rejected all but five, which are heard in the soundtrack today. A palette of twenty-five narrowed to five by the director shows how a composer’s large choice meets a filmmaker’s decision. The BBC records “The Ludlows” from Legends of the Fall as played by a studio orchestra conducted by Horner.
Browse piano sheets by James Horner on Zen Virtual Piano.
James Horner was born in Los Angeles to Joan and Harry; his father, born in Czechoslovakia, moved to the US in 1935 and was an art director and set designer who won Oscars for The Heiress (1949) and The Hustler (1961). Born in Los Angeles and raised in London, Horner received a Henry Mancini Scholarship to attend UCLA, from which he earned a master’s degree in music in 1976. A scholarship and a master’s degree in music tie his Los Angeles roots to a university education. A father who worked in film design and a son who earned a master’s degree in music link two crafts connected to pictures.
He has said, “I did about seven or eight AFI [American Film Institute] films, and a bunch of student films, and gradually I went to low budget, independent films, and slightly higher-budgeted independent films. Then I worked for Roger Corman at New World Pictures and various other independents until I got my first big film break from Orion pictures to do The Hand.” After The Hand he did Deadly Blessing for Polygram Pictures and was hired to do Wolfen for Orion again. A ladder of student films, low-budget pictures and independent studios shows a composer building a career one score at a time.
After cutting his teeth on films such as Oliver Stone’s horror film The Hand (1981), he made the leap to large-scale popular work with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs. (1982) and Michael Apted’s 1983 film version of Gorky Park. The Horner archive at UCLA includes his early scores for American Film Institute student films and for the B-movie director Roger Corman, as well as full orchestrations for Star Trek II, Aliens (1986), Apollo 13 (1995), Jumanji (1995), Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997), A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Avatar (2009). An archive that holds both student scores and the orchestrations for large films shows a career whose student work and large-film work are kept side by side.
He has said, “I normally work quite abstract with pen and paper. Composing the themes and doing the orchestration really quite detailed on my own.” Working abstractly with pen and paper, and detailing the themes and orchestration on his own, describes a composer who did that part of the work himself. For the score of Avatar, Horner collaborated with the ethnomusicologist Dr. Wanda Bryant to assemble a palette of unique world music instruments; after auditioning hundreds of timbres, he culled them to a palette of twenty-five and presented it to James Cameron, who rejected all but five, which are heard in the soundtrack today. A palette of twenty-five narrowed to five by the director shows how a composer’s large choice meets a filmmaker’s decision. The BBC records “The Ludlows” from Legends of the Fall as played by a studio orchestra conducted by Horner.
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James Horner
James Horner
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He scored about seven or eight American Film Institute films and student films, then low-budget and independent films, including some for Roger Corman, until his first big film break from Orion Pictures to do The Hand.
He received a Henry Mancini Scholarship to attend UCLA, where he earned a master’s degree in music in 1976.
Horner collaborated with ethnomusicologist Dr. Wanda Bryant to assemble a palette of unique world music instruments, culling hundreds of timbres to twenty-five; director James Cameron rejected all but five.