The Classical Borrowings of James Horner
Written by Quinn Riley
There has been much speculation and debate over the years, among critics and fans alike, as to whether the late film composer James Horner borrowed too much of his music from the works of classical composers.
If you listen closely to many of his scores, you might hear Horner quoting themes and motifs from such classical composers as Robert Schumann, Wolfgang Mozart, Carl Orff, and Aram Khachaturian, to name a few. Horner justified his classical choices by saying that he often called upon the history of music to create the necessary inspiration for the film he was scoring. According to one interviewer, who did not agree with the accusation of plagiarism, Horner didn’t just copy and paste another composer’s work into his own scores, but rather brought his own sensibility and breathed new life into the thematic material, all the while respecting the historical and spiritual dimensions of the original work.
Of his own composing style, particularly in the case of the 1988 film Willow, where Horner drew inspiration from Robert Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony, James Horner said the following:
“I am a musicologist, a doctor of music. Therefore, I listened to, studied, and analyzed a lot of music. I also enjoy metaphors, the art of quoting and of cycles. The harmonic draft of the Willow score, and most particularly its spiritual side, came from such a cycle, from such mythology and music history that I was taught, and that I myself convey with my own emotions and compositions.”
Despite the criticism of James Horner’s quoting of classical pieces in his scores, during his all too short career (he died tragically at the age of 61), Horner received eight Academy Award nominations for best original score, winning one for 1997’s Titanic.
If you want to hear an example of James Horner utilizing the Adagio from Aram Khachaturian’s ballet Gayaneh in his score for the 1986 film Aliens, join me at 1:00 p.m. on March 24th for a comparison.
