Horner's career now spans over 20 years, he remains as prolific and in demand as ever - and lets face it, how many other composers who came to the fore around the same time are still as active and sought after today?

In my list of favourite composers, he perhaps wouldn't come in the top five (such places are reserved for legends like Goldsmith), but he would certainly figure in my top ten - and he remains well represented in my CD collection.

We all know his faults and indeed some criticisms levelled at him are undoutedly justified, but excluding Williams etc., is there anyone at the forefront of film music composition today actually better than Horner?

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I've asked myself, is there anyone working in the industry today who can hold a mantle to those greats.

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Danny Elfman comes to my mind; and Howard Shore, when he continues to deliver such mindblowing scores as Aviator, Sun or LotR.

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Originally posted by MarkA:
I'd take a Horner score over just about any Elfman score any day of the week.

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What did it mean to be great then, and what does it mean to be great now?

I think Horner has earned his greatness already. We know his downfalls, of which he's really only guilty of "doing it more." I mean, John Barry's last handful of scores all sound the same. Bernstein's too. But does this take away from their greatness?

If anything is not in favor of Horner's greatness, it's that his greatness came too early... especially if he's gonna keep scoring. He will crib for 20 or 30 more years, which may be enough to dampen our enthusiasm for praising him. So many are already tired of it!

But he's done his thing, and much of it great. As for those who made a name for themselves in the mid-80s along with Horner, I think most of them gambled their lot on going for the pop sound of the time, oops, or got "stuck" in TV scoring (I say "stuck" because the work may have been just fine... do all composers have an ulterior motive of becoming famous, or are they happy writing music to pay the bills?).

All that should matter is that you enjoyed the music, whether it was entire body of work, work form a specific period, or just one cue that you liked on a CD full of absolute banality.

King Kong is a prime example of the extreme pressure put on a composer, even if there are co-composers working with James Newton Howard, to come up with an entire score for a 3-hour film. And the results weren't exactly stellar, as far as JNH's high calibre writing goes for films where he has a little more time for scoring.

The real James Horner is probably orbiting a distant star composing great scores that we'll never hear.

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Originally posted by Bagtatta:
Sean, Ironically King Kong is one of my favorite scores. Not so much the beginning but as soon as the action tracks kick in I love it.

I have not heard much of James Horners scores. I recently purchased Glory for only $5 at a Sam Goody that was closing. I haven't had the chance to listen to it yet but plan on soon. From reading though I hear some of his scores parts sound the same..Not good from my point of view.

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Originally posted by PeterK:
What about an Elfman score that sounds like a Horner score? Is there one?

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Elfman's "The Letter" from A CIVIL ACTION sounds remarkably like the end title theme from APOLLO 13. A coincidence? Yes, of course. But still kinda cool.

After Williams retires, I see Horner taking over. He will have to compete with many other great composers though. I hope to see Alan Silvestri score more action films as he did with The Mummy Returns. I want Basil Poledouris to make a comeback, hopefully bringing us something half as good as Conan The Barbarian. I really hope John Debney is given the oppourtunity to score more action as he did with Cutthroat Island, a breathtaking score. James Newton Howard is a contender, giving us King Kong and Signs. I hope to see Shore do more. The praise from the LOTR Trilogy will only last for so long. Zimmer is great, giving us The Prince Of Egypt and Gladiator. He will be one of the top five. I never liked Elfman except for his work on Batman. He is overrated and repetitive. Hornerisms should be Elfmanisms.

Just for the sake of argument, here goes:
I think James Horner has huge potential. Probably the most accomplished and fully developed composer working today. Equally at ease with the grand, romantic symphonic form he used in the 1980's (Land before time, Star Trek, Balto...), as he is with ethnic instruments (celtic or otherwise) & influences (the Russian choir in An American Tail), and synthetic textures. (Troy being a pathetically poor exception - lamest Balkan-influenced music ever composed).

Once that is out of the way, reality kicks in: James Horner is too lazy to do anything new anytime soon. Like it or not Hornerfans, the dude's got more talent than anyone, but figured that it's easier to rehash the same themes ad nauseum than to actually do something new for a change. Oh, I'm not talking about style. That's what some of the most crazy Hornerfans don't quite grasp. Those of us exasperated with Horner, have not reached that state of mind based on his style. I really need to find that quote from George Fenton about composers and their styles.
The trouble with Horner isn't the stylistic cocoon on the outside; it's the actual content on the inside.

No one has ever ruined as many movies for me as James Horner. Going in to see one movie, suddenly hearing the score from another, and any attempt at immersion with the story is gone forever. Perhaps this is one of the subconsious reasons which made me argue with Lou that film music wasn't needed in films. If a film is scored by Horner, he might end up doing more damage than if the film had no score at all.

I wish he would just go away to a villa somewhere and never compose another film score until he is ready to do something good which is neither:
(1) a lazy photocopy of his past works; or
(2) a plagiarism of (most often Russian) classical music; or
(3) droning, mediocre underscore.

Just because Horner gets a lot of jobs is no proof that he's actually any good. It just means he's made a name for himself. Well so did Harold Robbins but you wouldn't put him on the shelf next to Faulkner.

There were a lot of people here who love the Horner sound, even some who called him their favorite composer. Well, I'm sure there are people who think Danielle Steel is the greatest author to ever live, ever! Can do no wrong! And to them, she is. Anyone who likes Horner and doesn't understand how anyone can't like him is a like my Danielle Steel fan. Fine, love Horner, advertise your lack of taste for the whole world to see, and enjoy yourselves.

Just because a composer finds a certain style and repeats himself (especially towards the end of his career) is no reason to slam that composer in & of itself. All the final Rozsa and Delerue scores, you can hum them almost as you're hearing them for the first time, but I love them nonetheless. It is about the Rozsa sound or the Horner sound or what have you. I'm not usually so "auteurist" in my thinking but in this case, it's true. The worst Herrmann or Rozsa score is automatically superior to the finest Horner score. I have no problem making this kind of statement.

I can't tell one Vivaldi work from another. They all sound alike, like one giant concert work broken up into ocassional opus numbers. But they're all generally great.

And this is how it is with the great composers and the poor ones.

It's not that Horner is repetitious, it's that his overall sound, his overall ability is nil.

Horner has no talent, no "huge potential" that he's wasting. And all the scores that people think are great and that "he's declined from" are no different. I can't listen to Krull. Even Star Trek II, the one good fluke in his catalog doesn't hold up any longer. Everything he does is just bad, unpassable TV music. He ruins every film he touches.

It goes beyong copying himself or worse stealing from others. Film music should work on two levels: it has to dramatically support a film and it should be of enough quality to work as music, to be played on its own.

Horner's music does neither. It's anti-drama for the films it's in. It's either over the top drum beats or crescendos or the most dull and cliched sentimentalist crap. And if that's what it is like within the films, you can imagine how unplayable it is away from the films.

Someone said maybe Horner wasn't being challenged enough by his directors. What nonsense. A director shouldn't have to challenge a composer. I can point to atleast a hundred B-movies where the professionalism of the composer made them give it their all to films far beneath their talents and whose scores are far better than anything Horner could ever touch.

It has nothing to do with this film or that. It's talent and an approach. The flaw is James Horner himself. Not the films, not laziness, a lack of challenge or of inspiration. It's not that he once in a while writes something good that gets overlooked because he's being slammed so much. He's simply incapable of doing ANY good work WHATSOEVER. PERIOD. The guy is a simply a worthless hack who should be barred from scoring films.

The part that I do agree with you the most on is that directors should not have to "challenge" the composer working on a film. I think Hans Zimmer does great music for films that are horrendous (Black Rain, Backdraft, The Ring, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, The Ring, and King Arthur, just to mention a few). So, you're right, it's the responsibility of the composer to get it right and not for someone else to hold the reigns for them.

As for TV music, I'd say that many shows nowadays showcase scores that are even better than most film scores. Michael Giacchino's music for Lost is one astonishing case-in-point, and so is Bear McCreary's continually excellent score for Battlestar Galactica; both of those composers, IMO, easily outsnap people like John Williams and Hans Zimmer on an episodic basis.

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Originally posted by sean:
Also, when you post your essay-long comments it would be great to read about something other than Delerue, Rozsa, or Herrmann and their past glories; most of their scores don't stand the test of time, and just sound downright "old-fashioned."

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Huh? Now there's a silly comment which makes me ask: how much of their music have you actually heard?

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Originally posted by Dinko:

Huh? Now there's a silly comment which makes me ask: how much of their music have you actually heard?

I mean, when I listen back, most of the film scores I have from the 1970's through the 1990's (for example by Zimmer & Co., Elfman, Goldsmith and Williams among others) sound more old-fashioned than what Rozsa, Delerue or Herrmann wrote for most of their careers.
I'm not saying I don't like the scores from the 70's through the 90's. I'm just saying they sound a lot more outdated today than the products of the three composers Lou mentioned.
Unless of course you define purely "orchestral" music as out-dated, thereby including virtually all classical music and all orchestral scores, then you're perfectly right.

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And yes Sean, Horner killed my dog. I played my dog Glory and he keeled over dead. And I have to thank the suicide hot line that night for keeping me alive there as well.

TV music might be getting better. And I'm not saying it's been bad: Star Trek, Air Power, Barry Gray, The Avengers, Mancini, The Twilight Zone, etc. etc. all showed TV music could be sublime. But there's a kind of very bad, very generic, funky 70s cop show chase music that I was referencing when I said TV music. I guess I should have been more explicit.

Also I'm running into the same golden/silver age vs modern age taste dichotomy I run into a lot. Sean says "it would be great to read about something other than Delerue, Rozsa, or Herrmann and their past glories." Ain't ever gonna happen. Film music IS Rozsa & Herrmann and everything, EVERYTHING, is secondary or crap to them. They are seraphim above criticism. In fact, not to worship & mention these guys on a regular basis is to miss the whole point of film music. To paraphrase Francois Truffaut, if you don't love Rozsa & Herrmann, you simply don't love film music and should stop turning on the CD player. ALL of their scores stand the test of time, they are the pyramids themselves, timeless and perfect. And if they are "old-fashioned" god forbid what "new-fashioned" must sound like.

On the other hand, to say that Rozsa can do no wrong & Horner can do no right (even if true) doesn't make for solid argument. Even if I hold my opinions as axioms of the universe, it still comes down to taste, to liking this & not liking that. And since I believe in freedom, you're all free to love Horner, listen to him, and choke on him to your heart-attack's content.

Nuts-score thinks that Horner could not have gotten his foot in the door without creating something worthwhile. That's an assumption. My guess is he slept with somebody. And must still be doing it. People might have liked his early scores. But just try to listen through 70+ minutes of Krull today: noise & nothing more. But the fact that Horner can write such obvious junk and still have a huge career today only proves Nuts-score is wrong: the same tasteless guys who hire him today hired him in the past too.

There are films I'd like to see that I avoid if they are scored by Horner (The Four Feathers being one example). When Horner scores something I have to see regardless (Enemy at the Gates or The New World), I find those films are flawed. In the end, I figure if you hire James Horner to score your film, your film must be bad to begin with because you have no taste to start with.

I could fill pages with scorn for the guy but why bother. In a world of giants there's no need to concern oneself with lice.

Excuse me for laughing long and hard about this. About every score Williams touched from the 70s all the way through the 90s could be considered a classic in one way or another. And even if one of his scores shouldn't be perfect as a whole once in a while, it still has some outstanding cues.

Here are some Williams classics that come to my mind:

Jaws, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple Of Doom, Last Crusade, E.T., Schindler's List, Superman, Hook, Jurassic Park, The Fury, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ... and those are just the absolute creme de la creme of his legacy.

Williams was utterly brilliant before Horner touched film music, and he still is, whereas Horner seems to have fallen already.

Now I can only speak for myself, but I have tried to listen to so many Horner scores, but each and every one of them left me completely cold. I don't know what it is, but there is something about his music that just sounds ... cheap.
And that horrid synth choir he uses doesn't help either.

By the way as Sean said it best it all comes down to a matter of personal taste.

If you like Horner than you do, if you don't then you don't. No one is right or wrong. However for someone like Lou to write an essay (literally) on why he hates the man and expect others to try and hate him too is going a bit over-board.

Grant I haven't been too thrilled with Horner since the late 90's. I know lately too he's been repeating himself over and over again and that's one reason why I don't like him anymore. However that doesn't mean I'm going to go on every message board and write an essay slamming him to the ground. Come on now have a bit more common sense than that.

I do like some of Horner's scores, they are...

Apollo 13
Batteries Not Included
Field Of Dreams
Legends Of The Fall
The Mask Of Zorro
Project X
Willow

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:

Nuts-score thinks that Horner could not have gotten his foot in the door without creating something worthwhile. That's an assumption. My guess is he slept with somebody. And must still be doing it. People might have liked his early scores. But just try to listen through 70+ minutes of Krull today: noise & nothing more. But the fact that Horner can write such obvious junk and still have a huge career today only proves Nuts-score is wrong: the same tasteless guys who hire him today hired him in the past too.

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And how is your essay as a whole not an assumption the same way that you've slammed me for making assumed and opinionistic comments?

This arguement, between all involved, is subjective. It always has been. There's a great majority of us on this thread that have slammed Horner rightly, I've been one of them. We're all making the same statements over and over again. There's also a majority of us who still admire Horner and those - for the life of them - can't see why we give Horner so much crap. You take it or leave it; this whole entire thread is an assumption made by individuals who have grown up listening to various composers and a large number of them have chosen to pick on one of them. I'm sure you'd find the same comments on the FSM or FilmTracks boards that we've listed here. You're just cementing your hatred of Horner the same way a religious zealot goes about spreading whatever blatant message they have. We get it Lou, you don't like Horner; but you're not going to bring any of us onto the boat that you've set sail on. We've all made our decisions; you've made yours. Let it rest and spare our eyes.

Goldberg, you remind me of someone who once told me there hasn't been any good songs written since the 1960s (this person was a huge Beatles fan) and you're identical in writing that evrything film music other than Rozsa and Herrmann is either crap or secondary. That's absolute bull-s*h*i*t if there ever was any on a film music message board; you're just the same as zimmerito, just trapped in the past. The scores by Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams outclass Rozsa and Herrmann anyday; also something ridiculous by you and Dinko is the notion that film scores shouldn't even exist today because of sound effects: yeah, O.K., baby genius—I'm sure that one will fly.

We get it Lou, you don't like Horner; but you're not going to bring any of us onto the boat that you've set sail on.
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I agree.

As stated you don't like Horner that's fine, but there are some of us that do like him. As I said I myself like some of his scores but I don't go around on a message board writing long ass essay posts bashing Horner until I'm blue in the face. That's just being pure childish.

I am just happy this isn't just a bash Horner thread anymore, because we have heard it before and people are dwelling on the negatives too much.

Yes I knew Silvestri scored BTTF, I was just telling the story about the discovery of my love of film music. Those two scores were the starting point. PETITION FOR A PROPER RELEASE OF BTTF. I am just kidding. But not really.

It's very easy to get into the rut of saying the stuff you grew up with was the best (the past was golden) and the stuff now sucks. It's not just a generation gap thing either. The best of the past that survives is filtered out from the total context of bad stuff it emerged in while we have to filter the good from the bad in our own time. Still, I'm not against artistic elitists per se (elitism has gotten a bad rap over the years) though I usually disagree with them to champion my own tastes.

Pauline Kael looked at John Simon and thought it was inhuman to maintain such a high standard of taste that didn't admit so much as a hot dog or hamburger into that filet mignon, truffles, and pheasant under glass world view.

Call me extreme, childish, overboard what have you. You're still all blind, hopeless, losers. I hate Horner and he needs to be stamped out. So anyone who's going to apologize for him and say, I love him, or I used to like him, or he isn't that bad, or what have you gets put between my cross-hairs. He sucks and if you can't see that, all I want to do is yell at you. But it's so hopeless to begin with that why should I bother. You're lost souls. The best de-programmers in the world aren't going to save you. Fine, love the guy, listen to all the Horner you want to, but don't expect me to chime in. You're going to post about how great Horner is, you're going to be reminded atleast by me that he sucks.

I look down on most new film music and consider my golden & silver age guys the best. The raison d'etre for even loving film music. I just can't change those positions even if you get scorched by them or think I'm a lunatic because of them. And I've always liked shouting them rooftops besides (even if my voice gives out from it). It's not that good new stuff isn't impossible. I'm not trapped in the past, I'm just constantly being thrown back to it because that's where the quality lies. I still go to new movies and buy some new scores and there are some great new films and even some great new scores out every year (TV included) but despite these exceptions the entire realm of cinema & film music still seems in hopeless, decadent, declination to me.

In any case, my arguments weren't personal. People hire Horner today when he's basically become an arranger so why wouldn't the same boobs be around to hire him to start out with. You don't have to be good to have an career in Hollywood, just an in, a likeability, connections, and some supporters. That was an attempt at a logical statement not a slam.

I take it Sean you work at some art theater. I'm not sure what new Godard film you saw & showed that you disliked. Notre Musique perhaps or another. But no matter. In any case, I wouldn't look at the latest Chabrol, Rohmer, Godard, and Rivette films and say these guys were washed up. They're almost more active now than they were in 1959 and all still making good films at that. For you to slam The French New Wave in total in the same manner as you're saying Rozsa & Herrmann have been outclassed, tsk, tsk. Imagine a cinema without Breathless, Pierrot Le Fou, Week-end, The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, Two English Girls, Les Bonnes Femmes, Claire's Knee, Celine & Julie Go Boating, Adieu Philippine, or The Mother and the Whore? A film music collection without North by Northwest or Ben-Hur? Impossible. No way. I'd have to shoot myself. If you can be against this, I'd hate to see what films & film music you actually do love--I'm sure they're abominable.

And it's only Dinko who holds the notion that film music is obsolete. And as he says, it's Horner that helped bring him to that position. However, if I had the choice between a film with a score by Horner and no score at all, I'd choose the unscored version in all cases.

The quote I was adapting is from the 50s when Francois Truffaut was still a critic. Like me, he was prone to hyperbole, but often truth lies beyond proper boundaries. I don't have the quote in front of me so I can't get it exact but it went something like this: "You can like The Big Sky against Johnny Guitar or vice versa, but to not love one of them is to not understand cinema and to be unable to get anything from it, such that you should stop going to movies altogether."

The funny thing is, despite how extreme a statement it is, is that it's absolutely true. If you watch The Big Sky and Johnnie Guitar and don't like either of them, you should give up and stop watching movies, because you don't get movies, what they are about in essence isn't touching you.

Well, that's how I feel about Rozsa & Herrmann. I suppose you can replace them with a few other composers but very few. Because there's a basic style, approach, and small fraternity of greats that means film music. And outside of that you get johnny-come-latelys who can't possibly get into the club. There are good guys working now and someday there may be a newcomer who outranks everyone we're talking about. But so far, no one else is at the same level.

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Originally posted by sean:
Dinko is the notion that film scores shouldn't even exist today because of sound effects: yeah, O.K., baby genius—I'm sure that one will fly.

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
you have no taste to start with

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I am very sad because I have no taste in music. It must be a tragedy if one does not share the same taste as Lou Goldberg. Sob, sob...