Back Tracks: James Horner

As this post is being written, the Oscars have wrapped up. Exciting, right? Of course not. The Oscars are perhaps as ridiculous as the Grammys, and usually don’t have a heck of a lot to offer fans of any music in general. Perhaps this year was a bit of an exception – it was very exciting to see Michael Giacchino score his first Oscar for the excellent score to Up – but for someone raised on ultra-thematic scores such as John Williams’ work for Star Wars, Jaws and others, there’s usually not much of a thrill to be had.

It was interesting, though, to see another nomination for Avatar composer James Horner, a longtime film composer who is only recently getting his due in the catalogue world. Some of the most interesting reissues or expanded titles in the past year have been scores he wrote, and – thanks to one very famous score from another James Cameron movie (the one with a boat in it) – he has become one of the few film composers with something close to household name status.

While he walked out of the Shrine Auditorium empty-handed this year, it’s worth taking a look at some of his most memorable musical works as seen through the catalogue music world. It’s not a complete list by far, but it will give you, the reader, quite the sense of how thematic, pleasing and occasionally complex Horner’s work can get.