If you have watched Titanic, Braveheart,The Land Before Time, An American Tail, Fievel Goes West, Aliens, Avatar, and many others, you have had the opportunity to enjoy James Horner’s amazing work. He was the composer for the scores of these movies.
I didn’t even know he passed. I was searching for animated movie scores and was browsing Fievel Goes West and The Land Before Time music and I saw a lot of RIP James Horner messages. Googled it immediately and found out he passed away yesterday. Very painful and sad news. Talented and amazing individual. He was only 61, too. He was flying a plane which crashed. His music helped define my childhood and led me through a wide variety of emotions as I watched the movies he composed for. He will be missed dearly.
RIP. I’m a big fan of his work. I had the Braveheart soundtrack when I was younger and used to listen to it all the time. I’ll have to find it and pay tribute. He went before his time, but left a legacy.
Don’t care for a lot of his newer work, when he started repeating tunes from earlier in his career, only the small changes made it worse. However, he was a genius early on; Willow, The Rocketeer, Aliens, and my all-time favorite film soundtrack (even more than Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West or Poledouris’ Conan the Barbarian), for Krull, composed when he was only 29. The tempo changes and breakdowns for that are still unlike I’ve ever heard. Every track is jaw-dropping, but this is my favorite; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iDgfi1eGjw&
Fievel Goes West I can’t remember how many times I watched that movie with my friends when we were kids laughing at the jokes every time it never failed.
And all the songs in it were awesome. I wore out the vhs I had as a kid* . RIP, Mr. Horner. Your music touched multiple generations, and will continue to do so.
*…but not so badly that I couldn’t confirm that one of the crew DID scribble a dick in front of Tanya’s mouth near the end of Dreams To Dream for one frame…and it’s still present in DVD discs.