James Horner Quotations

When I do a film score, I am basically nothing more than a fancy pencil for hire. I don't own any of the music when I am - it belongs to the film company - and likewise, when I am done, even if I come up with something astounding that I may want to revisit... in the world of film composition, you can't do that.

My tastes went all over the place, from Strauss to Mahler. I was never a big Wagner or Tchaikovsky fan. Benjamin Britten, Tallis, all the early English Medieval music, Prokofiev, some Russian composers, mostly the people that were the colorists, the French.

I don't use a computer in writing at all. I'm sort of old-fashioned about it.

I think very abstractly when I'm writing. Then, as the project moves on, it becomes more like sculpting.

I tend to write it and then let go emotionally.

I think people hire me for the slightly weird angle that I bring. Part of the trick is keeping it sort of simple; you have to give the impression of not that much music playing when there's really a lot.

To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don't use a computer when I write, and I don't use a piano. I'm at a desk writing, and it's very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.

You have to make an audience experience with the ears as well as their eyes.

The sound world that I created for 'Avatar' had to be very different, really, than anything I ever created before. There is also three hours of music.

The music's job is to get the audience so involved that they forget how the movie turns out.

I'm used to working with the director and producer, and that's my relationship. It's very simple.

I am a musicologist, a doctor of music. Therefore I listened to, studied and analysed a lot of music. I also enjoy metaphors, the art of quoting and of cycles.

I'm sure that I was influenced by Goldsmith's large orchestral scores when I started out, and that was because the people who employed me wanted that kind of sound. I wasn't in a position to say, 'Go to Hell!'

I'm a fanatic about Irish music. I love its moody, modal and timeless quality. I'm different from some other composers, because I don't look at this as just a job. I think of music as art.