JAMES HORNER Hearing the Music of His Avatar

James Horner has visited many musical worlds during over three decades that have made him into one of Hollywood’s top composers. Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for his success is how Horner’s boldly emotional sound can place a viewer so effectively in the skin of the characters he scores, from the mystical Indian heritage a cop explores in Thunderheart to the ethereal, exotic jungle a boy grows up in Where the River Runs Black. Or it can be the choral battlefield valor of soldiers charging into Glory, as well as the ferocious jungle danger unlocked when two children play a game of Jumanji.

All of these melodic feelings, and many more from dozens of memorable Horner scores can be felt amidst the Pandoran jungles of Avatar (score CD on Atlantic Records), the latest, and one of the most impressive epic worlds that Horner’s music has allowed us to visit. It’s a planet that further evolves for Avatar, Horner’s third teaming with writer-director James Cameron, who first let Horner feel the militaristic terror of being swarmed by Aliens before segueing to the epic romance and tragedy of Titanic.

This winner for Best Picture and Director also brought James Horner his first Oscar for Best Score. And it’s likely Academy voters will also take notice of this majestic visual, and musical leap into a score that conveys an alien world, and culture like few soundtracks before it. For Pandora’s jungle is filled with haunted electronics, the songs of its Na’Vi inhabitants and the tender, transcendent emotions of a human visiting its world in their form. Yet Pandora’s dense sonic terrain will also be invaded by the dark strings and military fury of the terrans who covet its riches—something the Na’Vi won’t give up easily with exhilarating “War” music that will thrill audiences, and Horner’s vocal fans in particular.

Realizing the challenge of inhabiting this Avatar has yielded rich rewards for James Horner, who now talks about creating the music to match James Cameron’s astounding visuals.

Venice: When did James Cameron first talk with you about Avatar?

James Horner: James had first mentioned the film to me about three years before he started shooting it. He asked me my thoughts, and told me a rough time frame of when he thought I’d be scoring it. But the discussions back then were very abstract. 

What was your first reaction when you saw how the film, and its visual effects, were coming together?

Because of the way Avatar was shot with motion capture and 3D, I didn’t see very much of it in the way you’d expect to, even when I visited the shoot. It was a minimalist approach, with lots of equipment and lots of technical stuff, but none of the “razzledazzle” of costumes or sets per se. That all comes later, even when I visited the set in New Zealand where they were shooting some live action stuff. But I did get to meet some of the actors, which helped give me a sense of the movie. It was only when James started getting into the editorial process that I truly began to feel the movie on an intimate level, especially as I began to get a sense of what the Na’vi figures would look like. That finally gave me a representation of how the script read.

What were your initial musical conversations with James Cameron like?

They were pretty generalized at first. He told me, “This is going to be a hell of a lot more difficult than Titanic was.” The biggest challenge of that movie for me was how to musically tell its story to an audience who already knew how it would end, as was also the case with Apollo 13. Now Avatar was taking them to another place, another time, and another planet. It wasn’t reliant on the things they were normally used to seeing or experiencing. This was going to be a revolutionary cinematic process for James, and he wanted the music to sound just as revolutionary. But when you say “revolutionary” and “think outside of the box” to somebody with my background, you have to make very sure where they’re setting my limits. Because I can do things that are really quite far out there. So James and I talked about the kind of music he meant, and how it would relate to the story. And it turned out that what James meant by “revolutionary” was mostly the color of the orchestra. He didn’t want it to be just “natural” orchestral music, but something that would go much deeper emotionally. That in turn would generate a lot of instrumental and vocal colors that no one had really heard combined in such a way before.

Avatar is a film that people have been anticipating for almost a decade. What kind of responsibility does that put on you while scoring one of the biggest, and most expensive films ever made?

I don’t feel any pressure on my shoulders financially, or anything like that, because I’ve never been a pressure-driven person. My pressures come artistically. My bond with a director is like having one with a lover. I’ve given my word, and I want my music to match their work. That’s my responsibility. I don’t care about the fact that I might have ten days to write it, or that any picture I’m on costs ten zillion dollars and the studio’s future is riding on it. Those things don’t mean anything to me. Though I’ll almost always succeed on those levels with the way I work, my pressure comes from keeping my promise to make the music as stunning as I can. So I need to keep my promise when I told Jim, “I get this” and he’s left Avatar in my hands. When he shows me a stunning sequence, I’ll need to keep my promise that what I do aurally will be as amazing as his visuals. But I also have to keep in my mind that while audiences seem to readily accept radical visual things, they’re much more conservative when it comes to music. So one always has to remember that I can only go so far with sound before I lose an audience. If I went as far as Jim did visually, and used all sorts of weird scales to be “out of the box,” I’d be destabilizing the film. Obviously, I’m writing film music, so it has to appeal to a film audience, which is why I chose to keep things relatively conventional in melody and shape. Everything was really well grounded to match Jim’s visuals so the music could help Avatar play anywhere, from the center of the country to the most cosmopolitan places.

Do you think Avatar is the ultimate evolvement of the kind of exotic scores you’ve done like Where the River Runs Black, House of Cards and Thunderheart, especially with its use of ethnic instruments, percussion and an alien chorus?

Yes. I’d say so. But Avatar’s score is not so much a distillation, or culmination of anything as much as it is the largest collection of disparate elements that I’ve been allowed to use in one project. Avatar’s given me the largest canvas to put musical colors on of any film I’ve ever scored. And along with that I’ve had to solve an equally large amount of ethnic, and orchestral music problems to make all of those style fit. Because in the course of one eleven minute cue, there may be fifteen different things going on. Yet it still sounds like one piece of music strung together.

Talk about how you wanted your music to humanize the Na’vi. And do you think your tribal approach turns them into space Indians?

No. I don’t think of them as “space Indians,” and I purposefully stayed away from music that in any way would make them feel alien. I gave their music of the Na’vi “people” a tremendous sense of serenity and peace, as opposed to the kind of exoticism that would sound like a weird Navajo or Chinese instrument. The Na’vi’s music is nothing like that, because there’s a luminous quality to it, which is difficult to put your finger on while composing. It’s also another way of contrasting them with the music of the military guys and their machines.

Do you think the way you combined orchestra with ethnic textures and electronics was particularly important here in conveying the film’s sense of being in a new world we’ve never seen, or heard before?

I think it was very important. The music is part of the bioluminescent world of Pandora that you see at night. It gives you the sense that the Na’vi people have this great one-ness with nature. Aside from the opening cut that brings you into the film, I’ve constructed the Avatar album to be a constant reflection of the Na’vi world in various guises. And as the album progresses, you have a sense of leaving their serenity hitting the sharp metal of what man has done to their planet. It’s a real contrast in musical colors.

Is working with James Cameron smoother now than when you started on Aliens? And what do you think it is about you, and your music, that’s made him use you for his third, and biggest picture yet?

Yes. I think our relationship is smoother. We’ve both grown up. Aliens was made under very difficult circumstances, so I don’t think that reflected our true personalities, or was a fair test of our working relationship. I think Titanic was a much better test. I can’t speak for Jim, but I think he keeps using me because we communicate very well, and are able to read between each other’s “lines.” Jim trusts me to solve the musical problems in my own unique way. And I’m just as detail-oriented as he is, because I tend to paint around the solution until it’s perfect. I don’t just deliver music and say, “Here it is.” I tend to mess with it quite a lot until it’s perfect. So we think very much alike. Jim has a different personality than I do. But our sense of filmmaking and responsibility to what we’re working on is really just as compulsive. That’s what it boils down to. He also relies on me to tell also the inside story, which is something that I like to think I do well. The outside stuff, the bombastic stuff, the stuff that’s going to look stunning on screen, is going to take care of itself. But the inner turmoil story is what I’m more concerned with. The trick is weaving the music for the love story through the whole score, all in a way that will make no one aware they’re being manipulated. Then when you lose something at the end of the film, you can’t help but cry.

On that note, do you think the kind of epically melodic music you write is going out of fashion with directors, and Hollywood in general? It seems that they just don’t appreciate these kind of “big” scores anymore.

Oh yeah. Definitely. It’s all about how you’re perceived. A skilled composer doesn’t have to write a stunning, long love theme. He can go about the same thing in a different direction. And if a composer is savvy with the new musical tools, and is on top of their craft, then one doesn’t have to sound like Max Steiner, or being perceived like that. But what happens is that you do a film with a big, fancy love theme and a song attached, and suddenly you’re perceived as being in a musical realm that’s no longer “current.” It’s an interesting change that’s going through Hollywood, because a lot of directors don’t want themes, or theme-driven scores. They want action-driven scores, or chord-based based scores with no themes, or a hint of them. And that’s fine, because there are lots of films that require that. But other films need thematic writing to connect with an audience. So I think it’s a miscalculation of directors to think it’s “old fashioned” to have a theme. Take for example a TV director who has very little knowledge of the past, or anything that’s musically sophisticated. You have a generation lock right there, and it moves forward from that step. They don’t understand that with a little more sophistication, they can get something a little deeper from the score. Part of the problem is also what composers choose to write. They’re enabled by tools that are easy to access. With little education or knowledge, one is able to create symphonic loops that sound fabulous. A lot of composers don’t write thematically. It’s all action or loop-driven in one way or the other, and it makes their work sound like it’s all come from the same school. Some composers are almost set up like architectural firms, where they’re the pinnacles and they have people working under them. And directors and executives don’t really know the difference. It’s just music to them. But just look at the film music that’s played at The Hollywood Bowl, the summer festivals, or this or that. It’s only a tiny fraction of the film music that’s being written now, compared to the kind of scores that were being written ten years ago. So there’s a reason people connect with that kind of movie scoring, unlike the current scores of movies today.