Titanic (James Horner)

(1997)

Titanic, at the time the most expensive film ever made, was predicted by many to be a failure and take its funding studios, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures down with it. It would become the highest grossing film in history, until Cameron’s next feature, Avatar surpassed it in 2009.

The first time James Cameron and James Horner worked together was on Aliens (1986), and the experience was apparently so bad that Horner declared he would never work with Cameron again. Horner’s score for Braveheart however, impressed Cameron to the point of hiring him to score Titanic. Horner won his first, and to date, his only Oscar for Best Score for his work on this film, and due to the success of the film, the score is the best selling of all time.

I did enjoy this album, but not as much as I’ve enjoyed other works by James Horner. The first few themes, such as ‘Leaving Port’ and ‘Southampton’ make too heavy a use of synthesizers for my liking. They’re in no way bad pieces of music, but I would have enjoyed them a great deal more if they had the orchestral quality that Horner brings to so many of his scores.

It’s not until much later in the score that there were some themes I really enjoyed, starting with ‘Hard to Starboard’, which begins with Rose’s theme, and then becomes a violent string, brass and percussion piece as Titanic hits the iceberg, complimented by two more great action cues, ‘The Sinking’ and ‘Death of Titanic’, featuring heavy percussion and brass alongside a synthesized chorus. The latter instrumentation was the only downside of it really; for me anyway, a real choir would have been much more effective alongside the brass and the percussion.

For most people anyway, the major attraction of this album was probably the Celine Dion performed song, ‘My Heart Will Go On’, which won the Best Song Oscar for Horner and lyricist Will Jennings. The music and the vocals are superb, but the lyrics are incredibly banal.

Titanic isn’t by any means a bad score – it works well with the film, and contains some good pieces of music, but for me, it just isn’t as enjoyable as other scores Horner has done. Nobody can deny that he was thoroughly deserving of an Oscar by this time, but he should have got it two years before for Braveheart or Apollo 13, not for this. John Williams’ score for Amistad was far more deserving of the award in 1998. In any case though, this score is well worth the penny you can buy it for.

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Track Listing

1 – Never an Absolution

2 – Distant Memories

3 – Southampton

4 – Rose

5 – Leaving Port

6 – “Take Her to Sea, Mr. Murdoch”

7 – Hard to Starboard

8 – Unable to Stay, Unwilling to Leave

9 – The Sinking

10 – Death of Titanic

11 – A Promise Kept

12 – A Life So Changed

13 – An Ocean of Memories

14 – My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme from ‘Titanic’) Performed by Celine Dion

15 – Hymn to the Sea

Credits

Composed, Orchestrated, Conducted & Produced by James Horner

Recorded & Mixed by Shawn Murphy

Edited by Joe E. Rand & Jim Henrikson

Recorded at Todd-AO Scoring Stage, Studio City, CA

Vocals by Sissel

Featured Instrumental Soloists

Simon Franglen

Ton Hinnigan

James Horner

Randy Kerber

Eric Rigler

Ian Underwood

Awards

Academy Award® for Best Original Score – Winner

Academy Award® for Best Original Song – Winner

Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score – Winner

Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song – Winner

Grammy Award for Best Song – Winner

Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music (BAFTA) – nominee

Insert Notes

Contains credits, and a note from director James Cameron.

All artwork and images are Copyright © Sony Music Entertainment Inc.