<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The French pianist Camille Saint Sa\u00ebns<\/b>, with his work Le Carnaval des Animaux<\/b>, is the eminent representative of classical music at the Cannes Film Festival<\/b>, introducing each screening since the 1990s. James Horner<\/b>, meanwhile, is responsible for representing film music<\/b> but also for opening and closing the festival each year with music<\/b>.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The score, written for the animated children’s film The Land Before Time by Don Bluth (1988)<\/strong>, produced by Steven Spielberg, has all the hallmarks of a work for adults<\/strong>. An embodiment of emotional gigantism<\/strong>, this ode to maternal love<\/strong> oscillates between drama and optimism and carries within it the courage to carry on despite adversity. It is, in short, a metaphor for the creative act and, even more so, for life itself.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Long before the success of Braveheart, Titanic, and Avatar, James Horner made a name for himself by incorporating choirs and electronic elements into his classical orchestrations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With an impressive knowledge of the classical repertoire, he was recognized and sometimes criticized for his \u201cfree associations,\u201d which bordered on plagiarism<\/b>. He even went to court over the music for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which was attacked by the heirs of Italian composer Nino Rota<\/b>, who claimed it contained elements of Amarcord.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe repertoire as a whole is in itself a fertile ground that I use like Prokofiev or any other composer. Richard Strauss considered himself someone who was ‘passing the baton’<\/b>, an expression I find very apt,\u201d he said during the promotion of the film Sneakers (1992). He added, \u201cFilm music has a particular structure that allows the repertoire to evolve. You know, I’ve always considered our profession to be a contemporary metaphor for the time when Bach and Haydn composed scores for kings or for liturgical events on commission.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1986<\/b>, James Horner worked on Don Bluth<\/b>‘s new animated film, The Land Before Time. Bluth is a former Disney animator who worked on Sleeping Beauty and Robin Hood before founding his own studio.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Initially, producers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas<\/b> (with Amblin Entertainment and Universal Pictures) wanted to make a feature-length animated film without dialogue<\/b>, similar to the sequence Le Sacre du printemps in Disney’s Fantasia (1940). Faced with the divisive nature of the approach, they backed down and opted for a more conventional film<\/b>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nA project bigger than life<\/h2>\n