I don’t think I can easily describe what’s in my tastes, but in general, most of the songs I like capitalize on the ever-popular I-V-vi-IV or i-VI-III-VII chord progressions somewhere in the chorus or refrain (e.g. Lifehouse‘s Halfway Gone, Taylor Swift‘s Love Story, Lady Gaga‘s Poker Face).  Actually, the refrain in Replay uses the latter chord progression too, but I just can’t stand that part where he makes baby sounds and starts talking about his iPod.  Anyway, the point is: we’ve got a lot of songs on the radio, and they’re all winning hearts with some of the same, tried-and-true musical constructs.

Not one to be caught going with the flow though, Britney occasionally throws a few little curveballs into the mix to give her songs an exotic or oddball quality.  In If U Seek Amy, she sticks a B-flat into the tail end of the refrain, lowering the second scale degree a half-step and thereby giving the phrase a Phrygian-like modal inflection.

Refrain from If U Seek Amy (Britney Spears)

From its beginning, the song clearly establishes A minor as the home key, though we don’t actually hear a B-natural until right before the refrain is first sung.  As if to draw more attention to themselves too, the B-natural and B-flat both appear in a conspicuous rhythmic context: a three-against-two hemiola (i.e. three quarter notes overlaid on the third and fourth beats of the last measure, as depicted above).

Anyway, the modern Phrygian mode is not so different from the natural minor (Aeolian) mode, as it differs only in the aforementioned second scale degree. And so it’s not completely jarring when at the end of this descending line one hears a pitch that does not belong to the tonic key.  It’s like in the song 3, when Britney sings an A-natural instead of an A-flat (the third scale degree) to put the phrase momentarily in a major mode.  The effect is mysterious.  Furtive.  Teasing.  Britney.

A fine example of Horner's work

Down Arpeggiated Chord

At first I though this element was synthesized, but after fooling around at the 88 for a bit, I realized that it’s most likely the figure below.

D-major arpeggiated chord

Horner typically inserts this piano arpeggio in places where the upper strings are the only other active orchestral voices.  Usually, juxtaposing a higher-register section of the orchestra with a low one (with nothing in between) effects a distant, expansive quality.  Examples from his scores can be found in Deep Impact, The Perfect Storm, and Apollo 13.

Chimes

There’s something about bells that evokes a sense of grand antiquity—a quality most likely born out of our familiarity with their pre-modern functions.  Horner uses tubular bells (or chimes) in a number of different musical settings (from the charging of Fort Wagner in Glory to the to the tidal force of the sea in The Perfect Storm), but they achieve the same effect in each situation.  Opinions will vary by the listener, but to me, the use of chimes lifts his music into a vast, limitless space where the sound floats freely, without bounds.  This is appropriate given the types of films he has scored.

The Lydian Mode

I haven’t exactly made a list of the places where I’ve heard Horner write with Lydian modality, but I think I’d be able to point it out in most of his major projects.  If you haven’t heard the term before, you’ve at least heard the theme to The Simpsons, which hits some of the key pitches of a modern Lydian scale.  In Apollo 13, Horner uses climbing Lydian scales in the violin section during the mission launch sequence, and the horn call that opens his score for the film Deep Impact, shown below, adheres to the Lydian mode on D (basically D major with the fourth scale degree raised a semitone).

Opening horn call from Deep Impact

The intervals that constitute a Lydian scale are close enough to those of an Ionian scale (the common major scale that your Western-classical-music-attuned ear loves to hear) that it isn’t as unsettling as some of the other modes.  In fact, if you listen to this horn call, you’d probably find it very sonorous and calming.

That’s also partly because the French horn is awesome.

Anyway, these are the three major elements that make James Horner’s music most recognizable to me, but I’d be remiss to leave it at that.  While they are among the most easily discernible features of his compositional style, they aren’t the whole of it.  An artist is many things, and the palpable elements are merely a vague manifestation of what’s really in the heart and soul.

Oh, and obviously, he isn’t the only composer using chimes, the Lydian mode, and piano thingamabobbers.