Hans Zimmer: Where Symphony meets Synthesizer

Hans Florian Zimmer is one of the freshest music composers active in the film industry today. Mr. Zimmer's signature style generally involves a fusion of orchestras, which in their current form have been around for at least three hundred years, with modern-day electronic synthesizers to create a very well-rounded acoustic experience that is fast becoming a defining aspect of modern cinema. His commercial and critical success, including 5 Academy Awards and numerous Golden Globes, has meant that his direction has been followed by almost every film composer who has trailed after him.

Early Life and Career
A German-born film composer, Hans Zimmer was born September 12, 1957 in Frankfurt, then later moved to London as a teenager, where he started off in obscurity making jingles for Air-Edel Associates. Hans was later involved with several New Wave and avant-garde bands such as the Buggles, Ultravox and Krisma, where he would specialize in keyboards and synthesizers. The Buggles' single Video Killed the Radio Star was the first ever music video shown on MTV; Zimmer makes a brief cameo in said video near the end on his keyboards. His experience with these electronic instruments would later shape his distinct musical style.

His First Films
He would first implement this style when he formed a partnership with fellow film composer Stanley Myers in the 1980s. Both of the composers worked together in blending the orchestral music usually used in movies with the most up-to-date electronic instrumentation they could get. Among the film scores they made together were Castaway (not to be confused with Cast Away staring Tom Hanks) and My Beautiful Launderette. This partnership would continue until November 1993, when Stanley Myers died of cancer.

Zimmer's first big commercial success came when he teamed up with David Byrne and Ryuichi Sakamoto to produce the soundtrack for The Last Emperor, for which they won an Oscar. He later composed by himself the soundtrack for Rain Man, where he mixed steel drums with synthesizers in an almost entirely electronic score; the soundtrack was nominated for, but did not win, an Oscar for Best Original Soundtrack. However, this film won an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1988, an award which another Hans Zimmer-scored film, Driving Miss Daisy, would also win in 1989.

The Lion King and Subsequent Success
Zimmer achieved true breakout success with the score of Disney's The Lion King. In order to give an authentic African feel to the soundtrack, Hans went to South Africa rather inconveniently at the time when apartheid was just getting abolished. He not only wanted to get inspiration for how to write the majestic score, he also wanted to hire some African choir singers to lend their vocals to the music. Having previously done the score for The Power of One, a film that was critical of apartheid, Hans had already gained a bad rep with South African authorities. Because of the racial violence occurring at the time, the members of these choirs often used the sound studios as safe havens.

Elton John and Tim Rice also did lyrical songs for the movie such as "Circle of Life" and the Oscar-winning "Can You Feel the Love Tonight;" they and Zimmer eventually won Oscars for Best Original Score and Song, as well as three Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award in 1998 for Best Musical for the Broadway version. To date, the movie remains the highest grossing hand-drawn animated feature film ever (not adjusted for inflation), undoubtedly in part thanks to Hans Zimmer‘s grand music.

Zimmer's success with The Lion King propelled his prolific film-scoring career. For The Thin Red Line, Hans was forced to compose a soundtrack before the movie itself was actually filmed; therefore, he had to compose six hours worth of music and then figure out later how much of it could actually be used in the movie. Zimmer also got the chance to compose for one of DreamWorks Animation's very first animated movies, The Prince of Egypt, where he was able to work with Ofra Haza, the famous female Israeli Yemenite singer. The directors thought Ofra was so beautiful that they modeled one of the movie's characters after her.

Modern Musical Maestro
The past decade has seen Hans Zimmer composing the soundtracks for several of the biggest blockbusters of all time. Gladiator, which Hans wrote the score for in 2000, is credited with reviving the "sword and sandal" epic among Hollywood producers. He also did the score for Pearl Harbor; though he is a bit embarrassed about scoring for the widely lambasted yet somehow commercially successful film, the score itself was specifically praised in a personal letter to Zimmer from Elmer Bernstein, the musical composer of The Magnificent Seven (w00t!) and one of Hans’ idols.

When scoring the Golden Globe winning track for The Last Samurai, Zimmer initially believed that his knowledge and mastery of Japanese musical styles was insufficient; however, when he tested the soundtrack with a Japanese audience, they were surprised at how he actually knew so much about it. Zimmer would also continue his connection with DreamWorks Animation with films including The Road to El Dorado, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Shark Tale, Madagascar, and Kung Fu Panda.

Pirates of the Caribbean
Zimmer collaborated with Klaus Badelt, one of his protégés, in recording the soundtrack for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. They had to hire fifteen different composers in order to finish the score as quickly as possible. Because Zimmer was still working on The Last Samurai, he felt it would be best if no one knew he was also doing Pirates (though Tom Cruise was still able to find out).

Eventually, Zimmer alone composed for the sequels, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. These films are distinguished by a heavier and more synth-based instrument selection than Curse of the Black Pearl, which was more orchestra-based due to Badelt’s personal tastes being put into the mix.

Dead Man’s Chest became Hans' most successful project, being one of only four films to gross more than $1 billion (the other three being Titanic, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and The Dark Knight). They are also Disney’s most financially successful live-action films. A fourth movie is in the works, scheduled to begin filming in 2009 and to be released in 2011; it has not yet been confirmed whether or not Zimmer will return to score it.

The Return of Batman
When director Christopher Nolan asked Zimmer to compose for Batman Begins and its sequel The Dark Knight, Zimmer then asked for Nolan to let him collaborate with composer James Newton Howard. Not only had the two planned on finding a project to work together on for a long time; the use of two composers with slightly differing styles was meant to convey the dual personality of the title character both as Bruce Wayne and as Batman. Far from either composer being hindered by the other, both men actually augmented the other's imaginativeness by sharing their ideas and altering their musical themes to suit each other's. Generally, Zimmer concentrated on the tenser action music (including the main theme) while Howard concentrated on the drama and pathos of the films.

Zimmer did his best to ignore the musical "language" of previous campy Batman films, which has included ill-fitting light-hearted music and sometimes even rock. Because of Batman's heavy use of high-tech gadgets and weapons, Zimmer's trademark of mixing electronics with orchestra proved to fit very well in the films. Hans also used a larger proportion of cellos in this soundtrack in order to give it a darker feel. The use of two composers was also used to contribute to the “schizophrenic” feel of The Dark Knight, especially in relation to the Joker and Two-Face.

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Hans would also act as the executive score producer over other composers with films such as Face Off, Antz, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Prestige, August Rush, Transformers, and Iron Man, many of which were actually scored by Zimmer‘s own protégés. Along with Klaus Badelt and James Newton Howard, Hans Zimmer has mentored other movie composers such as Steve Jablonsky, Harry Gregson-Williams, and Ramin Djawadi, all of whom have had musical styles similar to that of Zimmer as a result of his teaching. What good teaching it is indeed, learning from one of the greatest musical masterminds of our generation.