The Genius of Hans Zimmer

I think this is a surefire way to recognize really talented movie composers from ordinary ones.

Maxim Trevelyan
Writer, Squib

A movie can have stunning visual effects, a great director, wonderful screenplay and a talented cast, but it is nothing without an amazing musical score that accompanies the scenes. My favourite composer ever is Hans Zimmer, whose work we can see in movies such as The Lion King, Gladiator, Interstellar, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Last Samurai, The Dark Knight Trilogy and many more. He is, by far, the most successful movie score composer of all time, with John Williams being a close second.

Born as Hans Florian Zimmer on September 12th 1957 in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, Zimmer benefitted from a musically talented mother and inventor father. Interestingly enough, Zimmer did not really have any formal musical training, he mostly learned everything he knew on his own, which is admirable, especially since the works he puts out are simply amazing. Zimmer was mostly interested in the piano and electronic synthesizers, the latter of which were quite different in the past from those we know today. Zimmer started his career by playing keyboards for a band called The Buggles, then moving on to Krisma and Helden. This style did not suit him much, though, but after meeting Stanley Myers, a well-known movie composer, the pair formed a studio brand and worked on several movies in the 1980s.

Meeting Myers is considered a starting point of Hans Zimmer's career as a respectable movie composer, with 1988's Rain Man as a first featured movie with Zimmer's trademark score of fusion of orchestra and electronic music. Year after year, Zimmer participated in successful movies, such as Driving Miss Daisy, Thelma & Louise and The Power of One, when The Lion King (1994) came along as a movie with the best score from Zimmer ever, being rivalled by Interstellar in 2014.

To give a testament about just how much of a genius Hans Zimmer is, he was a recipient of many awards for his work, most notably an Academy Award (Best Original Score – The Lion King), two Golden Globes (The Lion King and Gladiator), four Grammy Awards (two for The Lion King, Crimson Tide and The Dark Knight) and many more. Zimmer also has a star on Boulevard der Stars in Berlin, as well as on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which he got in December 2010.

For the end, I will leave you with some of my favourite Zimmer scores, which I urge you to check out on YouTube; The Lion King – This Land, Interstellar – Cornfield Chase, Inception – Time, Mission Impossible II – Injection, Gladiator – Now We Are Free, Tears of the Sun – Theme, Pearl Harbor – Tennessee, and my absolute favourite, Black Hawn Down – Gortoz a Ran. They invoke incredible emotions and I think this is a surefire way to recognize really talented movie composers from ordinary ones.

---

Sources:
http://www.famouscomposers.net/hans-zimmer