Even if you have never heard of Hans Zimmer, I can almost guarantee that you have heard his music. As a film score writer, his works are featured in everything from Pirates of the Caribbean, to Dunkirk, to The Lion King, to Batman Begins, setting an acoustic mood for the most heart-wrenching death scenes, the most inspiring and uplifting movie moments, and everything in between. Zimmer’s astounding musical prowess has been established through his orchestration of over fifty movie scores, his mentorship of notable composers including John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, and Mark Mancina, and the numerous awards he has received, including four Grammys, two Golden Globe Awards and an Oscar. Perhaps most remarkably of all, though is Zimmer’s musical training—or lack thereof.

Zimmer was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to what he coins as “a confused family,” comprised of a music-loving mother and an innovative engineer as a father. His “grand musical education” consisted of just two weeks of classical piano lessons, before he gave up on the redundancy of music theory and piano scales, taking a chainsaw to the instrument. He did this not out of anger, however, but rather to modify the timbre of the piano under the encouragement of his father, who regarded the alterations as “an evolution in technology.” The budding musician spent most of his youth in England, where he split his time between attending classes at the Hurtwood House, and dabbling in the music industry, first playing keyboard in the ’70s band Krakatoa before joining The Buggles and being featured in the music video for their hit single “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Zimmer briefly joined electro-pop band Ultravox, followed by the Italian avant-garde group Krisma, but he wrestled with crippling stage fright throughout his experiences in bands, and soon migrated towards a less public means of music production.

Zimmer was first ushered into the film score production industry by famed composer and mentor Stanley Myers, and the two musicians founded the London-based Lillie Yard recording studio. In this studio, Zimmer helped to produce the soundtrack to the movie My Beautiful Laundrette, before begging several solo projects, including A World Apart. During his time working alongside Myers, Zimmer began integrating the electronic musical world with traditional orchestral arrangements, and he was tasked with writing the soundtrack to Rain-Man, which was nominated for an Academy Award and marked a significant turning point in Zimmer’s career.

By the mid 90s, Zimmer composed several scores for hit movies, including  Black Rain, Backdraft, Thelma & Louise, A League of Their Own, and Days of Thunder, all through combining classic music creation with modern electronics, when he was approached by Disney. The studio was working on The Lion King and had yet to find a composer to write the movie’s film music. Zimmer flatly refused the offer, explaining to Disney representatives, “All you want is Broadway princess musicals, and I don’t like Broadway princess musicals, I’m the wrong guy.” However, because he had a six-year-old daughter, Zimmer eventually caved on the hope that he could at least bring his daughter to the movie’s premier. As soon as he looked more into the plot, though, Zimmer realized that the story was much more than a mere children’s piece about fuzzy cartoon characters. He connected with the story on a personal level because he had lost his own dad at six years old, and through working on The Lion King, Zimmer was forced to revisit his childhood feelings about his father. The piece became a requiem for his dad in which all of Zimmer’s bottled up feelings from the past are laid out, creating an aural story within the larger plot arc of The Lion King.

Since producing the music for The Lion King, Zimmer has worked on countless other Hollywood blockbusters, all from the cozy technological hub of his studio. Michael Levine, a musician who worked under Zimmer for several years, describes the visionary’s musical knowledge, saying, “Hans is a so-so pianist and guitarist and his knowledge of academic theory is, by intention, limited. (I was once chastised while working on The Simpsons Movie for saying “lydian flat 7” instead of “the cartoon scale.”) He doesn’t read standard notation very well, either. But no one reads piano roll better than he does.” In spite of Zimmer’s limited music theory knowledge, he is described as remarkably perceptive, gaining inspiration from a book, a painting, or even a delicious meal, and he is perfectly fluent in the technological production of music. His ability to “spot,” or to work with a director and decide what kind of music is needed where, is exceptional, and Zimmer will fervently work on a film score until every last detail portrays exactly the emotion necessary for the film. And although he often faces criticism for his lack of formal training, perhaps Zimmers’ inability to become bogged down in the nitty-gritty details of music theory of music is what allows his works to so easily transcend into something larger than a splattering of notes on a page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCX1Ze3OcKo