Danny Elfman

Six planets of the ten sit in air signs, three in fire, one in water and not one in earth. Air arranges the thing and works out what it will do next, and the element that would hold any of it to a fixed shape is missing from the chart. Elfman composes, and the record names the Simpsons theme and Tim Burton's scores.

The Sun, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter sit across fifteen degrees of Gemini, four planets in the sign that holds two accounts of one thing and keeps moving between them. The Moon answers from Sagittarius directly opposite. A composer whose work has to sound like somebody else's film each time has identity, speech, drive and scale all gathered in the sign least willing to settle on one voice, which is close to a job description.

Two kites run through this chart, which is uncommon, and both hold the Moon and Venus with Pluto at the far point. Six aspects sit inside half a degree of exact and every one of them is an easy contact: the Moon with Neptune at two hundredths, Saturn with Pluto at nine, Saturn conjunct Neptune at a third. A chart that tight and that unbraced is rare. The two planets facing backwards at his birth were Saturn and Neptune. In a composer, six easy contacts and no brace anywhere is the chart of somebody who writes quickly and to order.

Jupiter came the whole way round to its Gemini starting point on 15 June 2024, at seventy one. Gemini wants to know how many different things it turned into, and five circuits precede it, which few charts live to collect. For a composer whose record is a television theme and a director's whole catalogue, how many things is the measure that fits. Six planets in air with none in earth is a chart made entirely of arrangement, which is the right structure for somebody whose trade is scoring other people's pictures rather than writing his own. The Moon in Sagittarius, sitting opposite the whole Gemini group, is the one placement here that commits to a direction. Two kites both built on private feeling and taste is where the recognisable sound comes from, in a chart that otherwise refuses to hold one position.