The Death of the Classic Film Score

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When you envision a grand film, what sounds does it evoke? Thundering drums, joyful trumpets, mournful violins. Films such as “Gladiator”, “The Lord of the Rings”, and “Titanic” are filled with them: grandiose orchestral compositions by composers like Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, and James Horner that accompany the on-screen conflicts and heartaches. Even more intimate family dramas, striving for critical acclaim instead of box office success, incorporate music rich in classical nuances, such as Carter Burwell’s poignant strings in “Carol”, adding a delicate lyricism to the turbulent emotions simmering beneath the characters’ surfaces. In essence, the past 50 years of blockbusters and award-contending films have been a symphony of grandeur; what we hear is an extension of what we see on screen.

As a movie enthusiast, I must say that the cinematic landscape of 20XX has been remarkably distinctive. Among these unique productions, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist stands out as a remarkable three-and-a-half hour Holocaust survivor narrative, shot in VistaVision and potentially securing Adrien Brody his second Oscar. This period piece introduces us to László Tóth, a Jewish Hungarian architect navigating America in the 1940s, emerging from a ship on the Hudson River with only dread in his heart. The duration of his sea voyage and the specific hardships he’s endured remain unclear. Even the path ahead for Tóth is shrouded in darkness and crowds. All we have to guide us is Daniel Blumberg’s Oscar-nominated score, which initially echoes with familiar, powerful brass notes, reminiscent of industrial machinery, setting the stage for an American Dream tale of heroic proportions. However, as the theme fades away, the music undergoes a transformation into something eerie: discordant clock chimes, jarring piano percussion, dissonant saxophone melodies that seem like instruments being dropped. What once felt grand and brassy now feels oppressive as the glissandi descend into cacophony. As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly challenging to distinguish which instrument we’re hearing, if we’re hearing instruments at all.

The music in “The Brutalist” showcases a trend in film scoring towards electroacoustic classical music. This style blends traditional organic instrumental sounds with electronic manipulation. Unlike past scores that emphasized boundless emotion, these newer ones have a pulsing, discordant feel, resembling composers like Steve Reich or Karlheinz Stockhausen more than European Romantic composers such as Beethoven or American pioneers like Leonard Bernstein. However, this doesn’t mean all scores sound like Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s techno-inspired “Challengers” score; rather, it suggests that composers are using familiar and sometimes unfamiliar sounds to enhance or contradict what we see on screen. Think of Hildur Guðnadóttir’s persistent “Joker” theme, Volker Bertelmann’s powerful “All Quiet on the Western Front” score, and Mica Levi’s unsettling yet understated music for “The Zone of Interest.” This shift in direction can be attributed to advancements in sound technology and an increase in composers with indie-music backgrounds. Today, it’s more likely to hear a film scored by someone who started playing at basement shows than someone who is classically trained. For artists outside the studio system, the question arises: what is their responsibility towards upholding tradition?

According to Bertelmann, composer of the 2024 papal drama “Conclave”, sometimes it’s necessary to go against what appears obvious. He prefers using music to create tension without dictating audience emotions. Instead of focusing on specific plot points or emotional resolutions, he aimed to find a sound that encapsulated the grandeur of the Vatican while avoiding overused tropes. In his own words, he wondered, “What could it be if not a choir or an organ, but something with the ethereal beauty of a choir or an organ?” His solution was the Cristal Baschet, a contemporary keyboard-like percussion instrument that produces sound from wet fingers and glass rods. This unique instrument plays in the background as Cardinal Lawrence undertakes the complex task of selecting a new pope, with long, resonating notes echoing as he looks to the heavens for guidance.

As a movie enthusiast, I often prefer to deviate from conventional symphonic methods and craft an unconventional score, much like a Brutalist architectural style. To create the rhythmic tick-tock sound of the film’s construction scenes, I spent a day placing bits of paper and screws on piano strings. For a breathtaking scene where Tóth and his patron, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), explore a marble quarry in Carrara, Italy, I ventured to a valley to capture ambient sounds, later incorporating them into a saxophone part performed by soloist Evan Parker. Similarly, Kris Bowers, another nominee for Best Original Score, adopted an environment-first approach for his score in the animated film contender “The Wild Robot”, a watercolor animation about a helpful robot adapting to life in the woods. Bowers collaborated with the Brooklyn ensemble Sandbox Percussion, instructing them to interpret my musical cues using natural materials found within the film: branches, metal pipes. As Bowers puts it, “I thought it might be like ASMR on top of an orchestra.

Veronica Fitzpatrick, an adjunct professor at Brown University specializing in modern culture and media, traces changes in film scoring back to Clint Mansell’s work with the Kronos Quartet for Darren Aronofsky’s 2000 film “Requiem for a Dream”. Mansell’s score uniquely combined various genres such as hip-hop, electronic, and traditional classical music, creating an unforgettable and powerful theme that echoed the characters’ descent into drug addiction through its repeated descending melodies. As Fitzpatrick explains, the score functions not just as a supporting element but as a separate entity that seems to drive and react to the visuals on screen. The film’s signature song, “Lux Aeterna”, has gained such prominence that it is now used in trailers for other films, suggesting that the music itself has become as iconic as “Clair de Lune”.

In an interview with NPR, Reznor stated that Mansell’s work didn’t specifically influence his collaboration with Ross for the scoring of The Social Network, but he emphasized that Mansell demonstrated you can create such music without years spent in university. Similar to Mansell, Blumberg and other composers are self-taught. Their unique style arises from their rejection of traditional classical scoring norms and reliance on their personal artistic values. This kind of music is shaped more by instinct than academic theory. When providing instructions to trumpet player Axel Dörner, Blumberg simply said “sirens” to see what he would come up with. Many contemporary composers credit Mansell for paving the way for independent artists who may only have recording equipment and a laptop to produce music for the big screen. As Cristobal Tapia de Veer, composer of Babygirl and The White Lotus, put it, “I wasn’t particularly fond of ‘film music’ until I heard what Clint Mansell was doing with Darren Aronofsky.” What captures my attention is often that the composer came from a band.

As a music-loving cinephile, I firmly believe that the big screen has emerged as a sanctuary for artistic expression in music. Bryce Dessner, an accomplished composer who’s worked on the 2024 films ‘Sing Sing’ and ‘We Live in Time’, echoes this sentiment. With a diverse background, having collaborated with directors like Alejandro González Iñárritu and Mike Mills, as well as crafting his own chamber and contemporary classical pieces, not to mention the music he creates with his brother and Matt Berninger in The National, Dessner speaks of the impact of algorithms on musical taste homogenization. However, he highlights that in film music, there’s a breathtaking variety of approaches.

In Dessner’s film compositions, you’ll often notice a minimalist, ethereal quality. The melodies are unmistakable, yet he intentionally leaves musical phrases incomplete, inviting the listener to complete the story. Much like today’s composers, Dessner prefers working with smaller ensembles rather than a full orchestra, jokingly commenting, “I’m not writing a score for them as if I’m Brahms.

In the movie “Babygirl,” one of this year’s award-contending films, the soundtrack initially features a melody so common it seems comical, reminiscent of what you might hear at a philharmonic. As described by Tapia de Veer, the composer, the story begins with the portrayal of Romy Mathis, played by Nicole Kidman, a successful businesswoman whose life and family are picture-perfect. However, as the music shifts, so does her life, rapidly deteriorating. The opening waltz is replaced by “the wolf,” a term used by the director Halina Reijn to symbolize the growing desire that permeates throughout the film. The eerie, rhythmic chanting that emerges from Mathis’s midlife crisis is dissonant and lacks harmony, reflecting her isolation in the woods of her own desires, running from her cravings. Only in the movie’s closing scene, when Mathis returns to her husband in their bedroom, does Tapia de Veer’s score introduce a second voice to the rhythmic breathing: her desire mirrored.

For a long time, except for musical films, scores such as Tapia de Veer’s or Blumberg’s were typically added to movies during post-production; directors would use temporary music to help with editing, and composers would receive rough cuts from the shoot as their starting point. Dessner explains that sound design was often considered later on. However, in modern filmmaking, sound designers, sound mixers, and composers are increasingly communicating with directors during production, if not even in pre-production. This shift means that sound can now shape, or even guide, the visuals and editing process. The opening sequence of “The Brutalist” was composed before it was filmed; Adrien Brody’s character Tóth’s journey from the ship’s bottom to the open air was “choreographed” to the music rather than being filled in later during post-production. Just as melody can heighten visual impact, so too can visuals make music more dynamic and lively.

In the past, most musicians lived and passed away before the advent of cinema, which is barely a century old. Conversely, music has become more accessible: You don’t need to recognize Chopin or Bruckner to navigate daily life; there’s no necessity to attend a conservatory to establish a career in it. Today’s film composers, to an extent, have taught themselves – they developed their unique soundscapes and then the movies adapted accordingly. The worth of a film or TV score now lies in its capacity to surpass its original visuals: Could this music be played at a club? Can it be reused for memes or humor? Could you superimpose it on another scene to evoke an entirely new emotion? “Each project – film, dance, opera, song – has its own demands,” Bertelmann notes. “Every time, I begin anew. If I repeat myself, that would be my undoing.

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2025-02-27 19:54