Emmy Award-winning composer, Nicholas Britell, is enjoying a moment right now. The Oscar-nominated talent behind the scores of films like “Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “Vice” and television series like “Succession” is as in-demand as they come, an artist who approaches film music composition in incredibly original ways, with some of our greatest contemporary filmmakers lining up to collaborate with him. For Netflix, Britell is behind the haunting, eerily timeless melodies of David Michod’s “The King,” a story taken in part from William Shakespeare’s “Henriad” series of plays and focused on the rise of King Henry V. Like all of Britell’s work, the score is a piece of its own within the film, the music seemingly sprouting from the very tones and atmospheres rendered by Michod and his team behind the camera. In this week’s episode of “The Call Sheet,” Britell dives into his love of hip hop, his use of unconventional instruments for the score of “The King," and the importance of trusting your instincts.
Emmy Award-winning composer, Nicholas Britell, is enjoying a moment right now. The Oscar-nominated talent behind the scores of films like “Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “Vice” and television series like “Succession” is as in-demand as they come, an artist who approaches film music composition in incredibly original ways, with some of our greatest contemporary filmmakers lining up to collaborate with him.
For Netflix, Britell is behind the haunting, eerily timeless melodies of David Michod’s “The King,” a story taken in part from William Shakespeare’s “Henriad” series of plays and focused on the rise of King Henry V. Like all of Britell’s work, the score is a piece of its own within the film, the music seemingly sprouting from the very tones and atmospheres rendered by Michod and his team behind the camera.
In this week’s episode of “The Call Sheet,” Britell dives into his love of hip hop, his use of unconventional instruments for the score of “The King," and the importance of trusting your instincts.
KRIS TAPLEY: I’m Kris Tapley, and you're listening to The Call Sheet: a show that dives deep into the craft of your favorite Netflix films and series with some of the most talented artists and artisans in the game.
We’ve got a little something for the music fans this week. Let's go ahead and hear from our guest first.
NICHOLAS BRITELL: My name is Nicholas Britell, and my craft is composing.
KT: It seems fair to say Nicholas Britell is enjoying a moment right now. The Oscar-nominated composer of films like Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk and Vice is as in demand as they come, an artist who approaches film music composition in exciting and fresh ways, with some of our greatest contemporary filmmakers lining up to collaborate with him.
He's also fresh off an Emmy win for his work on TV’s Succession, which has become a [00:01:00] viral sensation and made a huge impact on the internet and social media culture. It also hit the zeitgeist in an unexpected way earlier this year, when hip hop artists Pusha T tapped into the series’ main theme for his song “Puppets.”
For Netflix, Nicholas is behind the haunting, but gorgeous melodies of David Michod's The King, a story taken in part from William Shakespeare's Henriad series of plays and focused on the rise of King Henry V. Like all of Nicholas's work, the score is utterly of a piece with the film, the music seemingly sprouting from the very tones and atmospheres rendered by Michod and his team behind the camera.
On this episode, we're going to learn about Nicholas's process and how it shifts from film to film. We'll hear a few select tracks and get the lowdown on how they came to be. And what did he think about J-Lo dancing to his work in the latest Succession meme? All of that and a whole lot more is just ahead. So let's dig in.
Nicholas, at the top here, I just want to kind of get to know you a little bit before we start to talk [00:02:00] about The King in a moment. And I think it's interesting because first of all, you draw from a very vast and varied well of inspiration. You know, things like Phillip Glass and Quincy Jones, they've often been mentioned. Rachmaninoff and Gershwin. It’s a big range.
And I want to know: why is that important to you, to have such a kind of vast well to draw on for your inspirations?
NB: That's a good question. I think that, you know, growing up, I loved music and I think I spent a lot of time when I was young thinking about why certain things were musically interesting to me. You know, like really kind of breaking it down. When you hear a piece of music. What is it about a part of a piece of music that is beautiful or why are you moved when you hear certain chords? And things like that. And that I think for me, happens across all music.
I definitely couldn't say that there's like one thing that I feel inspired by because I feel music in general is such a [00:03:00] vast and universal kind of form of communication and emotion and ideas. It's almost impossible to latch onto just one thing that, “Oh, that's the thing.”
And in a lot of ways, I think the thing that I'm excited about with writing music, and in particularly writing music for films, is that every project has its own world that you get to explore. And for me, that's attractive because then you can create new sounds and experiment with new ideas all the time, you know? So it's different every time. Yeah.
KT: Yeah, totally. One extension of that, too, is part of your origin story, if you will, is the Witness Protection Program.
NB: Yes!
KT: Your Harvard hip-hop group, you opened for Jurassic Five and Blackalicious, which is awesome, by the way.
NB: We did, actually, yeah!
KT: And you said that hip-hop is the most profound art form of the last 50 years. Did I misquote you first of all?
NB: No, no, no.
KT: Tell me about that.
NB: Yeah. I think for me, you know, first of all, just as an art form, I think hip-hop is incredible, and I think people don't even fully [00:04:00] appreciate how remarkable it is, from so many different perspectives.
On a pure musical level, there's the way that hip-hop relates to and incorporates other musics. It incorporates other recordings. Literally the way that it approaches technology, the way that it's sort of evolved because of different – you know, if you think about turntables and sampling technology.
Also, I think just the way that hip-hop is on a rhythmic and structural level – it's something where it's basically a form of poetry. That is, you know, interrelated with these incredible beats. And obviously that's evolved, and is continuing to evolve all the time.
But I think it's remarkable the extent to which this art form in particular – which has now become essentially in some ways the most popular art form in the world – looking at it and realizing that like, this is a form which is essentially spoken word poetry over a beat. And that's that's new, at least from a sort of like modern [00:05:00] 20th, 21st century perspective.
You know, if you think about the history of popular forms of music, certainly in the West, it's very focused on certain types of song forms. You know, verses and choruses and really singing as like the popular form. And I think it's great to step back and actually look at this and say, “Wow, this is something really new and really fascinating and really different.”
KT: And by the way, that all must've made the Pusha T experience a trip. Pusha T remixed the Succession theme this year.
NB: Oh yeah. No, that was amazing. You know, just, thinking back on those early formative experiences and then getting to collaborate with Push was really special.
KT: That's awesome. Speaking of which, did you see Jennifer Lopez dancing to your music? Has it made it to you yet?
NB: I just saw a few memes over the past 24 hours!
KT: That thing took off, man. I mean, what's it like to be a part of kind of a zeitgeist thing like that?
NB: It's been incredible. Honestly, I [00:06:00] think the dream of anyone working in a creative field is that you can make something and that other people feel it, and that it gets out there in some way.
And when things take on a life of their own, like this has, it's really special. And you can't predict these things. You know, you have no way of knowing. That's maybe what's exciting about all of this, is that none of us really ever knows what's going to happen.
But yeah, it's been very exciting. I've just been blown away by the level of creativity that's gone into the memes.
KT: I don't think there's any end in sight either.
Okay. So let's talk about The King. You saw this film, correct me if I'm wrong, early on with no music, so like an empty sonic canvas. Just curious how your brain works. Are you hearing melody in your head when you're watching imagery? Are you just absorbing the story and [00:07:00] kind of take the spark as it comes later? How is your brain working when you're watching the film?
NB: That's a great question. I try to be very sensitive to my first instincts when I'm watching a movie for the first time, because that experience – that first experience – only happens once and you never have that same kind of feeling. You never have that same relationship to a project after that.
So I try to be very cognizant of my feelings and my thoughts as I'm watching something. And I definitely write down some of the thoughts as I’m I'm going. And you know, exactly as you said, I saw it in January. It was actually Dede Gardner And Jeremy Kleiner who first told me about the film, and I watched –
KT: Producers. Plan B.
NB: Producers at Plan B – amazing producers and the deepest collaborators that I've had over the years.
And I watched the film. And I remember when I saw it – for some reason I’m always [00:08:00] asking myself these questions about where these ideas sort of come from – but my first reaction was that I would be really excited to experiment with imagining that the sound was from like the 25th century instead of the 15th century.
Because we're seeing that the world of this is the early 15th century. And for some reason I thought to myself, “Well what if it was the future?” First of all, because we don't know what the future looks like and also
KT: It could look like that.
NB: It could look like that! And also, you know, the early 14 hundreds are so far in the past. It's another world. None of us has any idea what the year 1413 was like. I think it would feel like another planet. And I remember the first conversation that I had with David Michod when we were talking about it was this idea of: how could we create a soundscape that felt like this was another world? A world that you certainly hadn't been to, a world that you hadn't seen before?
And so I started with those ideas of, you know, what would [00:09:00] the sound of that be? I started making these experiments with taking base clarinets and playing them above the range and then running them through like a weird tape filter that gave the sound, this sort of like bent kind of odd texture.
KT: Is this just experimentation, by the way? Or you know what something's going to sound like if you do this to it?
NB: You know, I have ideas of the process that occurs, but one of the great things about this is I don't think any of us – certainly not me – you never really know what's going to happen. You just don't.
I think if you did, it wouldn't be as interesting because I certainly know music theory and you know, I know a lot of the techniques and the ideas of generally what might happen moment to moment, but on a macro scale, especially when you're working with visual media, when you're working with a picture, the interconnection between a sound, a piece of music, and a picture is something that is [00:10:00] completely, I think, unknowable what that will do.
I think you have instincts of like, “Oh, if I do this, this might happen.” But you don't know until you try it out. And so until you sit there and you play a sound and you watch a scene, you actually don't know. And I think that's just wonderful. You know, it's this alchemy that happens where different sounds, different tambours of instruments are, they're almost like this metaphor of like paints and a painter and colors, possibly.
But I find it very useful to invite a director over to my studio. And early on we actually just watch scenes together and I'll have certain ideas that I'll prepare before the director comes over. But you know, I invited David over, he came over in March to my studio in New York, and I would play some of these sounds against scenes.
And it's really amazing how there are certain sounds that if you just play them against a picture of a movie, some sounds just feel like they're a part of something. And some just feel like they're not. I don't know [00:11:00] why that is. And obviously there's so much of personal –
KT: Yeah it’s probably pretty subjective, too.
NB: It can be very subjective, but you know, the only thing we can go on is our own instincts. But I think also as a composer and as a film composer, I think the thesis we have is that, If we feel something, the thesis is that maybe others might feel that too.
And so with this film in particular, these early experiments, I took these metal sounds of clanging metal and bent it. I thought it'd be interesting to have metal as a musical element that was pitched in into the orchestra. And then the big question of like, “What is the music?” You know, it's something that's such a big question that I think we almost don't always realize how big a question it is – like, what is the right music? You know?
And I've always had this feeling that there's like infinite scores that are possible for a movie. And like we were just saying, you know, you're choosing one. You're choosing out of this whole universe of possible scores, you're writing one score that in collaboration with a director feels like it is woven in [00:12:00] to the picture somehow.
KT: Was there anything about the music of the era that you researched and wanted to touch on or include in any way?
NB: Absolutely. I actually did a lot of research. I did this whole deep dive into the late 13 hundreds and early 14 hundreds. Medieval, late, medieval, early Renaissance. Even in England.
What was interesting was seeing there were some real, sort of harmonic changes that were happening in music at that time, but David actually pulled me back from that a bit. Because similar to that initial instinct of looking at this as a foreign planet in a way, as another world, David didn't want it to feel like the music was just from the early 14 hundreds.
And to some extent, I think if things felt too period, that felt like it almost limited the scope to David. Because one of the things that I loved when I first saw the film, and that David and I would talk about a lot is, you know, the, the themes, the ideas that are in this movie, [00:13:00] resonate for any generation.
You know, these questions of: what is true and what is false? To whom do we entrust power? Families in power? These types of questions, clearly every era has to ask these questions. You know, we were looking for sounds that felt like they both had a strangeness, but also that they could exist in any time period, so it didn't feel like this was only an old story.
And David definitely had a very strong view on that, which I really took to heart. And I guess it's also just a way of saying that, on any of these projects that I've been lucky enough to work on, it's only through this collaboration with the director that I have any idea of what we should do.
You know, I feel there are so many ideas that, I may feel one way about something, but it's only through talking to a director that you start to get a sense of, “Oh, that's actually how they feel what this should be.”
KT: And you've done it different ways. I mean, this has been the process on this one, but I was going to ask, how does it compare to something like for instance, Moonlight, where you were heavily involved in the construction of the movie as well, [00:14:00] and just a more intimate kind of part of that process as opposed to coming in after the picture’s kind of locked in?
NB: It's a good question. You know, I think in general, I've been lucky enough to get involved pretty early. On Moonlight with Barry Jenkins, we met and had conversations about what the music might be before he had shot the film.
What was interesting about that was actually just having this long period of time where we could sort of marinate on these ideas and think about… With Moonlight, you know, there was this question of, Barry loves chopped and screwed music. The form of Southern hip-hop where you take a piece of music and you slow it down and then the pitch goes down and gets deepened and enriched and we had talked about that idea of taking --
KT: (Singing) I’m a classic man…
NB: Exactly, as we did in “Classic Man” in the film! But we also did it with the score where, that was something early on, where I remember these conversations with Barry. We talked about what if I were to write, essentially, more [00:15:00] orchestral music and record this music of ours and then use that technique and chop and screw our own music.
And again, that's one of those ideas where. There’s no way to know if that would work. It's totally possible that we would have tried that out, and then we put it up against an early cut of Moonlight and, we're like, “Wow, that just feels strange.” But in fact, we tried it out and right away Barry was like, “Okay, there's…” as he would say, “There's some there, there.”
And with David, we didn't have as much time as Moonlight, you know, I did come on after the film had been shot and edited a lot. But we had time to experiment with different things and the sound on The King did evolve quite a bit. It ended up being kind of a mid point, I would say, between this more futuristic world and the research and the thoughts that I had on this earlier, more historical sound.
I don't feel it's of any particular time period. There's an openness to some of the [00:16:00] harmonies that feels kind of older to me in some ways. It doesn't feel modern, in a sense. It doesn’t feel like modern classical music, but at the same time, it doesn't feel, it's definitely not baroque. It's not really medieval. I don't know what it is sometimes, you know?
And I think that was the fun of it, was finding this sort of framework and leaning into it. And then orchestrating it in a way that felt like it was emotionally connected to this film, which is really the key. We're trying to create sounds that that are their own elements of the film itself.
KT: Yeah. I wanted to talk about that actually, specifically. We're going to talk about some certain tracks in a moment, but I wanted to talk about certain themes that are prevalent in the film and how you wanted to illustrate those sonically. So for instance, there's this idea in The King of power slithering in and corrupting Hal and the throne infecting him like it did his father. So how did you want to illustrate that concept musically?
NB: Like you said, there's definitely different musical themes that have [00:17:00] relationships to different parts of the story and the elements of the film.
The music that plays around the coronation of Hal is actually a piece of music that structurally in the movie – and I always think about the kind of like architecture of a score— where do you seed certain ideas? Where do they occur? And then recur? The elements of the piece, the coronation, which is this piece I wrote Ballade in C Sharp Minor, there's a sort of swirling darkness to that piece of music.
And that theme element in variation form occurs as we see Hal potentially not following the right path. And there's a different theme, for example, in a different piece of music, a piece we call Song of Hal, which occurs in parts of the film, where to some extent, Hal is genuinely trying to understand what he should do and really thinking about things and when, Hal is potentially not doing those things [00:18:00] or is being swept up in this office of the King, you're hearing the swirling elements of the coronation.
So for example, in the execution sequence,, there's these swirling kind of violas that you're hearing. That had been bent there. You know, the music has its own relationship to those things. And I always feel too, that music in a film is really about, it's not like a one-to-one correspondence, you know? It's not like you see something and then you hear it.
It's really about the relationships and the dynamics between characters, oftentimes, you know. I generally don't think about a, a theme for a character. I often think about themes as relating to the way that those characters are actually interacting with other characters and with the world.
KT: And then also just before we get to these tracks, I wanted to talk about the climax of the film. It’s sort of this antithesis of a classic movie battle in some ways, because there's no glory shots. It's the battle of Agincourt and people are just dying stuck in the mud. You might expect a certain kind of music with something like [00:19:00] that, but you're getting a completely different scene to record, right?
So you tell me: how did you seek to kind of let the music similarly stand apart as the scene itself stands apart within that canon, if that makes sense?
NB: 100%. And actually one of the things that really drew me to the film early on was the way in which battle was dealt with. The fact that it was so clear how frail the human body is and how not glorious battle is.
And David early on was telling me about how an Agincourt, you know, apparently most of the people who died in Agincourt were trampled to death or drowned in mud. It wasn't this glorious, swashbuckling swordsmanship, you know? So I think, like you're saying, you know, understanding the counterpoint that there is a different take on this and also how much perhaps our ideas of battle are just historical narrative [00:20:00] conventions, the way that there's a great theater to a battle sequence like that.
But if you're trying to understand the way the battle actually occurred, it's not that. And so musically there is something that we do where you see the, the speech that Hal gives to the soldiers, the “make it England” speech, where he's rallying everyone up and that piece of music and that speech in some ways is kind of a misdirect.
You know, there's this moment of almost kind of a nationalistic swelling up, which is not really anything that we will see.
KT: You think the white wizard is going to come in…
NB: What is going to happen here? And it's not at all, it's not going to be this glorious battle. It's actually going to be this muddy, really sad spectacle for everybody, I think. And as we will then see in the denouement of the film, you know, the fact that there is another reveal that's going to happen, which changes our entire perspective on everything we've watched.
So the music in Agincourt is actually kind of a distorted view of that piece before Agincourt. So [00:21:00] there's a piece there called “Antiphon,” it’s actually chordily the elements of the Falstaff music, which is this piece called “Hymn.” Those emerge, and the idea there was that, you know, Falstaff has been really kind of the foundation upon which Hal has been able to build his idea of what is going to happen in this battle, and their friendship has helped bring him here.
So you're hearing these kinds of Falstaff chords underneath, and at the same time, there's this very intricate kind of multi violin piece happening on top. And then when the battle is actually happening, you're hearing a bent and distorted version of that piece actually inside all of the sound of battle.
And I think the idea there was really that the battle is a distortion of kind of the human condition. I find that battle sequence just… it's meant to be traumatic and sad and you know, reflective in a way it makes you want to reflect on what this is. [00:22:00]
KT: Let’s dive into some specific tracks here from the score.
If you have it at home, if you're playing along at home, we're going to look at track one, track eight and track twelve. We're going to start with a Ballade and C Sharp Minor that you mentioned briefly there. Coronation. Now, I’m a total layman. So I'm just gonna tell you what I was kind of feeling when I'm listening to this stuff.
NB: Please!
KT: So it's a very ominous vibe. You’ve got the strings going. There's a percussive -- is that a piano string cling?
NB: That's actually metal, that's a clang that’s bent and pitched.
KT: That’s what you were talking about with metal.
NB: Exactly.
KT: You know, what's going on here is this role that he didn't want. He didn't expect to take it. Is that part of the storytelling here that you're working with as well? Just walk me through this track.
NB: Here's someone whose life is going in a direction that he did not plan at all. And he's being really swept forward into this unknown future at a very dark time. Especially like in the early sequence we see of that battlefield, the very opening the film, David described it as sort of, this is like a hell on earth, and you know, it's not an [00:23:00] optimistic future that Hal is feeling here.
And I think the music there is, like I was saying, there's a swirling, there's this sort of almost rotational symmetry in the music that's going on, this swirling sound of violas. It builds as we move forward.
At the beginning of the piece, there is this descending octave that happens in the bass. It's actually a sound of double basses and it's doubled with analog synth CS80. This old analog synth that gives kind of this buzzy dark hue to this. And there's a motif that happens with this descending octave, that David and I called the war motif, and you'll actually hear that come back at different moments later.
Because this is still, you know, in the earlier parts of the film, obviously when he's becoming king, we're seeding some of these ideas that will come back later. So you're hearing this war motif, you're hearing these swirling violas, and then you're hearing these chords, which will come to [00:24:00] represent kind of a questioning of “what is the right path?”
There's variations that happen. For example, one of the other tracks is this piece called Canticle in E Minor, that you hear when he's speaking with Philippa. That piece is actually melodically a variation of this coronation, taking elements out of it.
I like to do that where you're sort of opening up the music itself and seeing what's inside and then writing music from those elements. In some ways, every piece of music, hopefully, in a film score, I think should connect in some way or should – there should be a linkage because hopefully one of the most important things that a score can do is actually to be a thread through which you're understanding and feeling a story.
[00:25:00]
KT: Track eight, Song of Hal. Strings in B Minor. This is the second part of a Song of Hal kind of thing that you've got here. What story are you telling here versus that other track? Because you know, when you've got kind of mirroring, not mirroring images, but you know, for lack of a better word, I'm curious how you want to change it up from one to the other. So what's the storytelling like for each of these separately?
NB: Yeah. You know, we needed a theme for Hal in his genuine search for understanding, his attempt to figure out what does it mean to be king? What is the right thing to do? And obviously he has, as we will learn later on, there are so many forces at work that he is unaware of, but he's genuinely trying to understand what his role is here and there's a responsibility of him representing the entire nation of England here.
[00:26:00] So the piece Song of Hal, I think there's a feeling of different forces maybe pulling in different directions in that piece. The track in particular that you mentioned in B minor, that takes place where it's right before Agincourt. And Hal is genuinely trying to understand if he's moving forward in the right way with Falstaff's plan for battle.
And in general when we see Falstaff and Hal, we're hearing that the piece called “Hymn.” But here we're hearing the Song of Hal, because again, this is him wrestling with what is the right path forward. And I would note that this is also a piece of music that at its conclusion, the boys’ choir enters.
And the choir is one thing that we hadn't really talked about because strings form a real base for this score, this sound of strings, and actually the string [00:27:00] orchestra, it's 35 strings. It was orchestrated where I was focusing on lower strings. So in general, there's a few fewer violins versus let's say an quote, “normal” orchestra setup, and there's more violas, more celli, more basses.
So it's a darker, lower kind of sound in the strings. And, the boys’ choir is the Trinity Boys Choir, and we recorded all the music of these ensembles in London. We recorded at British Grove Studios. It's sort of at the midpoint of the film when you're going to France, the boys’ choir really –
KT: When they’re landing.
NB: Exactly. And that represents sort of, a kind of a chapter two of the story, and I think for us, the sound of the boys’ choir, it was beautiful in a musical sense, but it also resonated clearly with this idea of a young man who was becoming king and trying to wrestle with that.
KT: It's also otherworldly, the [00:28:00] sound of that choir, it sounds like synths to me, almost, do you know what I mean? Like, because what you were talking about earlier, like you don't know quite how to define what this is.
NB: Yeah.
KT: The only thing it reminds me could possibly have reminded me of it reminded me of Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Something about the band, the kind of experimental band, or whatever that did the score for that.
And it's just kind of the vibe I got, especially when you hear that choir and when they're landing in France, and that synth-y kind of sound to it.
NB: And it's affected too. What's interesting is there, all those voices are the real boys choir. And yet there was a very, very involved, post sound process that happened in Australia where they mixed the film.
And some of those are very affected. There's very strong reverbs on some of those boys’ voices. And it evolves even over the course of the film too, this feeling of otherworldliness, however that comes, even the strings themselves. I generally prefer [00:29:00] a, people say like a “wetter” sound. I like the sound of string orchestra that has more of a longer tail reverb.
I mean, it's just a personal preference. You know, like I love hearing a piece of music that's played, for example, in a cathedral or that kind of beautiful, echoing kind of a sound. And in this film, in The King, almost all of the music has this richer reverb texture.
KT: And the choir comes in some more for this last trick. Hymn - Movement 2: Lament. So talk to me about that. Again, I was just getting that Aguirre vibe. Your score reminds me of nothing, but that's just something that flashed in my head when I was listening to it most recently. But tell me about this, track 12 Hymn - Movement 2: Lament [00:30:00].
NB: Yeah. So, The Lament, that piece is the music, which plays over the death of Falstaff, and it's a combination of different elements. There's a chord progression that I created with David. And actually I'll talk a little bit about that process too, because I mentioned our week that we spent in New York in March, but David was in Australia and then came back to my studio in early July.
And we had this kind of incredible period of time where it's almost like a fever dream where we figured out so many ideas together. And in particular, this question of the Falstaff theme was one that we were very focused on. I had written some different ideas for David. I think some of them were feeling too, you know, quote “old,” in a way.
Some of them were – they weren't feeling focused enough. When David was there, actually in the studio, I wrote this piece, which was a variation on one of the earlier ideas I had presented to David where it has [00:31:00] kind of like, almost like an undulating, cyclic kind of structure where it plays one sort of set of chords and then using similar notes, plays another set of chords.
And then it does this a few different times and it always is kind of coming back home again. But it's sort of going on this little journey each time. Again, this question of kind of tension and release, this coming back to something that feels like home, but also pushing away from it at the same time.
And those chords, which are, it's sort of cycling between this kind of major and minor chords as it's happening. I think that felt both happy and sad, just to put it in the most sort of blunt terms. There was this, it felt like their relationship and early on when I talked to David about the film, I remember feeling that I really wanted this emotion, this feeling of like a heart with their relationship.
I wanted to feel their relationship. Because again, you know, we see it clearly. We definitely understand [00:32:00] intellectually what their relationship is, but I want it to feel connected to it emotionally. And I think for me, there's always this interplay of things that feel bittersweet like that, there's a sort of wavelength of emotion that moves me a lot, and it feels kind of warm and sad at the same time.
And that's, I think, it's kind of this question of like, we're talking about colors, but I think when you're composing, in general, especially for film, there are so many different feelings. You know, there's so many different kind of emotional hues, and honing in on like: what is that exact feeling you're looking for?
So these chords felt to David like that relationship too, and the piece “Lament” was really the combination in a lot of ways of that idea. That moment in the film was sort of what everything was leading up to, actually. This powerful relationship between these two people. It's a very close bond and whatever the music was for that relationship, it had to work at the beginning when you first see them and it had to work [00:33:00] exactly at that moment of death. And so that's that piece of music.
KT: Yeah. How's that for getting into the weeds? So what we do here before we wrap things up, I just briefly wanted to get your thoughts on… this is me talking, but I think there's an exciting, kind of slowly simmering revolution happening in film music lately. I just look at some of the talents that are out there and just sort of the line between film, music, and sound design is blurred in interesting ways.
I think of folks like Mica Levy and the late Johan Johansson, you know, obviously Reznor and Ross, and what they've been up to. The form just seems to be shifting to me. What do you think about the current state of the art form and what are your thoughts on the evolution from here? Like where can [00:34:00] film music go? That maybe it hasn't been yet?
NB: That's a great question. I think that film music is always evolving. You know, if you look at the history of film music early on, I think it was in some ways, almost an extension of like late 19th century Germanic Romantic symphonic music, you know, that then sort of with some certain émigrés, you know, from, you know, Germany and Austria came to Hollywood, and then there's this early Hollywood sound.
But that sound is constantly evolving. And I think, you know, some areas have a big orchestral sound, you know, then there's, it's cyclical where then things move away from that. And you have the sort of like Mancini era, you know, and you have Morricone changing things.
And I think what's fascinating is over time these… There are so many possibilities, and I don't think any of us, you know, has even scratched the surface of those possibilities. And maybe that's the thing that, like I was saying earlier, like that's why I'm so excited about this, because every single film provides [00:35:00] this amazing opportunity to just start again from scratch and do anything really, if it feels right.
And I think that there is such a broad array of unbelievably talented people making films today, and getting the opportunity to make films today. And the more that we experiment with this stuff, I'm sure that we're going to find sounds that we could never even have imagined. So all the people you mentioned, I mean, are amazing and –
KT: And by the way, I include you in that if it's not clear.
NB: That's very kind. I mean, I feel so lucky to get to do this and I feel just personally, like film is such an inspiring form, especially for a composer because music is so abstract, you know, just by definition it’s like these air pressure vibrations, you know, it's literally intangible to us and yet film –
KT: Hitting the hairs in your ears.
NB: [00:36:00] Yeah, exactly, and your brain’s kind of doing math and dividing frequencies in here. I mean, it's unbelievably mysterious and complex, and yet at the same time for me, film gives you a focus. You know, it says, okay, there's infinite things you can do, but here's this fascinating assignment where you get to create a piece of music that somehow coexists with this story and these characters in this world.
And I just feel that that is such an inspiring starting point, and that can lead really anywhere.
KT: Totally. Let's bring it home, with just a few random rapid fire questions.
NB: Okay!
KT: First of all, I won't give you the “what's the greatest score of all time” question, but I'm curious: what's the greatest score cue of all time?
NB: Oh my God. That's an amazing, that's an amazingly impossible question, I would say. Well, you know, interestingly, I always talk about how I was so inspired by “Chariots of Fire,” but I'm not [00:37:00] going to talk about that now because I've talked about that a lot in the past.
I would say, I think the Zbigniew Preisner score for The Double Life of Veronique is incredible. And I think the piece of music that he wrote, which is, both in the film, which is the film that the character of Veroniqua Veronique sings and is also the score, and in the film they actually claimed that it was written by this old Dutch composer named Van den Budenmeyer, and it turned out that was just sort of a phony story they used it to create for the film. You know, that I think that is one of the greatest pieces of music written for a film. So that's one of my, that'd be one of my strong votes.
KT: The old kind of desert island question, but you can only listen to one film score for the rest of your life. What is it?
NB: Oh wow. I mean, “Vertigo” is pretty amazing.
KT: That’s solid.
NB: It's pretty amazing . [00:38:00] I mean, that'd be a weird rest of my life if I was just listening to “Vertigo,” but I'll use that. Bernard Herrmann. How can you go wrong with Bernard Herrmann?
KT: Totally. Barry Jenkins. Speaking of him earlier, he said that you are the most positive, upbeat person he's ever worked with in his life. How does music play into that mindset?
NB: I think it's about trying to be positive, because if you approach a work, like the work that you're doing, from that mindset, things feel more possible.
All work is hard work, and every project actually is sort of terrifying at the very beginning. But I think that if you try to have a positive framework or a positive perspective, things on the margin feel maybe more possible than not.
KT: Probably keeps your mind open, too.
NB: Yeah.
KT: And then last thing here. What's the movie that made you fall in love with movies?
NB: That was definitely “Chariots of Fire.”
KT: Well, we gotta talk about it now!
NB: So “Chariots.” When I was five, I [00:39:00] saw Chariots of Fire” for the first time. And I fell in love with the music and we had this like, old upright piano in our apartment. And I went to the piano and tried to figure out that amazing theme, by Vangelis and I asked my mom for piano lessons.
So that definitely changed my life. And, you know, just having that kind of emotional musical connection with a film. I mean, I never forgot that. So that definitely was the one that made me not just fall in love with movies, but also really got me to begin falling in love with the piano.
KT: It's weird as we talk about this now, I feel like that is probably – I'm 38. Not Star Wars, not even Jaws. I think “Chariots of Fire” is the first film score that I remember.
NB: Wow, we share this then! That's amazing.
KT: I mean, it's pretty iconic, right?
NB: And I think that it is so multilayered. You know, maybe I was trying purposely not to, but [00:40:00] maybe we'll have to tie that with Vertigo. We'll bring that with Vertigo. But, you know.
KT: The remix!
NB: Yeah, we'll put them together, see if they fit, I think, but there's so much in the “Chariots of Fire” score, both with sound, the way that he's using synthesizers, and the music itself is just beautiful.
KT: It’s amazing. Well, Nicholas, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about this movie. It's brilliant work, and I think you're – there's like a rocket ship attached to you right now. You're going places obviously, and you're just, like I was saying earlier about the zeitgeist, I mean to be able to command the zeitgeist with some of your work like this is just kind of incredible.
So it's great to see what you're doing and thank you again for coming on, man.
NB: Well, thank you so much. I'm honored to be here and thank you for those kind words. .
KT: You got it.
Okay. I was obviously gushing a bit there at the end, but how can you fault me for that? Nicholas is one of those talents. I think we're going to hear from him more and more as the years go by.
Which makes it all the more exciting to sort of luxuriate in these early [00:41:00] beginnings of his career. And let's face it, if those beginnings have already given us definitive sonic portraits like Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk, and now The King, among others, the potential going forward for this incredibly talented composer seems almost limitless.
So dig into The King and soak up Nicholas's work. You can see and hear it for yourself. It's streaming Netflix right now.
The Call Sheet is a Netflix podcast hosted by me, Kris Tapley. The show is produced by Noah Eberhart and the team at Blue Duck Media. Stuart Park created all the original music in this episode and a special thanks to the team at Netflix.