‘A Small Light’ composer Ariel Marx on ‘magical experience’ of scoring this Holocaust drama [Exclusive Video Interview]
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Ariel Marx recalls that her marching orders after being hired to compose the musical score for the powerful Holocaust-themed Nat Geo limited series “A Small Light” was to put a contemporary modern spin on a story that’s been told many times before but never quite like this. “It was inspiring to bring something that would make it feel lived in and accessible,” she says. “I was told by (executive producers) Tony (Phelan), Joan (Rater) and Susanna (Fogel) that they wanted to dust the cobwebs off the story. For me musically, that meant getting to explore a lot of different genres. The score is inspired by Benny Goodman and Tom Waits and the Squirrel Nut Zippers and contemporary neo-classical. It also has a large use of electronics. All of those elements really helped anchor it.” See our exclusive video interview above.
“A Small Light” tells the true story of Miep Gies, the courageous Austrian woman who agreed to hide Anne Frank and her extended family from the Nazis in Amsterdam in the early 1940s. Gies lived her life cloaked in humility, and Marx wanted the music to reflect that, particularly early on in the series when she’s shown to be a normal young woman whose life was somewhat messy (a bit flaky, partying too hard, etc.). She guarded against having the musical tone be too mournful and anachronistic while still honoring the gravity of the story.
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“It was a fine line to draw,” Marx stresses. “We were insistent on keeping our small group of musicians, our orchestral, humble in what we created early on, living in the playful folk/jazz world. But as the stakes in the story grow more intense, we widen to a larger, more orchestral palette. Fortunately, the performances of the actors (including Bel Powley as Miep and Liev Schreiber as Anne Frank’s father Otto) are so wonderful and authentic that being articulate with melody (to match the) emotion was actually quite easy. The performances could withstand both a lot of sparsity and quite a lot of scoring. But it wasn’t the same formula or the same approach for each episode. Especially in the later episodes, the score takes a much bigger role.”
Marx researched music that was popular in Amsterdam in the 1940s to generate inspiration for the score as well. “Some of that is certainly influential,” she says. “Swing jazz, Goodman, Duke Ellington, klezmer and hot club jazz, Central and Western European folk, classical…I tried to be very intentional to maker it feel timeless.” The multi-talented Marx herself also played instruments on the score, including violin, cello, percussion and guitar. “The intention was to have a small ensemble that doesn’t sound like a five-piece band but much larger. That has to do with very intentional orchestration and layering to make a group of five musicians sound like 50.”
Working on “A Small Light” felt special to Marx, who boasts a lengthy resume; of film and television projects extending back a decade. “It was so meaningful to everyone involved, and they just gave their absolute heart to it,” she says. “It was just so palpable. It was just a really magical experience, knowing it was such a meaningful project.”
“A Small Light” is currently available to view over Nat Geo with new episodes every Monday, with the last pair of installments premiering on May 22. Each episode streams the following day over Disney+ and Hulu.
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