Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir on Creating the Music You Do (or Don’t) Notice for Cate Blanchett and Todd Field in Tár
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The post Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir on Creating the Music You Do (or Don’t) Notice for Cate Blanchett and Todd Field in Tár appeared first on Consequence.
Little Children director Todd Field’s return to film, the acclaimed drama Tár, was worth the wait. A haunting descent into the psyche of a composer/conductor (Cate Blanchett) whose ambitions get derailed by her past and present foibles, the film presents a lush soundscape that includes many layers, from the original composition that Lydia Tár is struggling to create, to the lush symphonies of Mahler, to the uneasy underlying score created by Oscar-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir (Joker).
Field brought Hildur onto the project very early on — “I think I was like the second person to join the project after Cate,” she tells Consequence via Zoom — and she says that when she first read the script, she felt like the writer/director had authentically captured a lot about the modern-day world of music composition and conducting.
“There’s a lot of how the character is that’s very different from my musical world and my musical landscape. But I think that for a certain type of musician, I think he came pretty close,” she says. She did have some notes for Field: “There were some parts that I was like, ‘No, you’d never say that as a musician.’ But the great thing is that Todd is a musician himself, he used to be a trombone player. So he has a pretty good understanding of what it is to be a musician. I think he was well-informed.”
While the character of Tár has completed the famed achievement of winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, Hildur is currently a T shy of EGOT-ing, something she tells Consequence she doesn’t mind too much. Below, transcribed and edited for clarity, the Icelandic composer also explains how deep her involvement in the film went, from literally writing music to help set the pace of scenes, to helping to create a “concept album” that will capture all the musical elements of Tár. This includes her own actual score for the film, which is deliberately subtle so that it “lives in a realm that’s more the subconscious level, the otherworldly place where you’re not sure exactly what is real and who is who.”
To start off, talk to me about what joining the film was like, because I’m very curious about how that all went.
Todd really wanted to involve me in the whole process, you know, because the film is a process film, it’s all about music. So, obviously music was very important and it’s also all about the psychological and emotional aspects of what it is to rehearse music, what it is to write music, like what it is to be frustrated with that process, to be really encapsulated by it — or what happens if you’re misaligned in your process.
And it was just like all these different angles of the music process, you know, which I find personally is probably more interesting than just listening to a piece of music by itself. I just find it so interesting, you know, how to get there and how the conversation is with the people that you’re playing with or how your inner dialogue is when you’re writing, or how to deal with the frustrations that you come across when the music is not going the way that you imagined it’d go. All of these things are just very interesting and very delicate and very alive. I thought it was really interesting to get to have the chance to work with such great artists like Todd and Cate, to really dissect this process. What it is and how it feels and how it works and all of these things.
So my job was basically threefold. I started from the script on — I had meetings with Todd when he was location scouting. We basically tempo mapped the whole film — we tempo mapped the characters and the pace that they walked in, the pace that they were operating in, and I wrote music to accompany that basically, in the BPMs that were set for these characters, to set the tempo and the tone of the film. That’s music that you don’t hear in the film, but it’s very much part of the music process of the film.
And then my second job was to write the music that the main character is writing in the film. So we follow her process of writing and we witness her writing this music, but we never hear the final version of what she’s actually writing in the film. But then I ended up finishing that music and that music is coming out on a record, from the parallel universe to the film where she actually gets to finish the record that she’s working on in the film.
And then my third job for the film was writing the actual score for the film, that lives in a totally different place from the kind of day-to-day rehearsal space and the kind of orchestra space that she’s living in her day-to-day world. And the score lives in a realm that’s more the subconscious level, the otherworldly place where you’re not sure exactly what is real and who is who. So that’s where the score lives. There’s actually an incredible amount of score in the film, but the audience probably won’t notice it as much. It’s like having a ghost in the room that you can’t see, but you can feel.
Going back to your first job — you were writing music to essentially represent the pace of scenes and the pace of actors. What was the ultimate use for that?
Well, I think it was very useful in the sense of setting the tone for Cate’s character. Because the big frustration in her life is that she’s not really living according to what she really wants to be doing. Her passion in music and her passion in life is totally different from what she’s actually spending most of her days. I felt like what she really wanted to be doing was this more experimental approach to music, a more open and slower-paced approach to music. Something on the lines of like Charles Ives or Morton Feldman, people that are slightly more open, you know.
Tár (Focus Features)
But what she actually ends up getting drawn into is this classical world where she feels that she needs to be really strong and powerful and angry, where she has to kind of take everyone on head first. And the conflict in her life comes from these paths not aligning, you know, and not managing to marry each other. It’s still music, but it leads to a lot of frustration, basically.
She’s just very misaligned, you know, And then that forces her, in the end, back to actually where she wanted to be in the first place, which was not on this pedestal, or not on this kind of glorious pace where she’s the ruler. She wanted to be working on more intricate slower works. So, I think that writing that music that she would’ve been writing, and accessing that mindset that she wanted to be living in, was really important to set the literal tone for the character that she is in the film, you know? So it was very informative for us all basically in the character building of the film.
So is that part of what ends up becoming the concept album?
Yeah. So there’s a three-part quartet that’s basically like that, that’s the tone setting of the film. And then there’s the orchestra piece that she’s working on in the film that ends up getting finished on the concept album. And then there’s an outtake of the actual score, then there’s also Cate conducting Muller and one of the main characters, played by Sophie Kauer, who is a cellist in reality.
Then, also, there are outtakes of both me and Cate talking to the musicians and giving them instructions in the way that I speak to musicians, which is very different from how the character does, as a way of suggesting ways of accessing the emotional landscape that’s helpful for the performance of the music.
One track I want to make sure I ask about is “For Petra” — you clearly wrote so much music for this project, but that’s the only piece that’s directly credited to you in the final credits. What was the story there?
Well, that’s the piece that she’s writing in the film, and that was the first thing that came to me musically, like right after reading the script. Because in the script she was working on this melody that she’s exploring, and she’s trying to find her way to the right way of this melody, or finding the path that this melody wants to go to. And then that ends up being the main theme in this orchestra piece.
So it’s the piece that leads the whole film, basically, because in the film we hear her working on the melody and trying to approach it and changing it. Then we also hear me singing the melody, which is the very first time that I accessed this melody basically, as I recorded it on my phone. So what we hear in the film is actually a voice memo of the very first living moments of this melody.
Tár (Focus Features)
It’s your voice meant to replicate the character’s voice?
No, it’s kind of like the voice of how the music comes to you. Speaking for myself, when I write music or when I hear music that I’m writing first, I hear it in my head, you know? So there’s this music that happens internally and the easiest way for me to access that music is obviously through my voice, because that’s the closest thing to my head.
A lot of that music that I hear internally then becomes written for other instruments. So a lot of the time what that music ends up being is actually not my voice. But it’s so interesting to analyze just how that process happens. Like how music like that comes to you. Because it can happen in your sleep, it can happen when you’re on your bike, it can happen when you’re sitting and trying to write music, it can happen at any time. So what is that voice like? Or is it a voice? Or is it the spirit of music? Like your intrinsic experience of music.
But in the film, there are elements that this character hears where she’s not sure if it’s music or if it’s some other sound, whether it’s irritating or scary. She’s someone that hears sounds really loud, you know so there’s a lot of sounds that she experiences — for example, the sound that’s coming from her neighbor’s medical equipment that starts seeping into her head and she’s unsure if it’s music or if it’s something else. My voice kind of lives in that space. Like we’re not sure if it’s this character or if it’s her internal dialogue or if it’s a ghost or if it’s someone that’s running away. We don’t really know what that voice is.
To wrap up, I’m sure this has been brought to your attention before, but you are a T away from EGOT-ing — is that something you think about? Do you have the ambition to one day complete the EGOT, or are you just really happy doing the work you’re currently doing?
Well, I try not to think too much about those kind of extrinsic drives for my work. Because I think when you’re writing music or when you’re creating something, I think it’s really such a fragile process and I think it’s really important to treat it as such, to not push it and not to let the ego get too involved, because I think that the ego normally just gets in the way, you know?
And I think if you’re focusing too much on the awards and external motivations, I think it really starts to distort the access that you have to your inner honesty — being able to access the parts of yourself where you can really speak truthfully, or as truthfully as you can both yourself and the people that you work with, you know? I think the external motivations act as distortion. So I have to work quite hard to filter out that noise, basically. I would never do a project specifically to try to be successful. I’ve never been very good at that.
So you’re not calling Broadway producers and being like “What can I do for you?”
[Laughs] No, not at all. Not at all. Because I think as soon as I start to work from that point of view, I’m pretty sure what I make would just be really crappy.
Tár is in limited theatrical release now.
Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir on Creating the Music You Do (or Don’t) Notice for Cate Blanchett and Todd Field in Tár
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