The New Soundtrack Masters
By: Tom Wilson
The film industry is deeply rooted in tradition—if something works, stick with it. Soundtracks are no different, with the same few names composing generations of blockbuster soundtracks. Yet a new dawn has come, with new composers taking centre stage. These musicians do not only have potential, They are established composers in their own right with multiple awards to their name. While the new wave of film songwriters is vast, two names have risen to the top: Justin Hurwitz and Ludwig Göransson, who are carving their own legacies in a rather closed off field.
For decades, the soundtrack genre has been dominated by two men: Hans Zimmer and John Williams. While they don’t sell out arenas or go on huge world tours, their work is embedded in pop culture. Star Wars, Interstellar, Harry Potter, Inception; the list goes on. One cannot begin a conversation on soundtracks without these men.
As is life, however, time catches up to us. Williams is now 91 years old and announced in 2022 that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, released this June, would likely be his final score. Although he has now reversed this decision, he only has a few projects left. While Zimmer is a few decades younger and still producing work of the highest quality, at 66 years old he is in the latter half of his career. As the clock ticks forward, film studios have had to look for younger composers.
At only 38 years old, Justin Hurwitz certainly has his fair share of notable works. A versatile composer, he has shown himself competent in various genres and unafraid to break barriers. His collaboration with director Damien Chazelle has led to his scores on films like Whiplash, First Man, Babylon, and most famously, La La Land. The latter earned Hurwitz an Academy Award, Grammy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA. His young but accolade-laden career is backed up by his impressive repertoire, but also his ability to tackle a new musical style with each project.
What makes Hurwitz so compelling is his versatility. Whiplash and La La Land are heavily influenced by jazz, with the latter also being part musical theatre. Babylon, a movie set in the Roaring Twenties, is parts big band and ragtime. It is in First Man, however, that his multifacetedness demonstrates itself. An ambience score backed by an electric orchestra, it is his most ambitious work yet.
For a biopic on Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 moon landing, the large brassy sections of the score are, while impressive, the least notable aspects of it. To emphasise the loneliness of space, Hurwitz uses two rare instruments: the harp and the theremin. The theremin, an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer, provides an alien-like eerie sound as seen in the track ‘Crater’. The presence of the harp in the track ‘Home’, which plays as Neil Armstrong looks at the Earth from the Moon, emphasises the loneliness and homesickness of the astronauts. Space is ever expanding, but one can feel Armstrong’s solitude through Hurwitz’s music.
Like Hurwitz, Ludwig Göransson’s first break came as part of a collaboration. The Swede, now 39, met actor and musician Donald Glover (a.k.a. Childish Gambino) on the set of Community. The pair collaborated on all of Glover’s albums, including Awaken, My Love! and the album’s 2017 hit single ‘Redbone’. His main work, however, is film and television. Since 2018, Göransson has scored numerous films including Black Panther, Tenet, The Mandalorian, and most recently, Oppenheimer.
Since Batman Begins, Zimmer has scored all of Christopher Nolan’s films. When Zimmer chose to score Dune over Tenet however, Nolan had to look elsewhere. Succeeding the German maestro can be thought of as an impossible task. Yet this is exactly what Göransson has done as the new sound to Nolan’s films. The synthesiser heavy soundtrack of Tenet matches the movie’s dystopian and other-worldly atmosphere. With that, Nolan had found the perfect successor to Zimmer, and knew he could count on the Swede to score his next and most demanding film yet: Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer is as much musical as it is visual. Göransson’s violin-based score transforms the movie from film to an experience. The audience does not just see inside J. Robert Oppenheimer’s mind, they hear and feel every emotion. The rapid, staccato playing of the particle sequences show the physicist obsessed by his field of knowledge. The track ‘What Have We Done’ is the opposite, as the light but tense shrill of the violin reveal a man devoured by regret, now facing the consequences of creating the world’s most destructive. The score makes the audience feel both tense and feeling a sense of dread, showcasing Göransson’s astounding ability to sway the scene. “There’s a tension to the sound,” Nolan stated in an interview with Universal Pictures, “in a way that I think fits the highly strung intellect and emotion of Robert Oppenheimer.”
The movie’s most popular song, ‘Can You Hear The Music’, has reached unexpected levels of popularity. The song employs a stunning twenty-one tempo changes and has gathered over thirty million plays on Spotify. If there was doubt over Göransson taking on the mantle from Zimmer, the Oppenheimer soundtrack has put them all to bed.
Justin Hurwitz and Ludwig Göransson are only two names among a vast number of young film composers. Both have emerged as the leading stars, with a stunning array of versatility in an era of film scores that requires more than just an orchestra. As the old guard slowly makes way for the new, it is certain that the fate of the soundtrack is in good hands.