NEW YORK, NY.- Jonny Greenwood had long since achieved global fame, as the lead guitarist of Radiohead, when he ventured into scoring films nearly 20 years ago. To some, this seemed at first like a side hustle, something to keep Greenwood occupied between albums and tours.
But over the past decade in particular, its become clear that is not the case. With 11 scores to his name, including two for Jane Campions The Power of the Dog and Pablo Larraíns Spencer that may figure in this years Academy Awards race, what was once a subsidiary career now vies for preeminence with Greenwoods day job.
As he has moved further into film, he has also achieved some prominence as an orchestral composer, with his concert music often fueling his soundtracks. In a recent interview with Alex Ross of The New Yorker, Greenwood described some of his durable strategies, including the use of octatonic scales, which he said can lend a nice, tense sourness in the middle of all of the sweetness of a scene.
But if some of his inspirations have remained constant with modernist composers like Olivier Messiaen and Krzysztof Penderecki remaining steady fascinations he has also evolved over time. Here are some highlights from his past two decades of writing for orchestras and films.
Bodysong (2003)
Greenwoods first soundtrack effort is modest in its ambitions but confident in its execution. It doesnt offer full-throated orchestral material or directly invoke the likes of Messiaen or Penderecki. Instead, it is more closely associated with the avant-electronica of Kid A and Amnesiac, Radiohead albums from just before. Yet Bodysong makes for an effective, ear-catching album. And some tracks are early templates when it comes to Greenwoods skill at merging disparate styles, as when the opening jazz combo sound of Milky Drops from Heaven is overtaken by whirling tendrils of electronic music.
Popcorn Superhet Receiver (2005)
This work heralded Greenwoods leap into classical music complete with tightly coiled string clusters inspired by Penderecki. But Greenwoods own melodic style, simultaneously swooning and full of unease, is here, too. Its the piece that inspired film director Paul Thomas Anderson to first contact Greenwood, and hearing Popcorn in full, you understand Andersons early confidence in this composers abilities.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
This was the project that Anderson wanted Greenwood for. It uses parts of Popcorn Superhet Receiver, making it ineligible for an Oscar, but adds some new music that helps render the films pressure-cooker atmosphere as something seductive. Like Prospectors Arrive, with piano, strings and the ondes Martenot in a gorgeous blend of instrumental colors. The Copenhagen Philharmonic later recorded a string orchestra suite culled from the soundtrack.
48 Responses to Polymorphia (2011)
The original incarnations of Overtones and Baton Sparks, from Andersons 2012 film The Master, can be heard in this orchestral work. That self-borrowing resulted in another round of Oscar ineligibility, despite the soundtracks excellent original tracks, like the harp-driven Alethia. And once again, the original orchestral piece is impressive on its own. Taking as its start the lush final chord of Pendereckis Polymorphia, Greenwood pushes into more firmly romantic territory than in There Will Be Blood. (Dont worry, though: Theres still plenty of string noise.)
Inherent Vice (2014)
Andersons adaptation of Thomas Pynchons noirish novel offered an opportunity for Greenwood to broaden his film score palette. The song Spooks has its roots in an as-yet-unreleased Radiohead track, but the most winning feature for guitar here is Amethyst a piece that combines folky strumming and droning background chords to ultimately joyous effect. It goes with a part of the ending thats legitimately happy not a regular feature of either Andersons or Pynchons work.
Water (2014)
This orchestral work fits well alongside the score for Inherent Vice. You can hear in it some scalar patterns familiar from tracks like The Golden Fang. Yet this 14-minute piece (for an unusually outfitted string orchestra, including flutes, ondes Martenot and a tamboura) is its own thing, perhaps because of inspiration from various Indian classical music traditions that Greenwood was immersed in around this time. After what amounts to a slow alap development section familiar from some raga styles, we get a climactic whirlwind tour through Greenwoods overarching melodic design.
Phantom Thread (2017)
In an interview with former New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini, Greenwood described drawing inspiration from a wide variety of sources including Benjamin Britten and Bill Evans for the score of this Anderson film, set in the 1950s. Although the music lacks some of the obvious avant-garde touches of Greenwoods past work, its still suffused with some of his signatures. A cascading piano riff from The House of Woodcock, for example, is a bit familiar when compared with the piano in the second half of Prospectors Arrive from There Will Be Blood. But the more sweetly arranged version here gives it an entirely new character.
You Were Never Really Here (2017)
If the score for Phantom Thread was uncharacteristically gallant, here is a return to electronically driven, sometimes discordant music, Greenwoods second time working with director Lynne Ramsay. Just as Joaquin Phoenixs character stumbles through the plot without a full understanding of what hes stepping into, so, too, does Greenwoods score keep the listener off balance thanks to rhythmic feints in quasi-dance tracks like Nausea. But its not all mysterious: Tree Strings and Tree Synthesizers help give the final act its surprising effect of release from trauma.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
A setting in the old-time American West? Menacing, droning strings? Is this score for Campions first film in 12 years some kind of retread of Greenwoods neo-Western work on There Will Be Blood? Not at all. Touches here are particular to the waking-dream surrealism of Campions project. Detuned Mechanical Piano is a bit too refined (à la miniatures by Gyorgy Ligeti) to really be the work of a busted player piano. And the strummed locomotion of 25 Years is a reminder of Greenwoods guitar chops, which were heard on his score for Norwegian Wood (2010).
Spencer (2021)
Larraíns film, starring Kristen Stewart, isnt a conventional Princess Diana biopic. As Diana hallucinates her way through various royal obligations, Greenwoods score delights in the way that the film hews closely to her perspective. A track like The Pearls starts off as a plausible imitation of decorum, with a string quartet shown on screen in the entryway to a dining room. But as Diana loses her cool, so, too, does the musical material stretch beyond propriety. (Sure enough, the on-screen quartet responds to the interminable dinner with some thundering accents.) The pairing of improv jazz textures with the escape from courtly life is particularly well done on cuts like Arrival.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.