Greenwood’s Blend Sends Score Soaring
Composer’s unexpected union of baroque and free jazz reinvented monarchal music
Composer Jonny Greenwood invented a fresh musical approach for Princess Diana in Larraín’s “Spencer.”
Greenwood responded to Larraín with “disparate ideas, some sillier than others.” What they agreed upon — classical chamber ensemble meets free jazz — is surprising.
“The idea,” Greenwood explains, “was to take a traditional baroque orchestra and mutate it by substituting players with free-jazz performers. Films about royalty have a sound, usually a pastiche of classical composers. So, it was about the colorful chaos of Diana against the staid royal family.”
Larraín and Greenwood never met, given pandemic circumstances, but enjoyed a lively exchange: “He sends long voice letters, which is a nice, personable way to communicate,” says Greenwood.
Larraín thought Greenwood’s concept “quite shocking, a very bold idea. I didn’t see how he was able to mix those genres. They’re from different galaxies. He started sending me beautiful Baroque-style music, which created a sense of strangeness and unsettledness.
“Then the jazz came in — played by musicians with controlled improvisation. When there are other characters, Baroque predominates. When it's just Diana — or her with others — we play jazz to suit her mental stress.”
Greenwood assembled a string quartet, jazz band, and the London Contemporary Orchestra’s strings and harpsichord.
Pablo Larraín on the music of Jonny Greenwood
He asked the jazz musicians to improvise the classical material, noting, “It’s fun to push into true chaos while the string players are firmly in 1750.”
One of Greenwood’s favorite moments was writing “a piece of formal dinner music that had to unravel ... a really delicious brief to be given, just a few images and the script.” His string quartet dissolves into dissonance, accompanying the horrifying scene of distraught Diana at the royal family’s dinner.
“For a character that needed freedom, [the element of jazz] worked really well,” Larraín says. ✤
by: Jon Burlingame
