One of Britain’s most acclaimed composers has criticised modern movies for drowning out action with ‘wall-to-wall’ music.
Debbie Wiseman, who composed the theme for the BBC’s Wolf Hall, said some film scores had the same emotional impact as elevator music because they were simply used too much.
Ms Wiseman, 61, cited Oppenheimer, which earlier this year won the Oscar for Best Score, the 2021 sci-fi film Dune: Part One and its 2024 sequel Dune: Part Two and Japanese film Godzilla Minus One as movies whose scores were relentless.
She said: ‘There is a trend now, particularly in movies, when the music is wall-to-wall. It starts with frame one and ends with the final frame. To me, it’s counterproductive because it becomes like wallpaper.
‘You don’t notice the music. It doesn’t have as powerful an effect as it should have because it’s there all the time.
‘It’s like going into a lift – there is music going on and you don’t notice it. You need to give space for the dialogue to breathe.’
ebbie Wiseman conducts the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at Classic FM Live at London’s Royal Albert Hall
Ms Wiseman, 61, cited Oppenheimer, which earlier this year won the Oscar for Best Score
She also noted Japanese film Godzilla Minus One as a movie with relentless music backing
Ms Wiseman said she was not criticising individual scores, which were often excellent, but how they were used.
The composer, who worked on both Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations and King Charles’s Coronation, contrasted that with her approach to Wolf Hall.
One of the key factors in the success of the series, which stars Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell, Damian Lewis as Henry VIII and Kate Phillips as Jane Seymour, is the music. The soundtrack for the first series topped the classical music charts in 2015, and the follow-up for the new series will be released on December 13.
Ms Wiseman praised the drama’s director, Peter Kosminsky, for knowing when not to use her music, and described how they
work together.
She said: ‘I wait until he has a rough assembly of the episode and then he and I and the editor sit around the piano and look at the scene, and we decide where the music goes.
‘Not only do we decide where it goes, we decide every single bit of feeling, emotion and drama that it should have. A lot of time I am getting out of the way so I don’t overpower the dialogue.’
l Wolf Hall: The Mirror And The Light continues on BBC1 tonight at 9pm.
