‘We never wanted anything to be fully happy or fully sad,’ composer Justin Hurwitz tells EW.
Thirteen years ago, Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz became friends during their freshman orientation at Harvard.
And both are only in their early 30s.
Credit: Dale Robinette
(Multiple tunes from the same movie can be nominated in the Best Song Oscar category.)
And thats sort of a dirty word that Damien uses.
And what he means really is that its too emotionally straightforward.
The scene that this piece of music plays over takes place in a restaurant.
I was actually on set, playing piano while that scene was shot, Hurwitz says.
I was writing that cue as we were shooting it.
When Chazelle called cut, Hurwitz fine-tuned and reshaped the theme.
Later, the music grows into the largest crescendo of music in the entire movie.
It was a 95-piece orchestra, Hurwitz says.
And the orchestration is just feathered in.
All the brass, all the wind instruments, all the strings.
The timpani is exploding.
Its a very lush romantic cue.
I was playing with that melody and I orchestrated it with quite a bit of counterpoint.
He adds, All the woodwinds are talking to each other.
Theyre all in dialogue, which introduces a certain kind of dissonance which helps the music feel emotionally complex.
Every time were in a major key theres a suspension that helps cut it.
And likewise, when were in a minor key, there are colors which help it feel more buoyant.
I really like the way this cue functions in the scene emotionally.
In a movie wall-to-wall with music, this track is the one that Hurwitz is proudest of.
But this cue in particular gets across my voice as an orchestrator.
It has a lot of color and a lot of texture.
I think its hopefully a sound that belongs to this movie.
