Composer makes music of ‘Succession’ a star
Soundtrack becomes a virtual narrator in HBO family drama
The piano is remarkable for its ability to act as a chameleon, composer Nicholas Britell recently mused, noting that it can produce light, poetic sound as easily as it can transform into a more intense, powerful instrument. Tenderness can emanate one moment, passionate anger in the next. Such melodies are present throughout “Succession,” the HBO drama that last year marked Britell’s first foray into television score and recently earned the two-time Oscar nominee his first Emmy nod.
Before recording the nominated main title theme, which returned Sunday night to households that hold fast to appointment television, Britell de-tuned the piano to “make it a little stranger.”
“You can draw any symbolism from that,” he joked, days before the Season 2 premiere. “But I actually prefer listening to music that isn’t perfectly in tune. When things are perfect, they lose a little bit of their humanness. What I love most about hearing musicians play music is that they’re real people with individual sounds and a set of emotions. When things are too perfect, you lose that.”
Britell layered the title theme’s piano melody over a hip-hop beat, abandoning the tinkering tune for roaring strings about 15 seconds into the 90-second track. The melody returns close to the end. The results are dissonant but radiate gravitas – fitting for a sometimes absurdist show centering on the dysfunctional family of an aging media mogul. The scheming Roys consistently snipe at one another, as do the piano keys, but all of that gives way to loud, sweeping drama from time to time.
The first season of “Succession,” for instance, concluded on a darker note – with the onetime heir apparent, Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong), who struggles with addiction, winding up in a Chappaquiddick-like incident on his sister’s wedding night. Kendall had planned to rebel against their manipulative father, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), to gain control of the company, but must now return to the family’s side with his tail between his legs after Logan gets his people to cover up the fatal accident.
Britell works to ensure his music feels “like it’s somehow woven into the fabric” of every project, he said. The second season of “Succession,” which picks up a couple days after Kendall’s accident, features foreboding strings in the very first scene.
“I was actually talking to some of my colleagues, ‘What if I imagined the score for Season 2 as almost like a second movement of a symphony?’ We’re going somewhere else, but it’s completely connected at the same time,” Britell said. “I’m still exploring a lot of the same instrumental and tonal universe, but the music itself, I hope, feels like a next step in the story.”
The “Succession” score almost serves as a secondary character, adding weight to the narrative but bending to the Roys’ every whim. Logan, a snarky and intimidating force, felt as though he would prefer “this very dark, sort of quirky classical music,” Britell said, whereas it is established at various points that Kendall listens to hip-hop. In collaboration with creator Jesse Armstrong and executive producer Adam McKay, the composer also aimed to juxtapose the “seriousness” of wealth and power being so concentrated with the “crazy moments and absurdities of the story.”
Among the first pieces Britell played for Armstrong was an experimental “combination of weird bell sounds and out-of-tune pianos and these huge hiphop beats that I was making.”