The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly) - The Hollywood Reporter Awards Special
Somber Tones for Funeral Marches
Emmy winner Nicholas Britell created dirges for the vastly different dramas Succession and Andor, both of which are nominated this year for music composition
In both series for which Nicholas Britell is nominated for outstanding music composition for a series Emmy, he scores a death. But those deaths could not be thematically more different. For Andor’s “Rix Road,” Britell composed a rousing funeral march played upon the passing of Maarva Andor (Fiona Shaw), music that is the galvanizing tune of a nascent rebellion. For “Connor’s Wedding” in Succession, he crafted the sounds of the confused emotions surrounding Logan Roy’s demise.
“Maarva’s funeral represents almost a culmination — the seeds of rebellion are being birthed,” he says. “And Logan’s death and funeral in some sense really feels more like a huge ending.”
Britell, already an Emmy winner in 2019 for Succession’s main title theme, walked THR through his process.
What goes through your brain when you’re approached to do something in the Star Wars universe?
It really started with [creator] Tony Gilroy, actually. When I first spoke with Tony about this project, he said right from the beginning that they really wanted to do something that was very distinct and unique for this project.
A lot of what Andor is about, really, is Cassian trying to figure out his own history, who he is, his place in things, and how then that sort of morphs and evolves into a lot of other things certainly coming together. So for me, it was really about both the collaboration with Tony, the excitement of that, and also I think the idea that I really could do something that felt like its own sound from the start.
Where did you start with that sound and the sounds that represent Cassian and his journey?
We started at the literal end of season one. For practical purposes, there was a lot of on-camera music in season one. The funeral procession leading to Maarva’s speech was the actual first thing that I talked about with Tony. It’s a huge piece of choreography. We were very convinced that we wanted to do it live on set, which is what we did. That’s all musicians playing live. And we had to figure all that out obviously before they shot any of the scenes, because what is the sound of this?
A lot of it was thinking about what’s the sound of Ferrix as a planet, as a place. We had this idea that they’re a sort of metallurgical, masonry, construction-building kind of culture, but I just kind of imagined this sound that had multiple movements.
Part of my thesis was maybe there’s a way to weave elements of this final piece into the actual score that I’m going to then start in episode one somehow. So actually some of the motifs in that funeral became motifs that I related to Cassian and specifically to Maarva.
Were you on set for the procession shoot with the musicians playing the music?
We did this in 2020, and it was really in the height of COVID, so I wasn’t able to go. I was on Zoom, and we have this program called Audiomovers, which enables you to basically get real-time hi-fi sound. So as much as possible, I was present for a lot of things and I would get dailies and I would watch things and we would see how it felt. And actually an amazing orchestrator and music director whom I worked with, Matt Dunkley, he was on set for this, and we felt it was important for him to be there. And because he’s also a trumpet player, he was actually cast, so he’s in the scene, too, and he was the doctor who is sort of in town.
What is it like then coming on to season four of Succession when you’ve already sort of established this sonic landscape of the show, but especially for the final season where there are all of these really big moments?
Every season, there’s a few things that I kind of know going into the season and then there’s things that I sort of don’t want to know. So [series creator] Jesse Armstrong and I always talk about a few things at the very beginning, and then as I get episodes, I like being surprised so that I can hopefully be the audience in a sense.
For Logan’s death specifically, what did you start thinking about when you knew that was going to happen?
An elegy I wrote, which is in the end credits of episode three, was a piece that I sort of imagined for this idea. What is the sound of an elegy for this very, very complicated and problematic person and the darkness of that? But also the perspective of the family, too. It’s not just this is his life, it’s saying, “How do people feel in this world about him?” And the interesting thing I discovered that was when I actually was working on the episode itself, that whole sequence with the phone call [in which the children learn about Logan’s death], it was very difficult to find the sound because none of the typical ways of music that function in Succession would work for that sequence because what I realized was it had to be a sound that was really inside of the show. It had to be a sound that was inside the POV of the kids in a way. And that whole sequence, I remember calling Jesse and I said, “Look, the music here is going to be very different from what we’ve done in any other part of the show.”
The sound is actually this very raw kind of scratchy string sound with a lot of weird dissonances, and there’s a low organ tone and electronics and it’s very washed-out and messed up. And, interestingly, it’s actually the Succession main chords that you’re hearing there, but it just sounds very weird.
When you got that final moment of Kendall walking toward the water, what went through your mind of how to score this?
I wrote a piece of music after talking to Jesse in the beginning of season four, before I had obviously seen the ending. And I played it for Jesse early on in our collaboration for season four. I had been thinking that this could be the ending of the show. There’s something about it that just felt like the ending to me. I don’t know why.
Without saying anything, [Jesse] just goes, “I think that’s the ending of the show.” The idea of that piece was this thing that I just imagined for what the end of the show would be. And I think for me, it felt like there was a sense of ending, but I wanted there to be a kernel of a feeling that there might be a future.