"It's an intimate relationship which makes the music a necessity, and not only an embellishment - a good balance between fiction and function."ĭesplat says the link between color and sound vibration has always been strong for him. "I always seek a vibration between the music and the image," says Desplat. But in 'Part 1,' I ended up barely using it - it is much more present in the last episode."Ī film scorer's most pressing concern is creating a successful marriage of sight and sound. When a theme is beautiful, it's a pleasure to rearrange it or to interweave it with your own music. "I started 'Deathly Hallows Part 1' from a fresh palette," says Desplat, "but keeping in mind John Williams's theme - 'Hedwig's Theme' - which has become the Harry Potter theme. Desplat's two most recent predecessors in the series are Patrick Doyle and Nicholas Hooper, but it was John Williams, who penned the scores for the first three titles, whose music has become an iconic part of Potter pandemonium. "Music for films allow a great deal of diversity," he explains, "and the more you widen your skills, the better you become."ĭespite his own triumphs, Desplat entered the Harry Potter realm six movies into the series, after major movie composers had been attached to previous installments. UPIC translates images and graphs into sound.ĭesplat says that such far-flung musical interests have shaped his work for the big screen. "Years later, while I was studying with Claude Ballif at the Paris Conservatoire, I took a summer initiation into Xenakis' sound machine, the UPIC."Ī bit of background here: Xenakis, an architect and engineer as well as composer, built a computer system called UPIC - the Unité Polyagogique Informatique du CEMAMu CEMAMu is in turn an acronym for Paris' Centre d'Etudes de Mathématique et Automatique Musicales, where he built the tool. "Being Greek," Desplat explains, "my mother had recordings of Xenakis' Persepolis - and at the time, his music seemed to be coming from another planet." But Xenakis took a strange hold on the young Desplat. "My training in music has been very eclectic," Desplat says, "as first a flute player from classical chamber music to jazz, Greek, Brazilian and African music to contemporary concert music." But amongst his influences, perhaps the most surprising is one of the high priests of European modernism, composer Iannis Xenakis. Fox, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Queen, as well as popcorn-munchers like The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Other recent Desplat scores include Fantastic Mr. These include Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Tom Hooper's The King's Speech, which won a BAFTA for Best Film Music. Not only has Desplat, 49, penned the scores to the last two Harry Potter films, he's also scored other recent movies in which music plays a central role. In its opening weekend, the movie brought in staggering numbers: $168.6 million in North America and $307 million internationally, making for the highest-grossing opening of all time. For millions of Muggles worldwide, Desplat's music for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II is sure to become an integral part of their Pottermania. If you're a filmmaker looking for a smart score, commissioning music from French composer Alexandre Desplat is at the top of your to-do list.
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