The Soloist musically takes you by surprise; scoring such a film is a task in itself. Dealing with Beethoven, The L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra, and a child prodigy who lost his way falling victim to mental illness and a homeless culture in Los Angeles, is a momentous feat for director Joe Wright and composer Dario Marianelli. The keys to scoring The Soloist are the characters, the drama that surrounds their lives, and the marriage of a musical vision to Beethoven that’s challenged when reaching up to these concepts. At times it takes the composer into a world that’s impossible to reach because of Beethoven’s domination. When you listen to the soundtrack it’s not cut from the same cloth as a traditional film score, it has rules, a particular sound, an approach, and the performing musicians create the music in parallel to a classical concert or the feeling of a classical recording. There are groundbreaking highlights like the breathtaking Sister and Mr. Ayers and Mr. Lopez, stunning musical landscapes that evoke complex emotions. There are the twists and turns of Falling Apart and Nathaniel Breaks Down, which underscore the madness of Ayers. Almost the entire soundtrack is shrouded in Beethoven’s melodies, so the rules are set for Dario, when normally there are no rules at all other than making a director’s dream come true.

This film totally detaches itself from period pieces like Immortal Beloved or Copying Beethoven, taking us far away from the past to the present into the mind of Nathaniel Ayers who is played brilliantly by Jamie Foxx. From the touching scenes of Nathaniel as a child playing the cello after he sees a car burning outside his window pass by to his flashback from a recital into that dark basement where his sister (Jennifer) brings him soup and he goes manic trying to feed the soup to his sister while her mouth is closed, its these moments that take us into Ayers past painting a creative, but desolate soul with the color of Beethoven’s musical genius. It’s a journey deep inside the chaos of Los Angeles’ homeless community when we hear the words, “They can hear your thoughts Nathaniel,” and those screeching strings, the gut wrenching music that accompanies his mental illness. It’s Lopez driving his car, searching through the homeless people in the streets of Los Angeles for Ayers. A reflection on the touching and tumultuous relationship of a brother and sister, while finally Jennifer flies to California to see her brother, the Lamp Community he lives in,  and a moment of hope as the camera zooms back over The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra past conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. The spirit of The Soloist is reflected through Nathaniel’s pain and suffering to the happiness and joy of the homeless dancing to the musical accompaniment of Beethoven. It’s these emotional swings that are the drama and present a major challenge for its composer. Overwhelmingly emotionally taxing for the composer, it’s as if Beethoven was actually reincarnated into Marianelli. Though laughable to the composer, it’s director Joe Wright who says, “When you go into Dario’s house and are working on the score and he’s thinking, he’d always tinkle around with Beethoven’s melodies on the piano. It’s what just comes out of his fingers without thinking about it. I think he already is somehow strangely joined to Beethoven, his umbilical cord.” This is the hope and desperation of The Soloist, the challenge of bringing the biography of a tormented genius to life.

Through months of intensive scoring I stayed in touch with Dario and when the process was complete he talked with Music from the Movies about how the meaning of Beethoven graces this drama. Though always taking the viewer back into Symphony 3 (Eroica-Op. 55, Movements 1-3), the musical maze of Symphony 9 (Op. 123, Movement 3), the 1^st Cello Suite (Movement 1), Sonata for Cello and Piano (Op. 102, No. 1, Movement 1), the Triple Concerto (Op. 56, Movement 2), String Quartets 15 (Op. 132, Movements 1 and 3), 12 (Op. 1127, Movement 2), and 14 (Op. 131, Movement 1), will not soon be forgotten.

 These are the echoes of Ludwig from which the haunting visions of a genius are born, the inspirations echoing the melodies of Beethoven through Marianelli’s mind forever, but life goes on. Recently Dario has just finished working with director Alejandro Amenabar on Agora, a large epic placed in the 5^th century A.D., and he just completed working on the remake of an Italian movie called Everyone’s Fine, so as with all great film composers, Dario moves on to conquer new musical ground ascending into the future.

How was the process different working with Joe on The Soloist as compared to Atonement and Pride and Prejudice?

It was a very different kind of movie. Because the main character is a musician, it was necessary to have a lot of the music ready before the shoot, so that all the scenes in which we see music being played could be shot to playback. As Joe was in Los Angeles for quite a while before the beginning of the shoot, I had to spend several periods in L.A. myself, working with him, preparing the music and recording it. Jamie Foxx and some of the other actors had to learn the pieces and be able to mime to playback in a believable way, so we recorded the music for all those scenes not just on tape, for audio playback, but on video as well, with three cameras framing our players which would serve as training videos for the actors.

There were some of the pieces which we already knew would have needed to be pre-recorded with orchestral backing, and we had the luxury of working with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (they are in fact one of the “characters” in the movie). We recorded at Capitol Studios and at Sony, making sure that whatever solo instrument would eventually be featured in a particular scene was recorded with complete separation from the rest of the orchestral sound. That way, when you see Jamie playing in the film, we could bring in and out the rest of the orchestra at our pleasure, which was very handy for a few scenes. The main cello parts were played by Ben Hong, one of the principal cellists of the LAPO, and he also became Jamie’s coach for the cello playing. Ben’s cello playing is the sound you hear throughout the movie, and we spent some time together trying to create a style of playing that would suit our characters various ages in the movie and various moods at the different stages of his schizophrenia.

 Your approach had to be unorthodox; in the credits it mentions over ten Beethoven pieces in the film. Did you have to base your score around the feeling of his music?

I originally thought that we might try to derive the entire score from one single piece by Beethoven, possibly the Eroica, but that proved impractical very quickly. However, my idea of deriving the whole score from Beethoven’s music, one way or another, was accepted, and from that point my job became easier on one hand, and extremely more complicated on the other. The easy part is that Beethoven’s music is very powerful, has a very strong narrative, and there’s a lot of it. The difficult part was that because it’s extremely powerful, it has a very strong narrative and there’s a lot of it. In the weeks during which the script was finalized, I listened and re-acquainted myself with a lot of Beethoven’s music which I either had never heard or had not heard for quite a while, and started making a selection based on what I thought we might need for the various moments in the movie. But a very obvious problem was immediately apparent: this is music with such stringent narrative that it is impossible to find something that works as a score that can follow the movie narrative. One can find the perfect few bars to accompany a small section of a scene, but beyond that, the music goes off on a tangent, following its own internal logic, while the movie needs to follow another one. This is not so much a problem in scenes that simply portray a musician, or an orchestra, playing a specific piece, but whenever we needed something that could function as “score” as well, that’s where the problems would start. I decided however that rather than writing my own original score, I preferred to make myself as invisible as possible, and edit, re-arrange, even re-orchestrate original passages from specific pieces by Beethoven.

 Explain how you approached scoring a film from this point of view?

My involvement in pre-production was very heavy, compared to other films I have worked on, and I was there all the way choosing, arranging, re-orchestrating and recording pieces to be used for playback during the shoot. Then, once the film was shot, a different type of work begun, and again, it was very different from my usual involvement, in the sense that instead of looking at the movie and coming up with original ideas, I was instead dipping into Beethoven’s music again, and finding ways to make it serve the film narrative.

The main two approaches used in the score turned out to be almost diametrically opposite: one was a process of “shrinkage”, by which I had to take a long piece and turn it into a short one, by cutting and re-arranging sections. This is the case for example in the scene in which Nathaniel is given a cello, and plays it for the first time in a long while on the pavement of a busy freeway under-passage. The piece is the slow movement of the String Quartet op. 132, which lasts (depending on the performance) between 15’ and 17’. But we only needed about 2’30” of it, and I had to pluck my courage, chop up, and rearrange some of the best classical music that was ever written. I did it with some discomfort, but with the knowledge that really there was no other way to deal with it. The other approach of re-arranging Beethoven’s music was the opposite one, as I mentioned, and not less disquieting: it involved taking a small fragment of a long piece and expanding it to work as a film cue. I used this kind of procedure in the scene in which Nathaniel recites the Lord’s Prayer, while the camera tracks through the pavements of Skid Row at night. The three and a half minutes of the piece are completely expanded out of a few bars, buried deep in the string quartet Op.127. It was in some way easier to deal with the music this way, as it left me more freedom to control the density and the pace of the musical narrative, and match it to the content of the scene.

 Joe mentioned that Beethoven’s 3^rd Symphony was one of the key elements in your score, even though the first forty five minutes of this film really didn’t have any music at all. What was the first piece you worked on that helped you develop the rest of the score?

I wanted to try to derive the whole score from the Eroica, and so I started working on that piece. The 1^st movement became the audition piece that young Nathaniel plays in one of the flashbacks, and the second one generated much of the more disturbed and passionate music. I had done some thinking about the last movement as well, and in fact I had produced a very early mock-up of how it could have been used in the “City Symphony”, the piece played when Nathaniel was under the freeway. I gave the demo to Joe and he played it at one of the earliest production meetings to give everybody an idea of how we were planning to use the music in the movie in the event, the 4^th movement of the Eroica didn’t have the flexibility which I was looking for, so we never used it. 

 The part in the film when Ayers has his violin with two strings and he’s in Pershing Square, at the edge of the park where the statue of Beethoven is, what movement from the Eroica was used there?
It is an excerpt from a moment of the 2^nd movement of the Eroica. It is played quite dreamily, with odd repetitions, almost as if Nathaniel was trying to remember how it goes and can’t quite get it right. We hear the same passage later on in one of the flashbacks, played by the Julliard orchestra, while young Nathaniel breaks down.

 One of the first major cues was when Lopez gives Nathaniel the cello. There’s an orchestral accompaniment in background, pigeons fly upwards, and then we see them as they fly over the freeway, this was one of Joe’s favorites.

 This is also one of my favorite cues. I mentioned it before, as an example of “shrinkage”. The original piece, the 3^rd movement of the 15^th String Quartet, Op. 132, has a header at the top of the page, it says “Song of thanks, offered to the God by one restored to health”. It was the perfect fit for this scene, both in Beethoven’s intention and in the music itself, which alternates more meditative passages to other more extrovert and almost dance-like ones. We are not clear as to where the orchestra comes from, in the movie: perhaps it is all in Nathaniel’s head, or perhaps it is somewhere else entirely, but there is a beautiful parallel in this moment of health reacquired temporarily. It’s hard not to be moved by the images of a schizophrenic Los Angeles (a city where breathtaking buildings like Disney Hall sit next door to the thousands of homeless people in Skid Row) momentarily calmed down, at peace with itself, at least for the duration of the piece. It is like this broken, dispossessed, profoundly disturbed homeless man can magically cure the ills of the city, and himself, with music.

 What were we hearing when Nathaniel is at Julliard playing in the orchestra?

 Eroica, 3^rd movement (Nathaniel is still ok) and then the 2^nd movement, the first intimation of the beginning of his quick descent into schizophrenia. The Funeral March becomes Nathaniel’s own, his demise from the normal world, the beginning of his exile. 

Another excellent part is when the orchestra joins in after young Nathaniel sees a car burning outside his window pass by, he plays his cello as we see the glimmer of a fire burning to keep him warm in the background.

 The cue starts as the audition piece that Nathaniel plays to get admitted to music school. It’s an arrangement of the 1^st movement of the Eroica for solo Cello, not the actual part written by Beethoven for the cellos in the symphony, but more like the tune someone could hum if they tried to hum the Eroica. In fact we hear Nathaniel humming that very piece on his way to the audition. The cello piece continues and turns into his practice piece, as he gets older, and better at playing, in the basement of his house. The orchestra joins in for the last few moments of madness, as Nathaniel sees the burning car go by and the riots outside his bedroom window.

There’s a lot of music that underscores different scenes involving Nathaniel’s mental illness. Like when he’s hearing voices; we see a television with Nathaniel as a child cuddled up tight, lying on the floor suffering. Also when his sister Jennifer brings him some soup, he goes manic and tries feeding the soup to his sister while her mouth is closed, and finally when he revolts during the recital and runs away. Were these parts derived from Beethoven?

All these are derived mainly from the Funeral March in the Eroica, and also from the opening of the string quartet Op. 131. At one vertiginous (for me) moment, the Eroica and String Quartet actually overlap, and I know Beethoven will have something to say to me (not necessarily flattering) when eventually I get to meet him. The approach was always the same, really: trying to create something that could function as score and support the action, but which at the same time could work as part of Nathaniel’s own internal work, his demon, his obsession, which although at times can be benign, it can turn nasty at the drop of a hat. By sticking to Beethoven’s music, and in particular to the Eroica, the aspiration was that the music and Beethoven get elevated to the status of “character” in the movie.

 When Lopez settles down with Nathaniel for a nights sleep in the streets; we see an American flag, shots of homeless people sleeping on blankets and cots, what was this based on?

This is the “Lord’s Prayer.” Every time I listen to the String Quartet Op. 127, I get to those 4 bars, and I get a shiver down my back. I was hoping to maintain, and possibly amplify that feeling in this scene, one of the most memorable in the whole movie, for me.

How did you approach the synesthesia sequences, where you could actually see colors coming from the music?

 We always knew this would be the opening of the Eroica.

It wasn’t a particularly agonizing decision; this is the very piece that Nathaniel really got to hear when he was invited by the LA Philharmonic to one of their rehearsals a few years ago, and there was no reason to change the piece for the movie, it is perfect.

Jennifer finally comes to L.A. to see Nathaniel, when she arrives at the Lamp Community with Lopez to see her brother, what Beethoven piece is this based on?

 It is the opening of the slow movement of the Triple Concerto with almost no tampering (almost) on my side.

One of the greatest feelings in this film is the final shot of Nathaniel, Jennifer, and Lopez together at the L.A. Philharmonic concert. The camera zooms back as we see Nathaniel in the center, the camera moves past conductor Essa Pekka Salonen into the orchestra. Also the final sequence when the homeless are dancing to Beethoven at Lamp Community.

Home run: it’s the slow movement of the 9^th Symphony—you know, the one where eventually Beethoven brings in the choir to sing about universal brotherhood… It would expand the conversation on to other horizons, here, and we shouldn’t go there, but I am sure it won’t escape some viewers, and some listeners, that Beethoven’s own political and social ideas and aspirations about individual freedom, equality and universal brotherhood are not totally irrelevant to the subject of the movie. If the choice of words reminds you of the French Revolution, it might be worth remembering that Beethoven originally dedicated the Eroica to the young Napoleon, when he was one of the heroes of the Revolution (but scrapped the dedication when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor).But also, less politically and perhaps more humanely, it is impossible not to see what a heroic struggle Nathaniel has fought throughout his life against the demons that inhabit his own mind. I have wondered if part of Nathaniel’s respect and love for Beethoven and for the Eroica has something to do with Nathaniel’s empathy for the struggle always implicit in that music.

 Joe thought this might be the most difficult scoring job you’ve ever encountered. Was this your greatest challenge as a composer because of the unorthodox process?

 Not really. I think the hardest part was to get over my own obsession for Beethoven’s music, and get to the point where I felt free enough to start playing with it in a creative way, rather than treat it with reverential fear. I hope that what I have done to the music, which for me and many others, represents an unassailable peak in Western music, won’t offend too many people, and will instead bring closer some viewers who might be less familiar with the Beethoven’s genius.