BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE FOR LEVEL AND GAIN
The Lost Prince is a film for anyone who has ever been a parent or a child.
The French coming-of-age fantasy directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) follows a single father who fashions himself as the prince of his young daughter’s life. But, as with every childhood, it’s a dream that spirals toward the waking hours of adulthood. This is the struggle of Djibi (played by Omar Sy) as he ventures into his growing daughter’s dreams and tries desperately to remain her beloved hero.
It’s a script that moved composer Howard Shore to craft a glistening score for the film – in part, because it’s a narrative he already knows intimately. When asked why the story resonated with him, Howard responds: “I too was a single father bringing up a daughter, very close to the age of the daughter in the film.”
“I had a strong connection to the story because Omar Sy is bringing up his daughter in the film, and I had experienced a lot of the same things that he was experiencing.”
It was this lived experience of fatherhood that influenced the creation of Howard’s deeply personal score. But while it may have echoed his own story, the composer also found joy in the friendships that were sparked through the making of the film.
“Michel is a wonderful director to work with – it was such a great collaboration,” Howard reflects.
“We did the score in a very specific way that brought out a lot of the comedy and humour, and we also brought out a lot of emotion in the story. So I think having a strong connection with the story made my work come more from the heart.”
On a purely musical level, Howard’s score to The Lost Prince is reminiscent of the musical language with which he has constructed his former fantasy worlds. From 2000-2004, he scored Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And across the soundtrack of The Lost Prince, we can hear a familiar playfulness that one might have heard in the grassy hills of Hobbiton; while the new film’s track Le Monde des Histoires reveals a sense of accomplishment and determination one might recall from Pippin and Gandalf’s plight in the lighting of the beacons.
Hidden among The Lost Prince’s track La Femme a la Porte can even be heard some magical elements suggestive of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers, but here with a more minor feel – juxtaposing tension with the lightness of nostalgia and childhood.
“If you listen carefully to films as you’re making them, they tell you how to use music”
– Howard Shore
Music plays such a substantial role in the generation of any film’s atmosphere. For Howard, this atmosphere doesn’t emerge only from his mind, or from conversations with the director about how the film should feel. (Though, these certainly have their own roles to play.) Instead, Howard mainly attributes the creation of this environment to the very film itself, which takes on a life of its own before the composer’s themes start to emerge organically.
“It’s more come out of what’s on screen. We listen to the movie very carefully,” Howard points out.
“If you listen carefully to films as you’re making them, they tell you how to use music in the film. You create a certain relationship with the visual and the music composition.”
It’d be easy for a soundtrack to dominate the subjects that do appear on the screen – and Howard’s compositions provide such visual listening experiences. Somewhat unpredictably, he highlights an entirely different player when answering for the fine balance of score to vision.
“I think that has to do with the actors. Their movements, the way they express themselves in the scene, the editing – that all has an influence on the rhythms and how music is used in the film.”
Sy, in particular, Howard describes as “a great comic actor […] so it was easy to work with him; wonderful to work with him”.
This value for the presence of actors may paint a broader picture of Howard’s musical interests outside the world of cinema. Specifically, the composer has a taste for opera; his own opera The Fly (2008) has been performed at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Los Angeles Opera, and Germany’s Theatre Trier.
In the stage-based artform of opera, audiences witness storytelling through characters who sing and don extravagant costumes, set against elaborate backdrops. It affords a visual medium that can fuel the narrative as much as the music itself.
“I go to the opera regularly. I have a real fondness for the repertoire of opera, and I love contemporary opera as well.
“I relate to the opera in a way that I relate to cinema. Music for cinema developed out of the world of opera.”
One of the musical devices typically used in opera is the leitmotif – a word used to describe the theme a composer attaches to a character, location, mood, or situation. On hearing it, this theme becomes a way for the audience to identify what’s going on – and helps guide how they should feel about it.
If you’ve seen films scored by Howard, it’s likely you’d have picked up on his use of leitmotifs, too. And it may be one of the reasons his film music is so often performed live in concert halls across the world; his scores are inclusive of many individual stand-out melodies.
We can also hear this compositional device occurring in other beloved film scores. For instance, John Williams’ Star Wars boasts individual themes from the intimidating character of Darth Vadar (the Imperial March) through to the more romantic plot lines (such as the wistful Princess Leia’s Theme). Similarly, Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi wrote a childlike three-note motif to celebrate the three syllables of ‘Totoro’ – the fluffy main character in My Neighbour Totoro. The technique is also widely used in games soundtracks, particularly to indicate the presence of main characters or locations.
Howard openly admits his love of this compositional device, which he also weaves throughout the narrative of his French film score.
“I am using themes and leitmotifs in The Lost Prince – I like the technique of it, and I like the storytelling aspect of the leitmotifs,” he says.
“You can develop ideas from the beginning of the story, through the middle and into the end.”
In this instance, Howard uses a particular musical theme early on in the film, only to return to it at the end of by reimagining the melody into a full song with lyrics. (Fittingly, it’s called Tell me a Story, and Natalie Prass sings lyrics written by Elizabeth Cotnoir.)
“The song evolves through the course of the film, and then it’s sung at the end.”
One can speculate that it was a concoction of emotional, narrative, and musical themes that drew Howard to select this leitmotif for the film’s final song: “It’s one of the themes that were used with the scenes with the father and his daughter.”
Leitmotifs aside, an iconic aspect of Howard’s compositional style is his musical palette – that is, the language and instrumentation with which he executes his scores.
The composer has a lengthy history with the fantasy genre. This may indicate Howard’s ability to generate a believable and desirable world that exists outside our own (and, quite literally, generate it from thin air). But what we know for sure is that his fantasy worlds mark a return to his respect for the inner workings of the film.
“With film, what I’m trying to do is balance the music with the other aspects of film making – with the cinematography, the production design, the editing, the direction, the acting. All of these things are kind of foremost in my mind.
“It’s like how I’m using music in a film to create – whether it’s Paris of the ‘30s, or a fantasy world created by a great French director.”
The Lost Prince exists within a French imagination. Because of this sense of culture, Howard likens the score most closely to his work on Martin Scorsese’s 2011 family film Hugo.
“Like Hugo, The Lost Prince is set in Paris. In Hugo, it was set in the early 1930s as the silent era was moving into sound – ‘talkies’,” he relates.
“And this film [The Lost Prince] is current in Paris, but it also has a fantasy world that you go to called Storyland. That’s very vibrant and colourful, and has a lot of very interesting characters that are met along the way.
“So I guess that Storyland also relates a little bit to The Lord of the Rings, in that it’s a fantasy-created world.”
To unite worldly and otherworldly cultures, Howard uses specific instruments with identifiable pairings.
“I think there’s a connection there with Hugo in the use of the small group inside the orchestra – so you have a musette and the acoustic guitar, and the woodwinds like the flute and clarinet, acoustic bass, little percussion sounds.”
The ideas fuelling the sounds were in part born from the collaboration between Howard and Michel. He didn’t present the score to Michel as an independently produced package; rather, it was the result of a collaboration that came from the pair’s research and listening adventures.
“We worked together quite well and closely on it,” Howard says of their creative partnership.
“He’s very detailed, and we spent time together – we spent time in Paris together, we spent time in New York. He’s a very good collaborator, Michel.”
Creative workflow will range from artist to artist, but Howard values the interaction with film-makers who can offer deep insight into the story he’s tasked with setting to sound.
“We have a common goal, we’re understanding each other, and that’s a great process in film-making.
“Film-making is a collaborative art. You want all of the gears to be working together really smoothly. So I’m always looking for the relationship to be very positive.”
Howard spent 5-6 months composing The Lost Prince. He and Michel had indulged in listening sessions of music from the 1950s, soundtracks from post-war European films, and even Mexican film scores.
Interestingly, in a statement, Michel described his love of soundtracks that can unravel throughout the course of a film – rather than relying on more textural sound design elements, such as rhythm and structure. It’s a spot-on assessment of modern scoring trends. But how does Howard feel about it all, when considering his own work for film is typically symphonic or melody-driven?
“Film music changes pretty regularly. Every six months, there are new things to listen to. There are a lot of great composers all over the world.
“I like to try to create a timeless quality to the film music. So it could have longevity in the film, and a life away from the film as well. I hope the music to The Lost Prince will find its way in the world.”
Another of Howard’s timeless film scores is that which accompanies David Cronenberg’s Crash, which at its 25th anniversary has been remastered in 4K. Prior to our chat, Howard had just returned from an International Film Festival Rotterdam screening of Crash, with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra performing his score live to the film.
(This was the premiere of the Crash rerelease; just days later, Paris hosted the premiere of The Lost Prince.)
The word “timeless” is often overused to describe beautiful works, but there’s no single recipe for a timeless score – whether drawing from classical influences or popular trends. As Crash edges towards three decades old, it’s all the more impressive that Howard’s compositional practice has hit the mark from then to now. It proves his ability to produce truly timeless music across era and genre.
If we’re forced to compare, though, the scores to Crash and The Lost Prince couldn’t be further apart.
“I’m interested in composition – in harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration – and a score like Crash was created using pure counterpoint.”
It stemmed from a single compositional idea for three harps, which was orchestrated with six electric guitars, three woodwinds, two percussionists on metal instruments, and 40 strings in some scenes.
“It’s so carefully structured for David’s film. It really doesn’t relate to other film music. It’s a unique piece on its own.”
In fact, it’s so unique, Howard didn’t use his score as a reference point for any other works he wrote for David – of which there are close to 20 collaborations in total.
“The orchestration [of Crash] is really designed so specifically for that story, and that kind of evolved over time. I didn’t have the complete orchestration until I worked my way through it. It took months and months of hard work to create the piece.”
When considering the back catalogue of Howard’s compositional output – and the vast variety of influence, theme, and instrumentation – one must question how he can still have so much more to say through his work. Nevertheless, there certainly doesn’t seem to be any struggle in the search for new ideas – and the secret is his love of the craft itself.
“I think it has to do with the interest in composition. If you look at music as a purely compositional world, it’s so interesting – and I write every day. I write my scores in pencil; I like the graphite-on-the-paper feel to them. I like the visualisation of the score, and building the scores bar by bar.”
Of course, this shouldn’t be mistaken for a strategic or technical approach to composition at the sacrifice of emotion. When it comes to film scoring, Howard says “music, to me, is an emotional language”.
“And I’m not approaching it compositionally – in terms of in a technical sense – but I am interested in certain contrapuntal ideas. So I develop them really every day, and then I’m kind of applying my ideas to different film subjects that I’m interested in.”
“Music, to me, is an emotional language”
– Howard Shore
It’s a goal among composers to produce a distinguishable soundworld – one that shares their own voice and character simultaneously with that of the film. And it’s a rare feat to achieve this so successfully throughout one’s career.
When Howard was in Rotterdam, he also hosted an IFFR masterclass for a few hundred people, and a “conversation” with 25 Dutch composers, as a way to communicate to the next generation the skills he’s learnt through his time in the music industry.
“I like to share the knowledge that I’ve gathered over the years of working on films. And if I can enlighten younger composers with my ideas, I’m happy.
“They don’t have to adopt the techniques I’ve developed, but I’m happy to share them. And if that provides some insight into their work, that’s terrific.”
Though he won’t single out any specific young talents that hold promise, he feels there are many emerging film composers on the horizon who will be sure to leave their mark.
“I‘m hearing their work, and I’m hearing it expand, and I’m loving the diversity of the work being done in films.”
Howard’s recent scores include The Lost Prince, and The Song of Names. The latter is directed by François Girard, and violin virtuoso Ray Chen with Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain perform Howard’s score to what he calls a “beautiful film”.
This story was first published on the same date in our sister magazine Level and Gain, which celebrates all things film music. Why not head on over and check us out?
Images supplied.
