Name: 'Succession' Composer Breaks Down the Theme Song | Vanity Fair
Uploaded: 2020-03-18T19:40:41.000Z
Duration: 12 min 54 s
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Moser, Nicholas Bartell, and I'm here with Vanity Fair today to explore my score to HBO's succession.

Adverbs of degree

Now the word score would really imply the whole entity.

Of all the music that I've written as underscore for the show, you know what I'm talking about?

I'm basically referring Thio, a musical idea that Rikers and that may evolve over the course of the show.

There could be many different themes and many variations on those themes, all within this idea of the entirety of the score.

The score for succession has a similar duality that I think the show has, which is this combination of elements of absurdity and also a deep gravitas under the surface, because the show itself is dealing with very serious issues of concentrations of power and wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people focused in the media industry.

But at the same time, there's a human side of the story, which focuses on some of the day to day absurdities and Pettiness and strife among the cast of characters.

And when I was first thinking about the type of music for the show was imagining for myself.

What is the music that the royal family might imagine for themselves.

And then at the same time, I remember early on seeing some of the dailies where Jeremy was wrapping Beastie Boys to himself.

Well, is there a kind of dark, courtly classical music that might feel like it's related to them that they would think of for themselves?

What if we also mix that with Cem hip hop eats and see what that sounds like?

And right away, it felt like there was something working with this strange combination of sounds.

There's this sort of immediate dissonance right from the top of the piece where, you know, you hear this sort of see my core, but there's actually a B natural, which gives you this immediate sense that something is maybe potentially off and the melody line on top.

This if you break it down right away from the top.

There's sort of accented dissonances which aren't in the scale.

So you know this major chord eyes isn't part of the scale, so I'm constantly winding in these notes that aren't part of the scale, just to kind of like jolt the music in a different direction thing.

Things are always kind of off kilter with themselves, like the family on top of that underneath it.

If you strip out what's happening in melody there, these cords.

This is a very sort of old school classical set of Harmony's, which many composers would use these kinds of chords, often to signify perhaps a culmination of AA minor key piece of classical music, two half diminished in a first inversion.

So get this this feeling of, ah, late 17 hundreds dark classical universe.

And then there's a sort of scope and epic nature to the way that the score then evolves where these large core it's played on a string orchestra.

The main theme in its essence forms the basis for many of the variations that I explore.

So we have this thing, that kind of motif, where these cords then involved into something like this on.

At that point in Season two, the music actually takes a left turn and goes, Milady, this is a new of ideas.

You can see how not only is there a kind of variation that happens with the chords and the basic idea from season one.

But in seizing to one of the fun things to explore was, Where do we go with these?

These characters, as they themselves, are evolving as this story is developing in a different place.

The conversation that I had at the end of season one into Season two with Jesse Armstrong, our show's creator.

I had this idea of what if the main ideas were almost like the first movement of Symphony?

And what if, in Season two is kind of like a second movement of a symphony?

Those ideas is taking them into a slightly different emotional place and still for sure, at times going back to the ideas from Season one.

And what's actually interesting in this show is that there are times where a theme will start seeming like it may be related to one character, but it actually becomes related to many of the characters, and I think that some of those air actually almost like unexpected on our part.

There's times where a certain piece of music just links up in a way with a storyline, and it's almost like the show is is directing us in a certain place where it's almost telling us that there were these other dynamics at work.

So I'm always excited to see the new episodes because I try to stay as open as possible toe following where I feel the show is taking me and how I might then evolve the music along with it.

So, for example, the variation in the culmination thing that I was talking about that's a change in the form and the rhythm.

So there's a call it kind of like a ostinato.

In this case, it's a very chic is the same form of peace is just different on then there's sort of filigree kind of that can be played piano play with strings.

It could be played with many different instruments.

There's always something lurking between surface.

Hopefully with a lot of these themes at the beginning of one of the episodes where we see Logan walking in Central Park, there's a dark melancholy, I think in that, but there's also at least to me I think I'm sort of implying a sort of coiled power may be inside of it.

These sort of in particular with Logan's character, where none of us really know the full depths of of what he's thinking off.

There's quite a few different variations where I also explore different kinds of classical forms to there's things All of those were in essentially, like 44 time.

There's things I do in almost like a menu ET kind of ah, Darkman you.

If there's a theme that you hear a times, this kind of Oh, uh huh, that kind of an idea.

And again, I think, where there's a sort of dark, courtly nature to that.

But it's also kind of dance like in a sense, which provides different tone in different places.

That piece of music actually may occur around corporate intrigue when corporate strategy is being discussed.

We're always doing musical experiments, and I'm always excited to try different ways of taking us out of these episodes and through the end credits.

So in almost all cases, the end credits is its own variation and idea.

One of the themes that that is very featured at that moment is this theme we were talking about earlier.

There's there's a scope and a dark grand jury time to the music.

Encounter point where you've had this large, you know, emotional experience.

And at the end of the episode, the music actually sort of retreats and goes into a quieter, more melancholy place.

There's something interesting about this feeling of like Is there this inherent settled sadness that's underlying all of what's happening in the show?

So we've just explored a few of the main themes of succession.

 Seasons one and two and how some of these themes evolve over the course of the 20 episodes, I am curious myself as to wear Season three takes us, and I hope you've enjoyed this musical exploration of the music and succession. 