‘The Brutalist’ Composer Daniel Blumberg Tells Us The Story Behind 2024’s Best Film Score

The Brutalist is a nearly four-hour movie, complete with a 15-minute intermission, about a Holocaust survivor who comes to the United States to live “the American Dream” and, one day, be reunited with his wife. That premise (and runtime) deserves an epic score; Daniel Blumberg delivered.

During a recent phone call with the composer, I tried to put into words how overwhelmed — maybe “experienced” is the better word here — I felt watching and listening to The Brutalist. The words “mighty,” “powerful,” and “monumental” came up (as did “Golden Globe nominated”). Blumberg, humble as he is, gave much of the credit to the A24 film’s director, Brady Corbet, and the musicians he worked with, including trumpeter Axel Dörner, British saxophonist Evan Parker, pianist John Tilbury, and bassist Joel Grip. But he was the guiding force behind 2024’s best film score.

Below, you can read our interview (which has been edited for length and clarity) with Blumberg. Preferably while listening to the overture.

How did you and Brady first connect?

We met when he was putting together his first film, The Childhood Of A Leader. We connected creatively straight away, and sort of started a dialogue about our work immediately. He invited me to his sessions for the score for [Leader], and he would be someone that I would send music to. It felt quite natural to start to work together. We’d done some smaller projects as well, like short films, sort of collaborations before, but this was the first time that we worked together on a feature film.

Do you remember the first conversation you had about The Brutalist?

I remember doing a drawing for him after his second film premiered. It was a bit of a silly drawing of him being attacked by these producers. He still has it in his kitchen, and I don’t know if he was joking, but he was like, “That was sort of the start of the film.” As soon as I read it, it was apparent that it was a film about making a film. I love films about making films. Like all the best directors have their films about making films. Fassbinder, Truffaut.

Babylon is a good recent one, and has a great score from Justin Hurwitz. How did you settle on the “sound” of The Brutalist score?

My first instinct was, when I read the script, I thought about the piano and the acoustic potential of that instrument. You know, it’s made up of many strings and hammers. And I thought prepared piano where you put screws into the strings. You prepare the strings, so you kind of wedge coins or pieces of paper in the strings, and that makes it into this percussive instrument. I mean, it is a percussive instrument because hammers are hitting the strings, but if you interfere with those strings, you can get these kinds of sounds that, for me, relate to the sound of making and construction. Obviously, in quite a cartoony way, because it’s literally hammers and screws, so conceptually, it felt right.

We didn’t want too much ornamentation because, I mean, it’s called The Brutalist. We wanted this kind of directness, but also, there’s such a responsibility with a narrative film like this in terms of tracking the decades.

Do you have an idea of how many musicians make up the score?

It’s 19 or 20, I think, but never in the same room. The biggest session was, like, two double basses, four horns, and then sometimes I play piano. That session with everyone was interesting. We just used that for, it’s actually very low in the mix when they’re doing their monologues, when there’s long monologues between [Guy Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren] and [Adrien Brody’s László Tóth]. But we spoke about that a lot, Brady, this huge sound being very quiet.

Is there a sequence in the film that you found particularly enjoyable to compose? And conversely, one that was especially challenging?

I think it’s when László’s theme develops into Erzsébet’s theme. I can’t read music, so it’s a lot of trying stuff out. I was living with Brady from pre-production and through to the set. I was there most of the shoot. And he was really excited about this kind of moment. He heard me through the wall of a flat in my room trying to work out where the theme could go, the kind of main theme. Because, again, it’s simple but the hope was that it could cover the whole three and a half hours. But I was excited to get Erzsébet’s theme because it just felt so romantic, and I knew that I could work with that. The idea was that you hear it in its full, quite beautiful state in the start of the second half, when you meet Erzsébet, and then it kind of disintegrates. And when you hear it, like when they [ed. note I left out an important post-intermission plot moment here], it’s all stretched out. That was a session where I was working with Axel Dörner and his partner, Carina, two trumpet players, and Joel Grip playing double bass in his studio. We were just trying stuff out, and it clicked. I thought Brady would love that. So that was really nice.

And then the challenge, I mean, there’s lots of challenges. Like, technically, the overtures were a really challenging mix, because that was something that required constant collaboration between departments. Brady wanted to shoot that scene to the music… I was on set and I was watching the monitor. The cinematographer was moving to the music, and Adrien and all of the extras. So that was pretty scary. But then also, when the sound mix starts, when [sound editor Steve Single] started the sound mix, he set sirens for the opening. That inspired me to get the brass to do siren-type sounds. And then the mix was a real dance. Me and [score co-producer Peter Walsh] were working with Steve, who was mixing the sound and the diegetic sound, and the low end of the piano. The editor was really trying to keep the integrity of the Hungarian voiceover. He’s Hungarian, so he can understand. I was saying, “Oh, it can be lower.” And he was saying, “No, it needs to be higher.” That was really challenging. We were all in the studio on the last day of the sound mix, moving stuff around. It was great. Very productive. But it was also hard.

I imagine the soundtrack going in a ’80s synth-pop direction was difficult, too.

That was actually the most fun to record because all of the music is acoustic apart from that. I’d been traveling around Europe with a case full of microphones and my preamps, and I’d bring back these long sessions to Pete for the mix. And it was like a lot of material. The ‘80s cue, the idea started because Brady was shooting on VistaVision and 35mm, it was a medium that related to the era in the film. But I knew he was moving to an early kind of digital video format for the ‘80s and had archival footage, and it was this collage-y kind of element to cinematography. I think when I heard he was using this kind of video for the ‘80s, I thought it would be a really nice opportunity for the music to literally evolve into the ‘80s. And Vince Clarke was the obvious person. I mean, he defined the sound of the ‘80s with Depeche Mode mode and Yazoo. Also, Pete Walsh, who I worked with, you know he produced Simple Minds and started working with Scott Walker in the ‘80s. I came to New York to work with Vince and then finished it with Brady, actually, in my living room. That was definitely the most fun moment, because it was right at the end and Brady and I got two bottles of wine and just started playing. We had a great time doing that cue. And it’s just so abrupt, that digital sound when it comes in after three and a half hours.

How does it feel to be nominated for a Golden Globe alongside the likes of Hans Zimmer and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross?

I’m so proud of Brady. He’s someone that I love, but also, the script was so incredible. For me, I was very nervous because I thought that the work was going to be amazing, and my main sort of aim was to not fuck it up. I was like, “If I don’t fuck it up, then I would have done a good job.” And also, I was thinking, if there’s a record in a record shop called The Brutalist, it has to be good because it’s a great title. I was more like, there’s an element of being relieved that I didn’t fuck up his film, but I’m also really proud of him, because it was so hard for him to make this film. He really gave everything to make it, and it’s really nice that people appreciate it. Basically, it’s quite surreal for us.

Safe to say, you didn’t fuck it up.

The Brutalist opens in limited theaters on December 20, 2024, before a wider rollout in January 2025. The Brutalist soundtrack is out now. You can stream the album below.