Actors Jeremy Robust (from left), Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin are pictured in an episode of Succession, which ends on Sunday.
Claudette Barius/HBO
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Actors Jeremy Robust (from left), Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin are pictured in an episode of Succession, which ends on Sunday.
Claudette Barius/HBO
The ultimate episode of Succession airs on Sunday, bringing an finish to the hit HBO sequence and, virtually as importantly, what some have referred to as “the definitive TV theme of the twenty first century.”
The opening theme, with its dissonant chords, dramatic strings and 808 beats, has remained a standard earworm over the previous couple of years, to not point out fodder for high-profile remixes and viral memes.
All of that got here as a shock to Nicholas Britell, the composer behind the present’s Emmy-winning rating.
“What’s occurred with Succession has been past my, any of our wildest desires, I feel,” he advised Morning Version. “And positively on the music facet, it has been very particular that the music has resonated the best way it has. I didn’t anticipate that.”
Succession is Britell’s first foray into tv. He beforehand labored on acclaimed movies together with Moonlight, If Beale Road May Discuss, Do not Look Up and The Large Quick. That is how he knew director Adam McKay, who advised him in 2016 concerning the new present he was government producing.
As soon as Britell got here on board, his first job was to determine what the mission ought to sound like.
“A lot of my early work on something is de facto kind of making an attempt to experiment and see what may work and what feels proper,” he says, including that the method often begins with conversations with the showrunner and ends as soon as there’s an edited episode to work off. “The image tells you what it is searching for.”
The sound of Succession got here from Britell’s early conversations with McKay and the present’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, in addition to his visits to the set.
He watched the filming of the pilot — together with a struggle scene between patriarch Logan Roy and his son-slash-original inheritor obvious, Kendall — an expertise Britell describes as “subconsciously sort of taking issues in concerning the frequency of the present.”
Then Britell invited McKay and Armstrong again to his studio and performed them some early concepts, certainly one of which was a chord development “that felt very, very 1700s.” And that is how the Succession theme was born.
The present’s musical signature is its mixture of “darkish, courtly classical sound” with “oversize hip-hop beats and 808s,” with the latter reflecting the style of each protagonist Kendall and real-life hip-hop fanatic Britell.
And it is meant to sound “off-kilter.” Britell says he will get requested whether or not the piano and strings are alleged to be out of tune — and the reply is all the time sure.
“I’ve takes of a few of these issues the place it is good and it doesn’t sound correct as a result of when issues sound, quote unquote, ‘proper’ for the Roy household, it is incorrect,” he provides. “It does not work as a result of the household is so dysfunctional that the music has to have this sort of brokenness to it by some means.”
Nicholas Britell accepts the award for excellent unique foremost title theme music for Succession on the 2019 Emmy Awards in Los Angeles.
Phil McCarten/Invision/AP
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Nicholas Britell accepts the award for excellent unique foremost title theme music for Succession on the 2019 Emmy Awards in Los Angeles.
Phil McCarten/Invision/AP
Britell’s Succession repertoire consists of excess of simply the opener. He says he does 5 to 10 new themes each season, along with variations on the principle theme chords, which was a part of his aware effort to evolve the music all through the present’s 4 seasons.
“I had this framework, it was sort of like an early thesis of, properly, what if each season was a bit of bit like a motion of a classical symphony?” he explains, including that every has its personal “emotional hue.”
Season one, like the primary motion of a classical symphony, was an allegro: “You are setting out a sure set of concepts in maybe a barely faster tempo.” Season two was an adagio, or a “slower, extra inward, extra introspective sort of a motion” (impressed by Kendall’s arc). Season three was a lighter scherzo, which comes from the Italian phrase for joke.
Britell stated season 4 may have been many issues, and he approached it not via one specific angle however by contemplating the form of the storyline and the characters’ journeys. Logan’s demise posed a specific problem: It arguably modified the character of the present and demanded a brand new sound, and but Britell did not need that sound to “not really feel like Succession.”
“I feel the largest problem was determining a manner ahead for the sound the place it may permit for the potential for a way forward for some kind, whereas additionally staying true to, to me, that unusual combination of absurdity and gravitas that’s the essence of the present,” he says.
Britell spoke to Morning Version about his course of, the ultimate season and what comes subsequent.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
Interview highlights
On his use of hip-hop
I used to be obsessive about hip-hop and in faculty was in a hip-hop band. … So when the concept struck me to maybe experiment with using 808s or or beats with this sound, it was one thing that I knew how one can do as a result of I might spent 20 years doing it. … The hip-hop is used very particularly in sure locations — the beats, using 808s — actually in the principle title sequence.
In season 4, there is a sequence the place Kendall is strolling into the workplace and he listens to hip-hop as a manner clearly of giving himself extra confidence. It is kind of a lift in a way, and the sequence the place I put certainly one of my beats underneath him strolling into the workplace, it is instantly after he is listening to a Jay-Z observe within the automotive, so there is a little bit of a parallel, I feel, in that to the pilot episode the place he is listening to the Beastie Boys after which he is strolling into the workplace after which the principle title beat kind of is available in. … I like making an attempt to attract sure connections and parallels and symmetries to issues.
On the method of scoring an episode
I get a full episode from editorial and … I am going via and I begin experimenting with, the place do I put music? … It is a massive, massive query, since you may put music theoretically wherever, however there are specific locations the place music goes which have an influence to them, that work in relation to the grammar of a specific mission. … After which after getting a way that there might be a second for music, properly then you must truly say, OK, properly then what’s the music? What will we put there? One of many fantastic issues with Succession is that having lived with it for 4 seasons now, you get an intuition for the place and what and the way for the music.
On the episode the place Logan dies
That episode specifically was actually fascinating for me, as a result of I had written a number of items of music imagining what that is perhaps. However after I lastly bought the episode and I noticed the cellphone name sequence … I spotted that that complete sequence truly required a sort of music or a sound that I had by no means used within the present earlier than, as a result of Logan had by no means died earlier than. … To me, the important thing for that sequence specifically was that we needed to really feel like we had been inside that emotion. I did not need to push individuals to really feel a sure manner, I wished it to really feel such as you had been truly certainly one of them, feeling this, feeling your father dying on the cellphone and you may’t be there.
I referred to as [Armstrong] up and I feel he was touring, he was in a foreign country. And I stated, “I actually suppose we have to get within the room collectively, as a result of this sequence is so necessary and I feel the one manner we can have it really feel proper is that if we’re sitting collectively, taking a look at it and within the minutest element shaping it collectively.” … He flew to New York and came visiting to the studio and … we principally sat collectively like a complete day, simply taking a look at this sequence and speaking about it and experimenting with it.
On whether or not there’s extra TV work in his future
Tv is numerous work. I imply, it has been a pleasure to work on Succession. I am very pushed by the collaborators that I work with, it is kind of the belief of working with sure individuals and believing within the initiatives themselves. So to me, I’d go ahead and work on one other present if it was the correct nice individuals for certain. … And I feel tv does require an order of magnitude extra work than motion pictures, simply due to the sheer scope of a present. So I feel earlier than I’d go into another tv sequence, I’d take into consideration the sheer quantity of music that must be written.
The printed interview was produced by Chad Campbell and edited by Olivia Hampton.