On the subject of boat-rocking, we return to Noah, and his reunion with the world-famous Kronos Quartet. This latest film marks the third collaboration between Mansell and the group, following Requiem For A Dream and The Fountain. Given that each time they work together is on a Darren Aronofsky film, I wonder if it was the director that first brought Mansell and Kronos together?
“It was definitely him that brought us together. When we were doing Requiem, the way that I’d written that score was, you know, for a very small ensemble. I mean, it was the first time I’d actually written for strings. And the idea was, you know, ‘Who’s the best quartet in the world?’ And we said, ‘Well, the Kronos Quartet’, so we just went after them. Darren went to a show and got backstage and pitched them on the film. They were really interested in the idea, and they saw Requiem and loved it. That was a really amazing collaboration because – this is back in 2000, so that’s about 15 years ago – Darren and I were very green at that point. I mean, I remember we recorded it at Skywalker Ranch in San Francisco, or Marin County, and Kronos are playing the music in the studio, and I remember Darren looking at me and going, you know, ‘We just haven’t earned this yet.’ And it really was an elevation of the work. Again, it was a collaborative thing. I mean, yes, I wrote the music, but it’s the performance and the nuance and just their interpretation that gives it the life, and makes it ache and makes it sing, you know? And that’s what you get from great musicians.”
The soundtrack for Noah ends with a sung track called ‘Mercy Is’, which plays over the end credits. Just as we have been discussing the importance of distinctive voices in cinema, ‘Mercy Is’ features the iconic vocals of singer-songwriter Patti Smith. In a stunning end to the original score, all the waves of orchestral tones wash beautifully into this ballad, written by the legendary Smith herself.
“Darren had got to know Patti over the past few years, you know, being in New York and all that sort of stuff, and I believe he’d asked her if she’d like to read the script – to get her thoughts on it. In the script there was this mention of the lullaby that was going to be required, and Patti had researched a lot of lullabies and stuff like this as part of her work. She just said to Darren ‘Could I write it? Please could I write it?’ And he said, ‘Well, of course’. So she did that, and when it came to me it was just sort of Patti and her guitar, you know?”
Having an original piece by Patti Smith and her guitar handed to you to work with – I suggest this must have been a fairly mind-blowing experience.
“Well, I don’t know. I kind of focus more on getting the job done, I suppose [laughs], you know, like, ‘…What am I going to do here?’ We kind of left it and left it and left it, because we knew it was going to play on the end credits, and we had it in the film, so, I wanted it to feel like it was the end of the score. I didn’t want it feel like it was suddenly coming out of left-field, you know? I needed it to be…organic, like you said before. So myself and my orchestrator were in New York recording, and we worked out a chart – a loose arrangement of what Patti had done – for Kronos to play. It was interesting when we started in New York. I was talking to one of the technical guys, and he recently – I think the year before or something – had worked on a Bob Dylan record. ‘Modern Times’, I think he said. He said that Dylan would come in each day with one song, and they would work on that song – they’d play it in different ways, different tempos, different arrangements – they’d just try to find the song, you know? And then, at the end of the day, they’ve got it.
So I thought, well, rather than, you know, laying this track out with ‘This happens there, that happens there, and that happens there’, and saying to Kronos and Patti, ‘This is how you do it,’ I thought that just doesn’t seem to be…organic to what we’re doing. If we could get the charts worked out, and then obviously Patti’s got the vocals, we can just all get together for a day in the studio, and just play the song, and get the feel of it. Kronos can get their interpretation, and it just becomes a much more organic experience. There’s no quick track, it’s just, let’s play it til it feels good, you know? And everyone really enjoyed it. It was an afternoon – about 4 or 5 hours – a beautiful afternoon, and everyone was really happy.
“It was a difficult project, all told, because it was just so much work and, you know – the pressure was on – so sometimes it’s very difficult to have a perspective on things, and I’m not sure I really have yet, to be honest. I’m really happy with the general response to the music – it’s been great, you know? Although, I just read something by one reviewer who absolutely slated it, but there you go. You can’t win them all.”
