Thomas

Newman’s 1917 Score

BIO

Thomas Newman is an American composer best known for his many film scores. He is part
of a Hollywood composer dynasty, which includes his father Alfred, cousin Randy and
brother David among other notable composer family members. Brought up playing the violin,
Newman studied composition and orchestration at USC and then at Yale University, where
he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1977 and a Master of Music in 1978. He initially
worked on Broadway theatrical productions alongside his mentor Stephen Sondheim, but
began writing television music after he was asked by his uncle Lionel Newman to score
episodes of the series The Paper Chase in 1978. Another early opportunity arose when
renown composer and close family friend John Williams invited him to orchestrate on the
Star Wars film Return of the Jedi, which led to Newman being hired as a composer on his
first film Reckless in 1984. Newman worked regularly on films throughout the 80s, but
confesses it took him eight years to properly retrain himself and feel comfortable composing
film music. He rose to prominence in the mid-90s with his scores to films such as American
Beauty and The Shawshank Redemption, and has continued composing for high-profile films
including Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo and now 1917. With his career spanning over
four decades, Newman has received countless accolades including an Emmy, four Golden
Globes, two BAFTAs and six Grammys, and is the most nominated composer to have not
won a single Academy Award (tied with Alex North for fifteen nominations).1

CONTEXT

1917 is a film about World War One, which follows two young British soldiers in a race
against time. The soldiers must deliver a message calling off an attack on German positions
that is doomed to fail, as the enemy has strategically retreated to a new position in secret.
Released in 2019, the film was directed by Sam Mendes who has collaborated with Thomas
Newman on most of his movies, and it received numerous accolades including Academy
Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Mixing. Newman was
nominated for his fifteenth award for his score, however he lost to Joker composer Hildur
Guðnadóttir.

BRIEF ANALYSIS

Newman’s soundtrack for 1917 features lush orchestral writing, motoric minimalist textures
and eerie soundscapes. Some of the major compositional devices that he employs include
blended synthetic and acoustic timbres, added tone sonorities, pedal tones, ostinati, ‘exotic’
instrumentation and split third harmonies.

1
IMDb, "Thomas Newman Biography," IMDb, accessed April 26th 2020.
[Link]
The blending of synthetic and acoustic timbres is evident in the cue “1917” and its
companion track “Come Back to Us”. Bookending the film, these cues feature a solo cello
backed by colourful sustained textures that blend synthetic and acoustic sounds. Newman
combines synths with processed instrument samples (such as reversed piano), French horns
and strings to form this colourful and fluid background pad, over which the solo cello sits
with additional string lines that emerge. Added tone sonorities are also employed in this cue
and others throughout the film, where additional chord tones are implemented for added
colour (an unresolved suspended fourth in this case). This is a technique common in many of
Newman’s scores such as Road to Perdition and The Shawshank Redemption.

The film is a race against time, so for much of its duration there is a sense of unrelenting
tension. The music is an important aspect of this, and Newman effectively creates a sense of
neutral pace that drives the scenes forward without being overly outspoken and distracting
from the story. This is evident in the motoric textures of “Up and Down the Trench”, which
employ an ostinato on a pedal tone for rhythmic drive yet harmonic stasis. There is no
melody, but repeated motivic cells juxtaposed in a binary block structure. Although relatively
simple in terms of texture, harmony and structure, there is a fascinating interplay of
contrasting synthetic and acoustic timbres throughout the track. Newman interweaves these
colours in a counterpoint of timbre similar to Schoenberg’s klangfarbenmelodie technique,
but with gestures rather than a defined melody. While some of these timbres are orchestral or
basic synth sounds, many of them are very interesting samples that are almost unrecognisable
due to heavy processing, such as reversed guitar harmonics or mangled reverb sends. The
music also features many exotic sounding instruments such as lap dulcimers, hang drums,
African drums and bamboo flutes, which Newman successfully manages to implement for
their colour alone without the connotations that some of them have.

Another technique Newman employs throughout the score is the split third sonority. This is
used in “Gehenna” to create an interesting emotional combination of tension and wonder, and
is created by juxtaposing the major and minor thirds in an ostinato introduced by a piano and
passed to the strings for a dramatic climax. This harmonic technique appears in several of
Newman’s other film scores such as Lemony Snicket and The Shawshank Redemption, and it
creates a very effective emotional colour.

MY THOUGHTS AND CONCLUSION

Many of the cues from the film are extremely minimalistic and repetitive, so I wouldn’t listen
to them for enjoyment and they certainly wouldn’t stand up in the concert hall. In the context
of the film however, this music perfectly expresses emotional intricacies and adds nuance
that couldn’t be conveyed with a traditional Hollywood orchestral score. Newman achieves
an effective balance between this subtle, psychological underscoring and a more dramatic
narration when the film calls for it with cues such as “1917” and “Come Back to Us”. The
soaring solo cello melody and lush string writing in these cues function as an objective
narration of the action, similar to the traditional Hollywood scoring present in Star Wars,
where the music creates a sense that the audience is looking through a proscenium at the
action.2 This is in stark contrast to the subjective perspective of being amongst the action that
is engendered for the audience with the more understated cues. After subtle underscoring for

2
Thomas Newman, 2016, Oxford Union Society, Oxford Union, Youtube,
[Link]
most of the film, there is a shift to this objective perspective at a major turning point in the
movie, which is extremely powerful.

Other effective aspects of the score are the use of ‘Mickey Mousing’ and symbolism.
Newman implements these techniques through his manipulation of timbre, where he uses
colour as one of the major musical devices to create these effects. An example of ‘Mickey
Mousing’ occurs when the main characters are travelling through a trench and pass a pair of
stretcher bearers carrying a gravely injured soldier. Newman reflects this on-screen event
with a subtle distorted tone that emerges out of the supporting musical texture, which in this
instance provides more emotional content (horror and dread etc.) than other devices such as
texture and harmony. Timbre is similarly employed in another scene to create symbolism,
when the main characters pass piles of dead bodies. Rather than scoring the scene with
traditional instruments and relying on harmony to create a sad emotion, Newman adds an
additional layer of nuance to the experience by using warped choral sounds that symbolise
the cries of the dying.

Overall, I believe Newman has composed a great score that employs some interesting
techniques and effectively combines several styles of music and scoring, while maintaining
an individual voice that is influenced by his earlier works.
 Bibliography

IMDb. "Thomas Newman Biography." IMDb. Last modified 2020. Accessed April 26th
2020. [Link]

1917. Directed by Mendes, Sam. Universal Pictures, 2019.

Newman, Thomas. 1917 Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. 1hr 17min. Spotify: Sony
Music Entertainment 2019.