The first sound to really hit you in “The Brutalist” is that of trumpets making it known that you’re experiencing an arrival, a sense of splendor that touches on its lead character László Tóth in America seemingly reaching safe harbor upon fleeing his native Hungary where he was surely consigned to death as Nazis gained control as well as the epic scale that director Brady Corbet will come to fulfill in following him through the travails to erecting a building in his adopted homeland, a monument meant to reflect the values of the God-fearing millionaire (Guy Pearce) that commissions it, but ultimately in its concrete design presents a country that’s given him a cold shoulder. However, it’s what surrounds the bombast that start to come to life as your memory of it wears on, the ambient dirge that immediately precedes the brassy fanfare, akin to churn of the boat that Tóth emerges from, and the scattered notes of various instruments bursting here and there as if rhythm eludes them, all trying to find their place in the grand scheme.
The cacophony notes the irony of a promised land that sits on quicksand, but what is completely genuine is the sense of possibility in the air as Daniel Blumberg’s score comes to overwhelm you in a film that perhaps dismisses America as a place of opportunity for Tóth when a turned-over image of the Statue of Liberty sets the tone for a story in which he may never feel welcome, but serves as a canvas where a certain level of formal experimentation coalesces into a cinematic landmark. Like any structure of such strength, Blumberg was involved in building “The Brutalist” from the ground up, having met Corbet and his partner Mona Fastvold around the time the former was making his directorial debut “The Childhood of a Leader.” Pursuing visual arts at the time with a scholarship at the Royal Drawing School after already making a name for himself in music, Blumberg had to be particularly intrigued when Corbet invited him back to the recording studio where he was working on the score with the legendary Scott Walker, putting sound to picture.
“I hadn’t really thought about scoring until Brady took me to those sessions,” Blumberg said recently, gradually finding ways to marry his varied artistic pursuits starting with a commission from Curzon Cinemas in England to provide music for an Agnes Varda retrospective and a later invitation from Fastvold to compose the score for her second feature “The World to Come” after being intrigued by work he had been doing with woodwinds. Although composers traditionally come into the process towards the end of the production, Blumberg and Fastvold’s friendship allowed for a different dynamic where the former was around on set to pick up the environmental nuances of the frontier setting for the Katherine Waterston/Vanessa Kirby drama, and the process repeated itself for “The Brutalist,” where Blumberg roomed with Corbet during the film’s shoot in Budapest and created a roving studio where musicians could record on location and enabled the composer to reach far and wide for the exact specialists he was looking for.
Blumberg’s close relationship to Corbet and Fastvold also made an impossible situation slightly easier to bear when Walker, who had provided the music for Corbet’s first two films, passed away in 2019 and Blumberg assumed the role, working with Corbet and Fastvold at the script stage of “The Brutalist” to create such a robust atmosphere for the film sonically. The score doesn’t only summon the dreams and nightmares of its characters, anchored primarily by a piano to reflect the tortured soul of László, but captivates in subverting Americans’ belief in a steady march towards progress with the absorbing cadence it finds in construction without suggesting that what’s out of step is off-key. With the film now in theaters, Blumberg could reflect on a years-long journey with the film in which the process led to some scenes being inspired by the music and others where he could be inspired by what was happening on set, as well as being able to set the tone for the entire production when gathering a group of artists to play at a jazz club for the first day of the shoot.
When you and Brady first started having conversations about “The Brutalist,” what was discussed?
We were talking from when he wrote the script because since I met Brady, we have been in dialogue about our work. When I finish recording my records before I mixed it, he would always be one of the first people to hear it and talk about it, so it was quite natural just to talk from the script [stage of his films]. Then I did a bit of music quite early and I had moved in with him in Budapest where he was shooting [the film], partly because the first day of shooting was the jazz scene and I had to put the band together for that because they did live music on set.
Lol Crawley mentioned that — it sounded like a great way to start the production when it had all that energy.
It was quite scary because it was the first idea that was printed forever on the film and I wanted them to refer to this theme that would later become the construction theme in the second half of the film. When construction [on the Institute] gets underway, you hear that same theme, so it was scary [to commit to something at the start] that would have to continue through the three-and-a-half hours of the film and I was thinking, “Shit, it better be good.” But I had put together a group of people that I knew could evoke that era of jazz, but also take it into more open music after they take drugs in the [bathroom], and to actually play that transition into kind of more woozy state that they’re in after they shoot up.
It was really good because it was the first day, setting down the tempo that Brady and I hoped would happen where there was a flow between the departments. Lol was moving to the music, but also Adrien [Brody] and Isaach [De Bankole] were able to react to the score in real time. That was something that we talked about from the start was that I thought it would be a good opportunity with me being on set to collaborate with the sound recorder [and others on set] and for it to flow quite naturally and [the score] not be an afterthought, but quite integral to the narrative and the scenes.
Is it true that you had the overture ready enough for the introductory scene of the film to have that kind of interaction with what could be filmed on set?
We always thought of the overture as a piece of music that would continue for the first ten minutes of the film from the opening [on the ship] until the end of the bus ride to Philadelphia. That was something that Brady really wanted to shoot to the music, particularly in the ship scene when László is arriving in New York. He wanted to shoot to the bus to music as well and it was interesting to make music before there were images. The overture was Brady and I sitting next to my piano and keyboard in his flat and me playing these ideas that I had, but also him saying, “Okay, then László goes up the stairs…” and imagining how the scene would be shot. Then on the day [of filming], we were really happy with it and it provided a structure to the shoot. Lol could adjust his movements to the music and then all the choreography of the extras and Adrien and we were using very basic demos with quick sounds that I have on a keyboard.
Then later when I was building [the sound] and we’re actually recording with real instruments, the overture was the foundation of the whole score, so it would introduce the main theme, but also the instruments and the musicians. The key musicians all have solos on the bus. You hear Evan Parker’s soprano saxophone coming in during the credits that you hear later in Carrara and Sophie Agnel, an amazing pianist from Paris who just plays the strings of the piano, interfering with the strings with different objects. And then Axel Dörner, one of my favorite musicians, plays trumpet. You hear all these quite unique players in the bus and then in between those two scenes [of the ship and the bus] you introduce the character of László and John Tilbury, an extraordinary artist who plays the more melancholic kind of piano that follows Adrien through the film.
From what I understand, Tilbury was a really crucial influence on how you thought about Lazlo musically even before he came on to play such a role in the film. How did his music come to mind?
I’ve been a big fan of his since I was introduced to his work by Seymour Wright, the saxophonist that played a bit on the score. When I read the script, I thought of how John Cage would put screws and coins in the piano and the hammers would bang on the strings and make quite percussive sounds – sounds that I imagined could relate to the sound of building and construction and ideas forming. And I thought of Tilbury because [he also works] with prepared pianos when you interfere with the strings to make percussive sounds and just has an amazing touch. It was a mixture between the initial prepared piano I did with two friends at Cafe Oto. We borrowed the piano, snuck in to this venue near where I live in London and spent a day just sampling sounds. I had many, many microphones on the piano, so you could really get an incredible amount of low end. Sometimes it might not be obvious what a piano is on the score, but initially we were drawn to the idea of the instrument being so huge and the acoustic potential being able to bring you through the whole story.
When you were on set, were there actually sounds from the location that were inspiring you?
Yeah, one of the spaces that I couldn’t get to on the set was Carrara because they had such a small team going up into the marble quarry, but then I saw the images and I thought, I want to know how that sounds, so I actually went back to Carrara to record the impulse response of the quarry, which is when you shoot a gun into the space and then you record how that bounces off the space. It bounces off the marble and the reflections and then you can apply that to instruments. In this case, I applied it to Evan Parker’s soprano sax that I recorded in Cannes. Then there was the train station scene and when we went to the location in Hungary, there was an old piano in the train station and I ended up playing Erzsébet’s theme as the actors came in [and László is reunited with Erzsébet]. We didn’t use the audio from my piano for the film for that scene, but we actually used it in the film when she’s in the bath a bit later. It sounded quite nice and we set up some mics after the scene was shot.
Incredible. A common thread throughout Brady’s films has been sound mixer Peter Walsh. What was it like working with him?
He’s just an incredible talent. I was traveling around Europe because I had very specific players that I wanted to work with and bringing him back all these recordings and he’s very good at finding ways of balancing quite complicated sounds on a mix. I work very differently to Scott Walker, but that’s something that he did incredibly with Scott’s albums and his work and Pete and I met on Brady’s first film because he was co-producing that as well. We’ve since done three records and this is the second film we’ve done together. This was a very intense mix because of the length of it — it was like mixing two films, but we work very closely and he’s a massive part of why it could work.
When you began to compose for films, was it much of an adjustment to think about music as it applied to a narrative or did it come pretty organically?
It was quite a natural thing when Mona asked me to do her [film “The World to Come”], but also very tricky because I’ve mainly worked with free, improvised music for years. One of the things I love about it is if, for example, you’re playing with a saxophone player, they might make a very short percussive note or they might circular breathe for an hour. With improvised music, you just don’t know how long a phrase is gonna be. It just is. And with film, it’s a time-based medium, so the scenes are like three minutes, four seconds and 60 milliseconds. Retaining that energy of the music that I love or working with people who are not necessarily used to having such specific time constraints is a challenge, but it’s really interesting to try. Also just loving film and in this case, working for someone that I love, it’s like a puzzle. You’re trying to honor that piece of work or align your instincts with someone that you really respect and I really like that. It’s different to making a solo record where you’re the last voice in the record, but with this, it’s trying to help Brady achieve what he wants to do.
Knowing that this has been in the works for some time, what’s it like getting to this moment with it?
It’s been quite amazing that people have responded positively to the film because you never really know. Brady’s quite a radical filmmaker. He’s making narrative cinema, and I work with artists who sometimes I feel are underappreciated. Like Steve Noble, who played on the score, is an incredible percussionist and drummer, and you can go and see him in London and there’s six or 16 people at his concert, which is crazy. So I’m used to seeing people make incredible work and not necessarily get that much feedback. And this is a situation that’s surreal, but quite nice because I know Brady made the film that he wanted to make and it’s quite surprising that other people also liked it. I was up till five in the morning last night working on this, and I’ve gone on straight into Mona’s new film, so being deep in that and then talking about the work Brady and I did is quite a nice mix.
“The Brutalist” is now in theaters.