Harry and Rupert Gregson-Williams (‘The Gilded Age’ composers) describe their ‘richer and more florid’ score for Season 2 [Exclusive Video Interview]
“When we started season two, we weren’t quite sure where it was going or where it was going to end,” confesses Harry Gregson-Williams about how much he knew of the rich story arcs of the second season of “The Gilded Age.” He and his brother Rupert Gregson-Williams are the composers of the HBO drama series, which he calls a “rich character piece.” Rupert was indeed excited to see how “smaller characters in the first season” would emerge as “major players in the second,” which required new musical cues. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Though the brothers were not fully aware of where the story was heading in the latest batch of episodes, they knew that the score of the show would become “a bit richer” because, as Rupert says, “the Russells are now richer, and we’ve become confident with them and their new role as leaders of society.” In the second season, Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) wages war on “old money” New York society by backing the new Metropolitan Opera against the established Academy of Music, while her husband George (Morgan Spector) battles with union workers at his Pittsburgh factory. As Rupert shares, “We’ve been able to write in a richer and more florid way as the Russells have developed.”
WATCH our exclusive video interview with Carrie Coon, ‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2
The score of each episode of “The Gilded Age” incorporates some portion of the main title theme, which the Gregson-Williams brothers also composed. Harry explains that it serves so many different purposes in the show because “it has an underlying engine, what we call an ostinato.” That “rhythmic engine” allows them to use it in “a very joyous way, a very triumphant way” but also “quite a stern way” when the scene demands. Rupert adds that the title theme is also used to “squeeze comedy out of all the little bits,” and they employ it for scenes that call for “comedy, romance, [and] serious” material. Harry notes that this “musical motif” helps when scoring “over 40 minutes of music in a single episode,” too.
The Gregson-Williams brothers submitted the seventh episode of the season, “Wonders Never Cease,” on the Emmy ballot, which is the penultimate – and therefore consequential – installment. For one, the episode depicts the death of Ada’s (Cynthia Nixon) husband Luke (Robert Sean Leonard). Rupert explains that they kept the score for that tragic scene “simple” because Ada “wears her heart on her sleeve, but is quite prim and straight” as well. They had used that “little melody” earlier in the season in a “joyful” context during the characters’ wedding, so when they revisit it in an “elegiac” way to mark Luke’s death, “it’s more poignant because all you’ve heard before is this very simplistic little thing that represents her happiness.”
WATCH our exclusive video interview with Morgan Spector, ‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2
Another form of tragedy befalls the family in the episode, too, as Oscar van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) reveals to his mother Agnes (Christine Baranski) that he has been swindled out of almost all the family fortune. Since the show depicts Oscar’s “emotional breakdown,” Rupert says they wanted “to cook the emotion at the right temperature” with their musical accompaniment. Harry notes that they had only “touched on thematic material” for that character in the first season, so it was exciting to write “a proper theme” for him this time around. The scene in which Oscar breaks the news to Agnes is “quite dramatic and quite a surprise for the audience,” so the duo was careful not to “overpower the scene” with their score. Rupert notes that when Baranski is in a scene, “you don’t overwrite… because she does all the work for you, really.”
“Wonders Never Cease” also centers on the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge and the attendant fireworks celebration. The composers introduce a choir for this scene, which is something of an anomaly for the series. Harry loves when the show incorporates “something quite historical” into the story, and Rupert notes that this scene is “very Julian,” referring to series creator Julian Fellowes, because “he wheels out some enormous historical, iconic moment in the city or American history.” Rupert cites this musical cue as his favorite from the second season, while Harry tips his hat to a similar sequence in the first season that centers on a demonstration of the invention of electricity as his favorite moment from the first two years.
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