Composers

Interview – WAMG Talks To CINDERELLA Soundtrack Composer Patrick Doyle

By Michelle McCue | March 9, 2015

On Friday, March 13, Disney will release the live action version of CINDERELLA from director Kenneth Branagh.

The original animated movie opened on February 15, 1950 to universal acclaim and 65 years later, CINDERELLA has become one of studio’s most treasured titles.

Branagh has once again turned to the Scottish composer Patrick Doyle for the score. The album features original music by Doyle marking the eleventh time he has teamed with Branagh.

In 1989, the director commissioned Doyle to compose the score for HENRY V and they have subsequently collaborated on numerous pictures, including DEAD AGAIN, MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, HAMLET, AS YOU LIKE IT and THOR, and most recently JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT.

Doyle scored RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES for 20th Century Fox and BRAVE for Disney Pixar, which was awarded Best Original Composition for Film at the International Music and Sound Awards.

From the worlds of Asgard to the Highlands of Scotland, Doyle’s various scores have whisked audiences off to distant lands, past, present and future. With an enchanting score full of magic and musical color, as well as creating a new Disney song, this time the Oscar-nominated composer takes us to the fairy-tale kingdom of CINDERELLA.

WAMG: CINDERELLA is such a beautiful film and your score is just wonderful. It sounds like a fairytale.

Patrick Doyle: Thank you very much. I think it’s a gorgeous, sumptuous film. It’s a classic movie – a timeless movie. It’s enchanting and it’s funny. It’s magical and very emotional. It’s a wonderful opportunity for a composer.

WAMG: The story is very familiar as well as the music. What was your first thought when you found out Kenneth Branagh was doing a new version of CINDERELLA?

PD: It’s a classic story. Number one, knowing Ken, I knew it would be a completely different approach to the iconic animated version. I think he’s done a wonderful job transferring from animation to live action. There’s always a thought that people will compare the two. I have been through this in the past with HENRY V and I knew Ken would have new approach to the film. I think he did a tremendous job.

WAMG: Your score is very romantic and while reminding the audience of the original, it takes you into this new adaptation.

PD: I’m glad you agree. I tried to write a classical score and hopefully it will have a classic feel to it. The reaction to the film, and the score, has been fantastic and it’s a tremendous opportunity to write for a symphony orchestra. Any reason to employ a symphony orchestra in a movie is always welcomed, especially when it’s the calibre of the London Symphony Orchestra.

The movie is from the original Charles Perrault’s French interpretation of the tale entitled “Cendrillon, or the History of the Little Glass Slipper” which introduced the fairy godmother, the pumpkin carriage and the glass slippers. We also come from a culture where we have what’s called Pantomime in Scotland, England and Wales. It’s an annual event – they’ll show Puss and Boots one year and Cinderella the other. Cinderella is a wonderful story and goes back to Greek times. It deals with diversity and it’s universal to every culture – it resonates to every culture the world.

It has a wonderful happy ending that everyone knows, but it’s the journey along the way is what’s so traumatizing. It’s cathartic in the end to watch her dream come true where she finds someone who’s a good person. It’s the best possible circumstances where people fall in love for themselves and not what they are.

WAMG: I loved Cate Blanchett’s theme – she makes quite the entrance as Lady Tremaine with the cat Lucifer in tow. Did you go with theme cues first or melody cues first for the character?

PD: (Sings the cue) I worked very hard to have a sort of chromatic theme – to roll around in the lower register of the instruments in the orchestra. I wanted to have a very distinctive theme for her.

The CINDERELLA waltz music at the ball, “La Valse de L’Amour,” was heavily plundered and mined by me throughout the score. (Sings the cue) I like to weave all these themes throughout the score. There’s waltzes and polkas, along with a plethora of dances, so there was a wonderful opportunity for me to write real classical music.

WAMG: You can hear it all through the film. With that classical theme in mind, what instruments, whether it was percussion, strings, brass, were you keen on using?

PD: It was an absolute mixture of everything. That’s the joy for a score like that – you can choose and strategize so that the sound can influence the viewer to see specific things. You can use the oboe for the mystery with the lower register, the bassoon for the entrance of the step-mother, the harp for the magical qualities. The whole symphonic voice comes into play and every instrument is utilized. The palette was wide open. I used the percussive sounds to give off wonderful colors.

My objective was to capture the magical enchantment and emotion in order to give it a timeless quality because the Disney canon is timeless. It survives generation after generation and that was in the back of my mind. I wanted to honor that great musical tradition of Disney.

The first film I saw on my own was FANTASIA. I went on my own at age 14 to Glasgow to see that film. That turned me onto music and animation – I was amazed by the marriage of the two.

In addition to the score, the soundtrack also includes end credit tracks by Lily James (“Cinderella”) and Helena Bonham Carter (“Fairy Godmother”), plus the end credit original theme song “Strong” (written by Patrick Doyle, Kenneth Branagh and Tommy Danvers) performed by Compound/Motown recording artist Sonna Rele and produced by TommyD (Kylie, Kanye West, Corinne Bailey Rae, FUN). Sonna was chosen by Kenneth Branagh to record “Strong.”

WAMG: Along with the score, fans have always liked that Disney made it a point of adding songs to his animated & live action films. In this CINDERELLA, there is the song that your wrote, “Strong.” How did that develop for the movie?

PD: The tune is totally based on all the themes in the film. You’ll hear the melodies and motifs, which I’m very proud of because all the score was first and then the song came in based on all the material in the score.

TommyD Is a great producer and writer and Ken worked on the lyrics and we worked very hard on it. I’m very proud to be part of that tradition to have written a Disney song. It’s really lovely.

I’ve also been the only one to write a Gaelic song for Disney with the movie BRAVE. I loved being involved in “Strong.”

WAMG: If I may ask you about BRAVE for a moment. When you first found out the movie was being made, being from Scotland, did you get choked up?

PD: Talk about being choked up! When the Pixar people invited me to San Francisco, after my initial meeting, to talk about the movie, I walked into a conference room and they had rocks, heather and little twiglets and branches and pictures beautifully displayed for me. Pictures of Scotland and the glorious Highlands – my wee eyes got choked up.

“I can’t believe you’ve done this to me,” I said. My life flashed in front of me! I was very proud to be asked to do that score.

BRAVE (L-R) Producer Katherine Sarafian, Composer Patrick Doyle and Director Mark Andrews amongst bagpipe musicians. Ph: Jonathan Prime ©2012 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

WAMG: Your music for RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES goes so well with the Jerry Goldsmith’s original 1968 score. The movie was such a success, especially for fans of the APES franchise. In APES and CINDERELLA, there are a ton of sound effects to accompany the visual effects. Did you work closely with the Sound Department on both movies?

PD: It was a fantastic opportunity to work on such an iconic franchise. I remember on RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, I asked the sound department to let me hear the early recordings they took of the real apes and I used one of their cries and turned it into a noisy musical cue for the percussion parts. It also became the running string motif in the film driving all the action sequences.

When thematic sounds come from an organic source, I think it has far more resonance so hopefully it connects people to the film.

I worked very closely with the sound department on CINDERELLA. I did a facsimile of the score, as I was going along, to give them so they were able to shape their sounds around the music and to tune the effects to the key of the orchestra. I had to work very closely with them to get an inter-organic marriage.

WAMG: You wrote the score for the silent movie IT starring Clara Bow, commissioned by the Syracuse Film Festival, which received its world premiere at the Syracuse historic Landmark Theatre in October 2013. How was it to score a film after the fact?

PD: I’ve always been a great fan of the early days of cinema. When I was a kid we had only two television stations in Scotland. There was the BBC and an independent station, and that was it. They would show lots and lots of movies from the 1920’s and 1930’s through the 1940’s and 1950’s. When I look back on it, I watched silent movies that were only about thirty years old.

I’m very lucky to be in that transition period to have written in the 20^th and 21^st century. When I was approached to commission the score I leapt at the opportunity. I loved the film and I’m very aware of Clara Bow. I took great care to write a contemporary score.

I’m quite excited because there’s going to be a Scottish premiere in June and I’m working with young children from my old Shire. I’m tremendously pleased and other movie industry people are doing workshops with these kids, so I’m very proud to be working on that.

All young kids from North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire where I was educated will be there. I remember as a very young kid going on weekends where I played in the youth orchestra and to be able to go back after working on this for a number of years, is a nice feather in the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, so we’re very excited about it.

Walt Disney Records will release the original motion picture soundtrack for CINDERELLA on March 10, 2015.

The score was recorded at Air Lyndhurst Studio in London, and was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Shearman and produced by Maggie Rodford. The film arrives in theaters on March 13, 2015.

CINDERELLA track list:

1. A Golden Childhood
2. The Great Secret
3. A New Family
4. Life and Laughter
5. The First Branch
6. Nice and Airy
7. Orphaned
8. The Stag
9. Rich Beyond Reason
10. Fairy Godmother
11. Pumpkins and Mice
12. You Shall Go
13. Valse Royale
14. Who Is She
15. La Valse de L’Amour
16. La Valse Champagne
17. La Polka Militaire
18. La Polka de Paris
19. A Secret Garden
20. La Polka de Minuit
21. Choose That One
22. Pumpkin Pursuit
23. The Slipper
24. Shattered Dreams
25. Searching the Kingdom
26. Ella and Kit
27. Courage and Kindness
28. Strong Performed by Sonna Rele
29. A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes Performed by Lily James
30. Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo (The Magic Song) Performed by Helena Bonham Carter