Interstellar Film Score by Hans Zimmer

In 2014, Hans Zimmer’s film score for the Christopher Nolan film, Interstellar, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score. While it ultimately lost out to Alexandre Desplat’s film score for The Grand Budapest Hotel, it was the first set of music from a film that piqued my interest in modern-day film scoring, demanding my attention on how modern film composers master their craft.

Despite the fact that much of the story in Interstellar is set in outer space, the music that accompanies these scenes are unlike what you would find in traditional space opera, or even the broader sci-fi genre that generally features heavier uses of trumpets and other brass instruments. If you’ve seen the film, you’d have likely sat through several action-intensive scenes in which the tempo of the piece noticeably quickens and the orchestra plays to a volume that is almost deafening. Yet, aside from these few pieces, the bulk of Zimmer’s film score maintains a quality that I can only describe as soul-stirring. The individual pieces enter very subtly into the scenes, but are somehow able to tap very powerfully into our innermost feelings of compassion, love, and pain. In contrast to the easily-recognised Star Wars overture in which there is a distinctive melody, the music in Interstellar places emphasizes the mood of the story rather than providing a clear melody or musical structure.

One of the most noteworthy things about this film score is the use of the pipe organ as the centre of attention. Considering that it is often associated with the church more than anything, a pipe organ in a sci-fi film is something of an eyebrow-raiser. Yet, it seems to fit well into a movie that on the surface, has no religious connection whatsoever. What it does have however, is a story that portrays the delicate relationship between a father and daughter, and humankind’s search for a home in the unknown. From a subsequent viewing of the movie, I can only surmise that the pipe organ was able to capture the feeling in both themes simply through its association with the church. The love and warmth felt in the father-daughter relationship is similar to that of a church-goer and his/her feelings toward God and his peers. Similarly, the mystical feeling of venturing into the stars beyond what is familiar is not unlike the feeling of interacting with an entity that is greater than yourself, such as one might experience in interactions with God.

Some other notable features of Interstellar’s film score is the use of relatively simple tunes when compared to the overall work, and the clock ticking effect present in a good portion of the score. For a movie that has an incredible story and corresponding visual effects, the tunes provided by the score are very simple. Take the leitmotif from the track “S.T.A.Y.” (see image below), the range of sounds are confined to just five pitches. On top of that, every other note is the same (high E) while the lower notes simply climb up one pitch at a time.

The tune of the leitmotif as can be heard throughout the film score.

In the context of the film, this technique seems to emphasize just how insignificant the human species when sized up against the universe. If the rich and full orchestra is the universe, then a simplistic 5-pitch melody is humankind. A section of the movie that very much exploits this technique is during the scene in which the spacecraft (in which the main characters reside) is tumbling through space at high speeds, yet it is seen on screen only as a tiny pixel moving slowly across the vastness of space, with the giant Saturn looming in the background. This sense of utter solitude evoked by this scene is only amplified by the simple piano tune. Secondly, the film score contains a favourite musical feature of Zimmer’s; that is, the use of a steady beat in the background. The effect is such that the listener gets an overwhelming sense of urgency as if a clock is ticking; in fact, this effect is not so subliminal as a metronome is used quite loudly to mimic the ticking sound of a clock. This can be heard very clearly in the track “Mountains” as the ticking appears right from the beginning and continues with this steady beat, becoming inaudible for a short moment as the rest of the orchestra crescendos, and then returning at a much quicker beat at the 2:35 mark.

As a whole, I’d say that these musical features worked exceptionally well in producing the emotional response that was intended of the story. On top of that, the inclusion of a church organ in an unorthodox setting added another dimension (pun not intended) to the listeners’ musical experience.