In Abbey Road studios in North London a full orchestra is playing, filling a huge room and loosely arranged around the conductor, whose eyes flit between the players, his sheet music and a television monitor. On screen is a 17-second passage from Titus, the blockbuster new film based on Shakespeare's play Titus Andronicus, and starring Anthony Hopkins. As the orchestra builds to a climax, thunder and lightning lash and crash across the screen. Someone gets their hand chopped off and the music stops dead. There is a moment of eerie silence.
Surreally, a telephone rings. The conductor picks it up. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. Yes.” He turns back to the orchestra as the film on the monitor rewinds to the beginning of the sequence. “OK, from the top, only this time hold the rest in bar seven for another two beats...”
In the control booth, separated by soundproof glass from the main room, composer Elliot Goldenthal and Titus director Julie Taymor confer for a moment. “Take 32,” someone shouts, and the orchestra starts again.
Goldenthal is something of a film score veteran. Having composed the music for such films as “Batman Forever”, “Heat”, and “Alien 3”, he knows the power a good score can give a film. Imagine “Jaws” without the menacing cello, or “Psycho” without the screeching violins – sometimes the music doesn't just add atmosphere, but gives a movie its very tone and definition.
“I also worked on the Titus stage production,” he says, “so in this case I was already intimately familiar with the drama. Normally I get sent scripts, the same as, I guess, actors do, and just follow the production through every level. The tone of any film score lies in the script - once a film has been edited all you can really do is make certain dramatic changes to the music.”
In a snatched break (so Goldenthal can try to work out exactly why a 17-second sequence needs 32-plus takes), he sits in the Abbey Road gardens – presumably the very same gardens John, Paul, George and Ringo pondered Sergeant Pepper in – and stares into space. Dressed head to toe in black and with oddly young messy hair la Andy Warhol, he wears an intense look... until suddenly he claps his hands. Problem solved.
“In many ways ‘Titus’ and ‘Batman’ are very similar,” he turns and declares. “Although ‘Batman’ was in many ways about a disposable culture and Titus is concerned with more eternal ideas, the music is still woven around quite mystic themes and the concepts of good and evil. The difference in scoring the two is all about layers, mirrors, convolutions of thought.”
Like writing a book or shooting a movie, scoring the film can be rather more about perspiration and less about inspiration. Once the excitement of the original seed has been sown, there come the long mechanical practicalities of actually putting it all together. The split-second spark of mental brilliance is inevitably followed by long hours in the studio, re-recording the same 17-second sequence over and over and over until it feels right... No wonder every now and then you have to sit in the garden staring into space.
“Oh I don't find the recording part frustrating in the least,” he smiles, with a glance back towards the recording studio.
“It takes so much attention – I think that can be just as rewarding as finding that original idea, just as thrilling. And it's nice to work so close to the director – it feels like the words, images, music all mesh together. That's just a fantastic feeling, a wonderful thing to achieve. That's why I keep doing it.”
And he's already walking back into the studios. “I've got an idea,” he calls. “If we repeat the sequence from bars 16 and 17...”
Note: This article was clearly written in 1999 during the "Titus" sessions, but evidently was witheld from publication until the film's U.K. release date in September 2000.