Hildur Guðnadóttir... composing at all times of day and night
Hildur Guðnadóttir is scrolling through her phone. Whereas most people use the device to collect photographs and notes alongside contact numbers, the Icelandic composer records snippets of music. These are not found sounds like bird song or a grumbling engine, but the melodies and rhythms that fill her mind on a near-constant basis. Such industry is not to be wasted, and so Guðnadóttir preserves each moment as a voice memo. ‘These snapshots are a musical diary,’ she says, demonstrating how she sings into the microphone. ‘My music is deeply connected to my voice; there’s a feedback loop between vocals and cello.’
There is a sense of exorcism to this process. Once the idea has been preserved, Guðnadóttir can continue with her day – or night. Creative seeds rarely arrive at convenient times. Many of these voice notes were recorded on pavements as Guðnadóttir paused on her bike, singing into her phone among the Berlin traffic. ‘Music wakes me up sometimes,’ she says. ‘I record it to get it to leave me alone.’
Where to From: Guðnadóttir's first solo album in 10 years
Some of the kernels have gone on to be featured in high-profile film and TV scores (more about them later), but many remained gathering proverbial dust. Now, the musings form the backbone for Where to From, Guðnadóttir’s first solo album in 10 years. The cover depicts a child, eyes lowered behind an icy-white fringe. There’s a luminous quality to her chalky skin. A passing glance suggests this could be an old photo of Guðnadóttir. But closer inspection reveals an unsettling stillness – these, and the images elsewhere in the booklet, are doll sculptures made by Gisèle Vienne, a friend of the composer.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about the history of record covers and the way composers have been presented over time,’ says Guðnadóttir. ‘I wanted to use the dolls, not only because I find Gisèle’s sculptures fascinating, but to play with the idea of what a composer looks like.’ The use of a doll as a trapped being is a leitmotif in art, where the uncanny or botched realism stirs concern and distrust. Placing this into the composer-context is subversive, effective – and a little creepy. ‘Both mine and Gisèle’s work is often described as dark,’ agrees Guðnadóttir. ‘People expect me to be a melancholic person.’
Hildur Guðnadóttir... a fascination with 'the darker side of life'
In fact, the creator of dark psychological thriller soundtracks – including Joker, Chernobyl and Tár – is warm and upbeat. ‘I think it confuses people,’ Guðnadóttir smiles. ‘I’m far more interested in gothic horror than rom coms. I grew up reading Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes and crime novels; there is something very interesting to me about the darker side of life.’ Musically, that interest is explored in works like Górecki’s ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’, which is on the piano in Guðnadóttir’s Berlin studio. ‘I’m playing his string quartets too,’ she says, showing me the score. ‘They are some of my favourite pieces.’ Next to the piano in this small room is another music stand, this one at cello height, holding Bach’s Suites.
Composing the music for Tár
We can imagine that these are the same pieces played by Olga Metkina (performed onscreen by Sophie Kauer), the fictional cellist in the Berlin orchestra conducted by Lydia Tár in the 2022 eponymous film. When Olga arrives at Tár’s apartment for a rehearsal, she plays a piece on the conductor’s piano desk. The bleak, beautiful melody is by Guðnadóttir, sung by the composer on the opening soundtrack album and played by Kauer in the version for cello. Tár posed an unusual challenge for Guðnadóttir: the film composer had to find a way to meld her own character-driven music with extant works – including Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, the work Tár is preparing to record.
‘There’s the character Tár presents on the podium – the grand classical maestro – and the music that moves her, which is more contemporary and simple. I wanted to capture that duality,’ explains Guðnadóttir. ‘For her own compositions I wanted to write something that was the polar opposite to Mahler,’ she says of the sparse, introspective pieces she created for Cate Blanchett to claim. The membrane between the screen composer and the composer for screen becomes increasingly porous; Tár is deliciously meta. The imagined Mahler Fifth is to be recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, the label for whom Guðnadóttir records (as well as Where to From, her solo albums Mount A (2006), Without Sinking (2009), Leyfðu Ljósinu (2012) and Saman (2014) are available via DG). The Tár album combines the Dresden Philharmonic’s performances of Mahler, Elgar and Guðnadóttir.
Hildur Guðnadóttir... on composing the soundtracks for Chernobyl and Joker
Composing for film can require incorporating some unusual elements. In Tár, the composer-conductor becomes fixated on a particular interval, which director Todd Field heard made by an alarm device used by his father-in-law. Guðnadóttir takes this interval and sews it into the score. ‘One of the first things we did was define the main characters in terms of their BPM [beats per minute] and their interior musical landscape,’ says Guðnadóttir. Using these types of immersive samples has become important in her work.
For the 2019 HBO series Chernobyl, Guðnadóttir uses a recording of a nuclear power plant. But often the clean acoustic melodies can be the most impactful; elegiac cello writing illuminates the ominous depression of the clown in 2019’s Joker.
Winning Oscars and Golden Globes
Such work is critically acclaimed, and Guðnadóttir has won an Oscar, a Bafta, a Golden Globe and two Grammys for her work in television and film, notably becoming the first solo female composer to win a Golden Globe for Best Original Score.
‘It wasn’t until I started seeing these statistics – the tiny percentage of female film composers – that I began to understand that the opportunities I have had have been unusual,’ says Guðnadóttir. ‘I’m not someone who likes to be in the spotlight but I’ve come to realise that I need to be more visible so that girls can see examples of women writing this type of music. I’ve had it said to me a few too many times, “Are you sure you can handle this?” The implication is that I might not be able to because I am a woman.’
Hildur Guðnadóttir... where and when was she born?
Such limitation had never occurred to Guðnadóttir. Born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1982, she was surrounded by music – her father Guðni Franzson is a clarinettist and composer, and her mother Ingveldur Guðrún Ólafsdóttir is an opera singer. She also grew up in a society that celebrated female leadership: during her childhood, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was Iceland’s president – the first woman to hold the position and the first in the world to be a democratically elected president of a country – and Björk was reanimating the avant-garde. ‘I grew up seeing women as strong professionals,’ says Guðnadóttir, whose grandmother was one of the first female doctors in Iceland. ‘I was always told that if there’s something that you feel that you want to do, you just do it.’
Hildur Guðnadóttir... where did she study?
That thing was the cello, which Guðnadóttir began playing at five, going on to the Reykjavík Music Academy and Iceland Academy of the Arts before moving to Berlin. ‘I spent my weekdays and Saturday mornings playing with string orchestras and practising scales. And then in the evenings and on the weekends, I’d be playing with my friends in bands and experimenting with electronics,’ laughs Guðnadóttir, ‘For me, those two sides have always gone completely hand in hand.’
Like Tár, Guðnadóttir didn’t always find the duality easy to reconcile. ‘I’d arrive at string sectionals smelling of smoke,’ she says, ‘and then later, playing in the band, my friends would be disappointed that I had to leave because I needed to be up early to get to orchestra practice. But I’ve always loved building bridges between those worlds, and Iceland was the place where everything was possible.’ In the naughties, the Icelandic post-rock soundworld led the charge, with Sigur Rós shifting the genre from alternative to mainstream. Guðnadóttir was at the centre of this community, making music with Múm and Jóhann Jóhannsson, with whom she would share a studio in Germany, continuing to collaborate until his death in 2018.
There was a sense of pragmatism to this collective working. ‘Life in Iceland was very isolated,’ says Guðnadóttir. ‘There wasn’t any internet at that point; we didn’t fly anywhere as it was so expensive. Between us we had a handful of amplifiers and good microphones. It was a beautiful way to grow up – making music with friends to survive the darkness.’
Hildur Guðnadóttir... her musical style
The Sigur Rós-inspired post-rock world foregrounded unusual timbres, such as gibberish vocals (that many UK fans believed to be the Icelandic tongue until corrected) and the use of a bow on electric guitar. It was within this sphere that Guðnadóttir began experimenting with cello techniques, and started playing the halldorophone, a type of electronic cello. ‘It was built by Halldór Úlfarsson, a friend of mine,’ she explains. ‘He made this instrument because we were having jam sessions and he needed something to play. Initially it had the body of a guitar, but later a cello body, with a speaker on the back that creates a feedback mechanism, with pickups on every string. It’s a Jimi Hendrix cello!’
The instrument, once beloved of Icelandic parties, got worldwide attention when Guðnadóttir used it in the Joker score. ‘It can make loud, droning noises but you can also play with the bow. I’m excited about expanding the vocabulary of the cello in every direction,’ she says.
It’s the combination of these acoustic-electric colours and clean, choral brushstrokes – inspired by traditional Icelandic music – that make Guðnadóttir’s style distinctive. Take The Fact of the Matter, premiered at the 2022 Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers, which brings to mind windswept treeless landscapes and smoking geysers. Rumbling percussion, tolling bells and crystalline vocals evoke an emotional landscape that occasionally explodes. The BBC commission was set alongside Jóhannsson’s reworkings of Durham miners’ songs (The Miners’ Hymns), Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet fantasy-overture and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a fascinating juxtaposition of Icelandic and Russian sonorities.
Hildur Guðnadóttir... composing for video games
Some who heard Guðnadóttir’s premiere may have been unaware that the composer had another piece performed at the Royal Albert Hall that year. Selections from Battlefield 2042 – created alongside Guðnadóttir’s husband, the British composer-producer Sam Slater – were played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the first-ever Gaming Prom. OK, so other than playing Super Mario Bros in the 1990s and the belief that Pikachu is adorable, my knowledge of gaming is rather 8-bit. Guðnadóttir is not a gamer either, although she spent time at the console for this, her first video soundtrack. ‘Ultimately, it’s very similar to writing for screen,’ she says, and of working with those close to her, ‘friendship and music are the most vital parts of my life. Getting to know each other through music is so special. My pieces and records are a musical documentation of friendship.’
