A Composer Steps Into the Universe of Stephen Hawking

The musician and composer Johann Johannsson, whose latest project is the score
for the film "The Theory of Everything." Courtesy SpectreVision Management

BY ALEXANDRIA SYMONDS

OCTOBER 28, 2014 5:45 PM
When discussing his soundtrack for James Marsh’s upcoming biopic about the physicist Stephen Hawking, “The Theory of Everything, ” the Icelandic musician and composer Johann Johannsson cannot help but tend toward scientific metaphors. He describes the lush, strings-driven accommodement in evidence throughout the work as “shimmery and sparkling - like the stars above, almost. ” And as for the four-note piano ostinato figure that anchors the particular score: “It’s like the DNA of the film that mutates and evolves, ” he says.

Though that motif provided a framework - and the possibility to “reverse it and deconstruct it and break it down and retrograde it in various ways, ” as Johannsson explains - a unique challenge offered by “The Theory of Everything” was its scope. The film employs Hawking (played by Eddie Redmayne) and the woman who would become his better half, Jane (Felicity Jones), over the course of 25 years. “People change, and things develop; the background music had to reflect that to a certain extent, but we wanted to keep it timeless, as well, ” Johannsson says. “We didn’t want it to refer to time-specific styles or genres. ”

This score, by turns delicate and exuberant, represents a departure regarding Johannsson, who is known for more minimal, ambient and experimental music, both in his very own original postclassical releases and in his many previous film soundtracks (including previous year’s “Prisoners”). “It’s quite a different sound for me, in many ways, ” Johannsson claims. “Although I have explored music that is in a similar vein, it kind of actually reaches a full flowering in this score. ”
Johannsson has long been interested in Hawking’s work, and also elements of the score, he says, “reflect the cosmology, the poetry regarding physics, and the way that the beauty of the logic and the mathematics of the galaxy are revealed to Hawking. ” But the emotional dimension of the film, he or she says, was an equally if not more important motivating factor. “A lot of the background music, when music occurs in the film, has to do with the relationships, ” he claims. “And also a kind of transcendence, and the amazing philosophy of life that Hawking embodies: his great sense of humor, and his great belief in the poetry of existence. ”

Here, listen to the full soundtrack for the film, which opens in theaters Nov. 7