hi i'm composer nicholas pertell and i'm
here with vanity fair today to explore
my score to hbo's succession
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
now the word score would really imply
the whole
entity of all the music that i've
written um as underscore for the show
when i'm talking about themes in the
show i'm basically referring to a
musical idea
that recurs and that may evolve over the
course of the show there can be many
different themes and many variations on
those themes all within this idea of the
entirety of the score
the score for succession has a similar
duality that i think the the show has
which is this combination of elements of
absurdity and also a deep gravitas under
the surface because the show itself is
dealing with very serious issues of
concentrations of power and wealth in
the hands of fewer and fewer people
focused in the media industry but at the
same time there's a
human side of the story which focuses on
some of the
day-to-day absurdities and pettiness and
strife among the cast of characters and
when i was first
thinking about the type of music for the
show i was imagining for myself what is
the music that the roy family might
imagine for themselves and then at the
same time i remember early on seeing
some of the dailies where jeremy was
rapping beastie boys to himself so there
was this thought of well
is there a kind of dark
courtly classical music that might feel
like it's related to them that they
would think of for themselves what if we
also mix that with some hip-hop beats
and see what that sounds like and right
away it felt like there was something
working with this strange combination of
sounds
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
there's this sort of immediate
dissonance
right from the top of the piece where
you know you hear this sort of c minor
chord but there's actually a b natural
in it
which gives you this
immediate sense that something is maybe
potentially off
and
the melody line on top this
if you break it down right away from the
top there's
[Applause]
these sort of accented
dissonances which aren't
in the scale so you know this
if you go on an a flat major
chord
that note isn't
isn't part of the scale so i'm
constantly winding in these
notes that aren't part of the scale just
to kind of like
jolt the music in a different direction
[Music]
so you see how things are always kind of
off kilter with themselves like the
family in the show
[Music]
on top of that underneath it if you
strip out what's happening on the melody
there are these chords
[Music]
this is a very sort of old-school
classical set of harmonies which many
composers would use these kinds of
chords often to signify perhaps a
culmination of a
minor key piece of classical music
one six
two
half diminished in a first inversion
and then on the five so you get this
this feeling of a late 1700s dark
classical universe and then
there's a sort of
scope and epic nature to the the way
that the score then evolves where these
large chords played on a string
orchestra
[Music]
the main theme in its essence forms the
basis for many of the variations that i
explore certainly in season one so we
have this theme
[Music]
that kind of motif where these chords
can then
evolve into something like this
[Music]
so
[Music]
and at that point in season two
the music actually takes a left turn and
goes
into a new
melody
and harmony
[Music]
and then
this is a new
set of ideas for season two
[Music]
so you can see how not only is there a
kind of variation that happens with the
chords and uh the basic idea from season
one but in season two one of the fun
things to explore was where do we go
with these these characters as they
themselves are evolving as the story is
developing in a different place the
conversation that i had at the end of
season one into season two with jesse
armstrong our show's creator was i had
this idea of what if the
main ideas were almost like the first
movement of a symphony and what if
in season two is kind of like a second
movement of a symphony so that's
actually where i came up with some of
those ideas as taking them into a
slightly different emotional place and
still
for sure at times going back to the
ideas from season one and what's
actually interesting in the show is that
there are times where a theme will start
seeming like it may be related to one
character but it actually becomes
related to many of the characters and i
think that some of those are actually
almost like unexpected on our part
there's times where a certain piece of
music just links up in a way with a
story line and it's almost like the show
is
is directing us in a certain place where
it's almost telling us that there are
these other dynamics at work so i'm
always excited to see the new episodes
because i try to stay as open as
possible to following where i feel the
the show is taking me and how i might
then evolve the music along with it
there's a lot of different places that
different themes might occur there's
different variations on them different
instruments may play them so for example
the variation in the culmination theme
that i was talking about that's a change
in the form and the rhythm so there's a
you call it kind of like an ostinato or
it's this
sort of
but the chords
in this case
it's a variation because the same chords
but the
form of the piece is just different now
and then there's sort of a
filigree kind of
more virtuosic
element
and that can be played with piano it
could be played with strings it could be
played with many different instruments
there's always something
lurking
between the surface hopefully with a lot
of these themes
at the beginning of one of the episodes
where we see logan walking in central
park there's a dark melancholy i think
in that but there's also at least to me
i think i'm sort of implying a sort of
coiled power maybe inside of it these
sort of
so
[Music]
in particular with logan's character
where
none of us really know the full depths
of uh of what he's thinking of there's
quite a few different variations where i
also explore different kinds of
classical forms too there's things all
of those were in essentially like 4 4
time there's things i do in almost like
a minuet kind of a dark minuet there's a
theme that you hear at times this kind
of
[Music]
that kind of an idea and again i think
we're there's a sort of dark courtly
nature to that but it's also kind of
dance-like in a sense which provides
different tone in different places that
piece of music actually may occur around
corporate intrigue when corporate
strategy is being discussed
we're always doing musical experiments
and i'm always excited to try different
ways of taking us out of these episodes
and through the end credits so in almost
all cases the end credits is its own
variation and idea one of the themes
that that is very featured at that
moment is this is this theme
[Music]
so
[Music]
as we were talking about earlier there's
there's a scope and a dark grandeur at
times to the music but i often like
playing things in counterpoint where
you've had this large
you know emotional experience and at the
end of the episode the music actually
sort of retreats and goes into a quieter
um more melancholy place
there's something interesting about this
feeling of like is there this inherent
subtle
sadness that's underlying all of what's
happening in this show
[Music]
so we've just explored a few of the main
themes of succession seasons one and two
and how some of these themes evolve
over the course of the 20 episodes
i am curious myself as to where season
three takes us and i hope you've enjoyed
this musical exploration of the music in
succession
[Music]