Mary Queen of Scots (soundtrack)

Mary Queen of Scots (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack to the 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots, directed by Josie Rourke starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary, Queen of Scots, and Margot Robbie as her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. Featuring original score by Max Richter, consisting of period and contemporary modern music, the album was recorded at the Air Studios in London, with an 100-piece orchestra and 12-member female choir performing the score. Deutsche Grammophon released the film's score on 7 December 2018.

Background and development

Mary Queen of Scots, being a period film set in the 16th century, Richter provided a fairly modern score that chimed in with his own musical interests, after his involvement with renaissance music. Early-music expert William Lyons called in to handle the historical material, which led Richter free to handle the dramatic score. He claimed that the director Josie Rourke gave him free reins to imagine a musical universe for the story, which consisting historical and modern music as well, and beyond that she was open to bring his vision into the story.

Richter wanted the film to have women's voice as the center of the film's score to provide a psychological context, as the film was a "female-driven piece of storytelling. It’s kind of a love story; it’s multiple love stories, really. It’s the two of them navigating their relationship, and they also have love relationships with other people, and it’s about how that plays out against the historical backdrop." The world of men, according to Richter, generally associated with brutality of various kinds, and preceded with heavy drones, and orchestral music, with low-register instruments, bass instruments pulsating the score, and war drums used to propel the combatants in these various battles and skirmishes, but also propelling Mary to her execution.

The French instrument cor anglais is used for Mary's voice to play huge themes. Richter also wanted the use of instrument as an easter egg, as Mary was born in France and came to Britain, which her liked to have the instrument of a French name that play her melody and served perfect for the story. He further used a classical harp and Gaelic harp to provide the domestic storytelling color. The score consisted of numerous choral music, which consisted of wordless female drones and written-out choral music that uses the language of 16th century Elizabethian polyphonic choral music. A lot of the orchestral music built around repeating bass phrases, which was called a "ground bass" played as a loop, where most of the music built around that. He further experimented with a viol processing the sound into "electronic cloud of viols for some of the more coloristic sequences with the voices [...] The instrumental music is based on a kind of geometry and a set of gestures which come from Renaissance music. So it’s a kind of wandering border between the contemporary and period authenticity."

A string infused 110-piece orchestra and 12-member female choir from London Voices being played throughout the score, but despite being set in Scotland and Richter's study in Edinburgh, he did not use bagpipes, instead employed Gaelic harps as to evoking those sort of colors without resorting to the touristy. The score was recorded in sections where he had to build the layers, sample them and remove those layers in the end. The choir was recorded separately in different sections, which were built up from the strings, and did separate sections for strings, brass, woodwinds and percussions and later assemble them into the score.

Track listing

Reception

Music critic Jonathan Broxton wrote "this is Max Richter’s career high film music composition to date, which will surely appeal to anyone whose taste in scores includes richly rendered but staunchly minimalist orchestral writing, enlivened with a dash of period romance." Gissane Sophia of Marvelous Geeks Media wrote "The entirety of the soundtrack is something special without question, but the few above are utterly mesmerizing. On some rare occasions, you love an original score even more than you love the film, and that’s certainly the case with this one. The soundtrack hits different, and it beautifully captures a plethora of emotions." Sean Wilson of Mfiles wrote "Richter provides highly effective accompaniment using a minimal yet well-crafted and expertly deployed set of musical tools". James Southall of Movie Wave wrote "There’s half an hour of real brilliance here – Richter is such a good composer – just a pity the whole thing is not quite as good as the sum of its parts."

Chart performance

Accolades

Album credits

Credits adapted from liner notes:

References