How Dario Marianelli composed his landmark score for ‘Atonement’
Born in Pisa and educated in both Florence and London, Dario Marianelli is one of the most prolific composers working today. Many of his most revered scores are the product of a fruitful collaboration with director Joe Wright. Following his brilliant work on 2003’s I Capture The Castle, Dario was invited to compose the score for Wright’s 2005 adaptation of Pride And Prejudice. The success of that knowingly neoclassical score cemented the composer’s reputation, and in 2007, he was approached to write the music for another book-to-screen adaptation, Atonement. The Oscar-winning score remains some of Marianelli’s finest work. Join us as we explore how it came together.
Like all of Marianelli’s scores, Atonement came together after a period of what most other composers would call R&D. Dario prefers the term “messing around”. Speaking to Spitfire Audio, the composer explained that the first thing he does when he sets to work on a score is panic. “Yes, that’s the invariable constant,” he said. “I panic. I drink a lot of coffee. I procrastinate. Once I’ve exhausted all the possible excuses, I start by messing around at the keyboard until, usually, something happens. This sounds a bit vague and haphazard, but, in fact, it’s a tried and tested method. Over the years, I’ve grown more experienced at allowing chance and serendipity to enter my work. Even just throwing my hands on the keyboard, if I do it long enough, might come up with something interesting.”
This improvisational phase gave birth to some of the score’s most important material, such as the main piano theme – first heard in ‘Briony’ – and the rhythmic clatter of the typewriter. Marianelli also developed a sloping, solo clarinet theme for Robbie and began developing darker string arrangments based on pre-establishes themes for cues such as ‘Cee, You and Tea’. One of the score’s greatest strengths is its orchestration. For this, Marianelli worked closely with Benjamin Wallfisch, who prepared Marienelli’s initial digital score for the musicians in the English Chamber Orchestra. The use of live players resulted in a free-flowing and highly expressive score. “I didn’t want to use a mechanical subdivision of time,” Dario told Spitfire. “I just wanted to find a way to bring my own musical performance into the sequencer. So I started using a conductor, who was Ben Wallfisch.”
Marianelli and Wallfisch worked with two soloists: cellist Caroline Dale, who had previously played on Pride and Prejudice, and French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who performed all the piano solos, some of which – such as ‘Love Letters’ – were written before Marianelli had seen a cut of the film. The piece wasn’t used in the film itself but provided a wonderful outro in the end credits.
Marianelli’s score incorporates numerous elements of Wright’s script. Briony’s typewriter is perhaps the most obvious example, and Dario’s use of this authorly tool helps to highlight the fact that we are watching the events from her semi-fictional perspective. Then you have the army choir singing “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” on the beaches of Dunkirk, for which Marianelli composed a lush string-based reimagination of ‘Repton’ by Hubert Parry. Of course, it’s those solo parts that really allow Marianelli’s score to shine.
Thibaudet’s piano, Dale’s cello, and those expositionary oboe and clarinet passages are all highly evocative of compositions by Brahms, Beethoven and, occasionally, Stravinsky. As well as showcasing Marianelli’s encyclopaedic knowledge of classical scores, these help the audience inhabit the world of the film, a world of mahogany tables, wide lawns, and violent skies. You can revisit one of our favourite cues from Atonement below.