Moonlight (soundtrack)
Moonlight is the soundtrack to the 2016 film of the same name directed by Barry Jenkins. The film's original score is composed by Nicholas Britell who applied a chopped and screwed technique of hip hop remixes to orchestral music, producing a "fluid, bass-heavy score". The soundtrack album consisted of 21 tracks, with incorporated compositions from Goodie Mob, Boris Gardiner and Barbara Lewis and an arrangement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Vesperae solennes de confessore" by Britell, with the score accompanying the remainder of it.
Lakeshore Records released the film's soundtrack digitally on October 21, 2016 and in physical formats on November 25, 2016, with the vinyl edition of the album, being released on February 17, 2017. The score received positive critical acclaim praising Britell's composition and the chopped and screwed musical technique. The score received nominations for "Best Original Score" category in the Academy Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, Golden Globe Awards and other ceremonies, but lost all of them to Justin Hurwitz for La La Land. However, Britell won the Black Reel Award for Outstanding Original Score and Best Original Score in a Feature Film.
Background
The original score is composed by Nicholas Britell, marking the beginning of a collaboration with Jenkins. Plan B Entertainment, co-producer Jeremy Kleiner approached Britell with a script for reading, which he felt as "incredibly beautiful" and "completely overwhelmed" agreeing to contribute to the music. He added "the film felt like poetry, it was so beautiful and tender".Recording and production
The score is an alteration of minimal instrumentation and sounds from full chamber orchestra. His initial musical instincts were to have "sensitivity, tenderness and intimacy", and adding a counterpoint is the idea of chopped and screwed music, a type of Southern hip hop genre where songs are bent and pitched and slowed down and become "fascinating morphed versions of themselves that are deepened and enriched". This technique is mainly to slow down the tempo between 60-70 quarter-note beats that, when repeated in a measure, creates a "choppy" effect. The recordings he scored where manipulated with the Ableton Live software, where he would play with octaves and tone and layered them to achieve that sound.As the film is divided into three chapters of Chiron's life, the score itself depict the character's growth with the progressive community. He first began with "Chiron's Theme" where he chopped and screwed piano alternates between major and minor chords, with spare violin acting as counterpoint, which led Britell call it as "Piano and Violin Poem". The theme was then morphed into cellos, when Chiron reunites with his childhood friend Kevin. In contrast, the score for "The Middle of the World" is played when a young Chiron is taught to swim by Juan, a sensitive drug-dealer who becomes his father-figure. This provoked him to write the main theme for the film. In a sequence, where Chiron and Kevin slap hands in a high-five before tragedy separates them, Britell used the sonic element to create a percussion tapestry, which was "a fascinating exploration of what happens to the pieces after they’ve been woven into a sonic landscape".