By Freya Parr

Published: Wednesday, 19 January 2022 at 12:00 am

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Bridgerton‘s first season landed on Netflix on Christmas Day 2020 and was immediately met by mild hysteria from audiences across the world. The bodice-ripper became the most popular Netflix series of all time, with Netflix’s CEO announcing that a record 82 million subscribers had watched the programme during its first month on the platform.

The music of Bridgerton was highly talked about, with Kris Bowers penning string quartet arrangements of pop songs by the likes of Taylor Swift and Shawn Mendes.

But what will the second series have in store for us?

Who wrote the soundtrack to Bridgerton?

American composer and pianist Kris Bowers was responsible for scoring the first series of the Netflix show. He composed both the lush orchestral score and the pastiche string quartet arrangements of modern pop songs, which were performed by the Vitamin String Quartet.

Bowers has previously composed scores for film, TV and video games. His best known score is for the Academy Award-winning 2018 film Green Book, inspired by a tour of the Deep South by African American pianist Don Shirley and his driver. The film blended Bowers’s original score with recordings of Shirley himself.

The score for the first series of Bridgerton was recorded remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic, with just eight musicians recording themselves at home. These recordings were then layered on top of one another to create a thick orchestral sound.

He wrote a theme for the protagonist Daphne, which was then expanded upon for the rest of the series. Much of the score is fairly minimalist, with simple strings and pared-back orchestrations, but when the drama heightens – and a layer or two of clothing is being ripped off – the percussion is added and the upper ranges of the strings are used to create a swelling effect.

Bowers also wrote a shared theme for the two protagonists, which is played when they are together and in love. This is slowly brought in throughout the earlier scenes of the series, as they get to know one another.