John Taylor is a creature of habit, no happier than within the safety and familiarity of his own four walls. The outside world, its noise, excesses, people and problems are too much for this puzzle-setter. That’s right, Taylor creates crosswords (among other brain teasers) and he does it under the name ‘Ludwig’.
Beethoven is big in Taylor’s world; ever since he was a child (abandoned by his father one New Year’s Eve) he has consoled himself in the music of Beethoven and it’s safe to say that his affinity with the composer is strong.
So when Taylor is wrenched from his ordered life so that he might help his sister-in-law get to the bottom of his twin brother’s disappearance, his world is upended. In order to help he must pretend to be his brother, a police detective, and in doing so finds himself having to solve a string of murders. The perfect puzzle.
Ludwig is the brainchild of Mark Brotherhood (Death in Paradise) and stars David Mitchell as the titular Beethoven-obsessive. Anyone who has enjoyed the series on BBC One or iPlayer will have heard the music by composers Nathan Klein and Finn Keane, who do a little more than tip their hats to Beethoven.
Their music uses Beethoven as its starting point, a hint of a melody here, a harmonic progression there. It’s given musically minded audiences their own classical music puzzle to solve. But what are the Beethoven pieces hidden in Ludwig, and how did Klein and Keane work together to create one of this year’s most puzzling TV scores? We sat down with Nathan Klein to find out just that. And be warned, there are spoilers ahead, both musical and narrative!
This kind of project is a bit of a gift for a composer isn’t it?
Both of us were so excited when we read the script for the first time, because it’s not just a passing reference to Beethoven. The main character’s identity is totally entwined with him, and at a really seminal moment in his life. In Episode One he’s processing a really traumatic moment and he turns to Beethoven for safety and comfort, but he also clearly turns to him for inspiration – because that’s what he uses to create his first puzzles. So there is that connection there and it didn’t feel like a light thing, it felt like we needed to do it. If we didn’t incorporate Beethoven when we were writing the score, that would maybe be a bit of a problem.
Was the idea of integrating Beethoven’s music into the score presented to you when you were brought on board, or was that something you came up with?
That was something we pitched when we met for the first time. I don’t know if anyone else had suggested that, or if they were already thinking about it, but it seemed like the reason we got asked to do it. We did some small sketches on some Beethoven themes; one of them was the Für Elise that ended up opening the whole show. So right from the beginning we had that key musical game in there, and that definitely made us feel like we could make it work.
Was it a challenge to maintain the idea?
It was a real challenge. In some ways I was a bit worried, because when you’re scoring a show you can just sit down, watch the scene, feel it and think, ‘okay, I’m going to do this music.’ And it’s almost easier that way, to do it instinctively. Whereas you’re setting quite a difficult parameter for yourself if it has to have some link to Beethoven.
We stretched that parameter sometimes, where it was quite a loose link, but at least it was inspired by it in some way. There might be a small amount of harmony, or a short motif, or even just a rhythm; so in some cues the connection is looser. But it was definitely harder to approach it like that, at least at first. Once we felt like we’d cracked the back of it and had done an episode or two, we had such a palette and a sense of how it could work that it made things easier – like any show, when you’ve found your themes and you’ve found your language. But it was definitely a daunting thing.
How did you come up with the final set of Beethoven pieces to work with?
There was a lot of discussion. We sat at the piano playing lots of different bits of Beethoven, thinking about it emotionally and thinking about the story and what function it would have in the scene. It was an instinctive feeling in terms of how it would work.
Initially we really wanted to use some other bits of the Ninth Symphony, particularly the second movement (which was used in A Clockwork Orange) and that’s such an exciting, thriller-ish thing. We thought we’d use it for all the thriller elements of the score to really create that energy, but we couldn’t get it in. So it’s definitely something we played around with. Ultimately you have to put it with the scene, sculpt it to the scene and see if it’s working.
Did you set out to have a single Beethoven musical theme running through each episode?
We’d sit down and try to find at least one new piece that would be the central theme for each episode. Sometimes that came from the ‘cold opens’ – the episodes open with a murder and it’s a bit of a set-piece without dialogue. So we’d try and find something that worked with that, because the music has to do a lot of heavy lifting.
In Episode Two, for example, we tried Beethoven’s Fifth for the chase through the manor house and that worked really well. Then the rest of the episode is that piece.
Episode Three is the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, which was gifted to us in the script, and it worked really well for all the organ stuff. It was a more emotional story, which felt right, because it’s an incredibly emotional piece of music.
Episode Four was the first movement of the Ninth Symphony, and Episode Five was the Coriolan Overture, which kind of felt like it had a resonance with the story. John is becoming a bit of a hero himself, serving society. Beethoven’s music is not always necessarily programmatic, but the titles can suggest something programmatic.
And then we used the ‘Eroica’ Symphony for the last episode, because he really is the hero. We called one of the tracks ‘Puzzling Hero’, which is the moment where he saves Lucy; he really has to use all of his mental abilities to figure her out of a very difficult situation. I think it just creates so much richness, and I love extra levels of meaning in things; not even on a sonic level, there’s a bit of thought behind every moment.
You’ve created your own musical puzzle for the audience… were you expecting that people would want to join your musical dots?
That was the thing that we debated at the beginning, because for some people this was going to be really fun, tracing all of this. I’ve had messages from people saying they’ve really enjoyed doing that, so it is adding an extra level of enjoyment. Obviously we didn’t want to alienate anyone; it’s a show for a wide audience and it had to work for the story, it couldn’t just be about providing that musical puzzle for people. So that was the challenge, but hopefully we’ve done both; hopefully it’s fun for this extra reason, but it still serves the drama.
If you get a second series, will you feel more pressure to continue to weave these musical references in and maybe make them more complex?
I think it’ll be exciting if there are future series’, I’d love to explore more of those kind of connections. Luckily Beethoven wrote an enormous amount of brilliant music. I think it’ll be so much fun; even the pieces we’ve already used, there’s plenty more there.
Tell us about your use of orchestral music and synths in the score, do the two soundworlds have a narrative function?
We really wanted to make sure the score wasn’t just orchestral, which is particularly important because of the Beethoven inspiration. We really wanted it to feel like re-composition and a new musical language with some ideas from Beethoven, so incorporating non-orchestral instruments was important. The big thing we used was prepared piano; we’d mute strings, put things on the strings, and we felt something about that would really distress John. He’s quite a conventional guy and the idea of playing the piano in the wrong way would grind his gears.
That first episode is, especially, all about him being exposed and out of his comfort zone. Where you really see that is when he’s going through the police station for the first time; we called that ‘Station Disorientation’, because he’s really overwhelmed by the environment. The sound designer did an amazing job creating that, but hopefully we did that with the music, too. That was largely prepared piano and some unusual percussion.
We wanted to bring in the synths because it looked back to the ’80s, when he was growing up with his brother. He’s living this weird synthesis of his life, with his brother’s, so we thought that would be an interesting element to call back to. It also just felt like a really good way of modernising the score; we wanted it to feel like a modern palette.
What was the process for the two of you, working together on the score?
We started at the piano, sketching and choosing themes, and then we’d part and work on sketches, come back together and evaluate them, change things and come up with different ideas. I’ve done a lot of co-composition and it really varies; sometimes you’re in the room together, sometimes you’re separate. But with Finn, because he does a lot of work in pop music, he’s pretty much always in the room when he’s working with a vocalist, a top line, or another producer. So he’s so used to being in the room, doing live ideas and experimenting. I’ve done a reasonable amount of that, but a lot less than he has.
So it was a really lovely thing for me to be with someone who is so used to doing that together. Composing can be such a solitary thing where you get stuck in your head and bit protective of your ideas. It’s like a beautful, liberating thing to share that with someone. We’ve been friends for 12-13 years, so it feels safe and that he isn’t going to walk out if he doesn’t like something. The most positive thing I’ve done in my career is co-write with people; and whenever I talk to someone who is starting out and looking for advice, I always say it’s all about collaborating with other musicians. I think film and TV composers start out thinking they need to meet lots of directors and producers, but I’d say it’s more important to meet other composers and work with them.
What was the Beethoven piece that was the most fun to play around with?
I think ‘Eroica’ for Episode Six was definitely the most fun. It’s such a great melody and we made it minor in the opening sequence. Beethoven does that himself in his development, but the bit that everyone knows the best is the major version and we do it in a minor key. It became really versatile and flexible, and Episode Six is just endless ‘Eroica’, but it never got tiring or boring.
Ludwig is currently on BBC One and iPlayer in the UK. Nathan Klein and Finn Keane’s album is available to stream wherever you enjoy your music, courtesy of Silva Screen Records. Listen on Apple. Listen on Spotify.