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Published: Tuesday, 19 March 2024 at 07:00 AM


The Oscar for Best Original Score is a highly sought-after and hotly contested category every year at the Academy Awards. This year was no different, with new contenders appearing for the first time, competing against the legends of the game. John Williams has broken his own record for the most nominations for any single living person, while Jerskin Fendrix makes a splash with a nomination for his very first feature film at just 29. But it was the most talked-about film composer of the moment who ended up taking home the top prize: Oppenheimer‘s Ludwig Göransson. Without further ado, here is your guide to this year’s winner, along with the other nominations for this year’s Oscars for Best Original Score.

Winner of the Oscar for Best Original Score 2024

Oppenheimer (Ludwig Göransson)

Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson has become one of the biggest names in the film music world in recent years, thanks to his work on films including Creed, Marvel’s Black Panther, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Disney+’s Star Wars series, The Mandalorian. As well as scoring some of the biggest films of the last few years, Göransson has worked as a record producer with Childish Gambino on several of his albums. This year he has already clinched the other two major awards for film scoring, winning the BAFTA and Golden Globe for his Oppenheimer score.

Göransson chose to place the violin at the heart of his score, thanks to its versatility and ability to ‘go from the most romantic melodic tone and within a split second turn the tremolo into something neurotic and manic’, he told Variety. As is typical of many of his scores, he uses synthesizers to enhance or evolve organic recorded instrumental sounds. The film’s director Christopher Nolan suggested the prominent use of the violin, because he thinks of it as a ‘fretless instrument’, much like the film’s protagonist, J Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.