Swedish musician Ludwig Göransson composed the score for the new film.
Christopher Nolan’s latest film Oppenheimer finally arrives in UK cinemas today, telling the story of the man chiefly responsible for creating the atomic bomb during the Second World War.
There are a great many impressive aspects to the film – from Cillian Murphy’s towering performance to Hoyte van Hoytema’s stunning cinematography – and as is often the case in Nolan’s films another thing that stands out is the use of music.
The film’s score was composed by Swedish musician Ludwig Göransson, who is working with Nolan for the second time following their collaboration on Tenet and whose other credits include Creed, Black Panther, Venom, and Turning Red.
And speaking in the film’s production notes, Nolan explained that “Ludwig’s work on the film is both deeply personal and historically expansive”.
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He added: “It achieves the effect of building out an emotional world to accompany the visual world that Ruth De Jong designed and Hoyte van Hoytema shot, and it draws the audience into the emotional dilemmas of the characters and their interactions with the vast geopolitical situations that they’re confronting.”
Nolan further explained that while he essentially gave Göransson free rein, he did suggest to the Swede that basing the score on violin might be appropriate.
“There’s something about the violin to me that seemed very apt to Oppenheimer,” he said. “The tuning is precarious and totally at the mercy of the playing and emotion of the player. It can be very beautiful one moment and turn frightening or sour instantly.
“So, there’s a tension—a neurosis—to the sound that I think fits the highly strung intellect and emotion of Robert Oppenheimer.”
Read on for the full list of tracks included in the score.
Oppenheimer soundtrack
All tracks were written and produced by Ludwig Göransson, while Thomas Kotcheff provided additional writing on Trinity and Something More Important.
- Fission
- Can You Hear the Music
- A Lowly Shoe Salesman
- Quantum Mechanics
- Gravity Swallows Light
- Meeting Kitty
- Groves
- Manhattan Project
- American Prometheus
- Atmospheric Ignition
- Los Alamos
- Fusion
- Colonel Pash
- Theorists
- Ground Zero
- Trinity
- What We Have Done
- Power Stays in the Shadows
- The Trial
- Dr. Hill
- Kitty Comes to Testify
- Something More Important
- Destroyer of Worlds
- Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer opens in UK cinemas on Friday 21st July. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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