A Conversation with Jocelyn Pook on Eyes Wide Shut
(this conversation took place in October 2014 and was first published in November 2019 on my website, www.jonopstad.com)
I first became aware of Jocelyn Pook through Peter Gabriel. As a sixth form student I was given the opportunity to interview Gabriel for my school magazine. Around this time Jocelyn was involved as both an arranger and performer on some of Gabriel’s large-scale projects, such as the music for the Millennium Dome (released as Ovo) and his score for the film Rabbit Proof Fence. Through this I discovered Jocelyn’s album Untold Things, released on Gabriel’s Real World Records label. I hadn’t yet seen Eyes Wide Shut, and didn’t know that Jocelyn had composed the score, but Untold Things introduced me to the music of an extremely interesting composer, with a highly individual voice in her writing for strings, voices and electronic elements. The opening track ‘Dionysus’ in particular had a big impact on me. Interestingly from our discussion below it turns out that that piece had in fact originally been composed for Eyes Wide Shut, but not used (it was later used memorably in Martin Scorcese’s film Gangs of New York).
Several years later, when I had graduated from film school in 2009 and was trying to find work, I wrote to a handful of composers whose music I admired. Jocelyn phoned me out of the blue one day and became the first composer to employ me in an assistant role. One of my first professional jobs was assisting Jocelyn on the Julio Medem film Room In Rome.
As a composer Jocelyn is very active in areas outside of film & TV, including concert music, contemporary dance and other projects. Some of her recent film and TV projects include her sensitive score for The Wife, starring an Oscar-nominated Glenn Close, and her BAFTA-winning score for TV film King Charles III. Jocelyn’s stunning music for Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut (1999) is perhaps her best known work for screen though, and the subject of this conversation, which took place at Jocelyn’s home in north London in October 2014.
We began by talking about at what stage Jocelyn got involved in the project…
JP: I started it two years before it finished. Do you know how it all originally happened?
JO: Yes. A choreographer played your ‘Backwards Priests’ piece to him [Kubrick], for the Masked Ball scene.
JP: Yes, exactly. So he rang me about that.
JO: So he rang you completely out of the blue then?
JP: Yes.
JO: That must have been quite a surprise!
JP: Well luckily his assistant, who was Leon Vitali, called me first and said, “Stanley Kubrick would like to speak to you”. And if he hadn’t done that I would not have believed it, you know, because that was like, “Oh my God, really?!” And I was on the phone, speaking to Chesters, I think it was, and then I had a call waiting and it was Stanley Kubrick! And I had to put him on hold — I said, “Oh hang on, I’m on the other line”!
He was saying, well, “I’ve just heard this piece… I’m really interested to hear more of your stuff… Have you got more that I could hear?”. And I said, “Yeah, sure”, you know, “I’ll make you a cassette” — in those days — and literally about two hours later a car arrived… a big black whatever-it-was, posh car.
JO: Had you had time to finish making the tape?
JP: Yes, because they were really keen to get it really quickly, so about two or three hours later I got this cassette of a compilation of my stuff and put it in the car. And the next day the car came back for me. And so it was literally the next day I went to Pinewood Studios, to meet him.
He was really incredibly friendly and really interested to talk about music in general… and also about my music. Firstly, he was kind of, “What do you call this kind of music that you’re doing?”, you know [laughs]. And he was very curious about it, and was playing me lots of music he was thinking of for the film as well, and saying, “What do you think of this?” and that and the other. Any excuse to talk about music really, because it was one of his passions.
JO: Well that comes across in his films.
JP: Yes. But I hadn’t realised how much. And then after that I also heard how he had these musical soirees in his house, and people I know used to go and play there.
JO: Really?
JP: Yes, because Jan — his brother-in-law, Jan Harlan, who’s the producer of his films — two of his three sons are musicians, Ben and Dominic. And two of Stanley’s daughters were musicians. There’s Anya, who was a singer, and then her husband is a conductor. Anya died sadly of cancer several years ago. And Vivian, the younger daughter, is a composer. So yes, there’s lots of musical activity in that family, and he’d love to have musical soirees.
So when I met him he was always very keen to talk about music. He was very, kind of, fatherly and really interested in any little concert I was doing.
Anyway, basically in that first meeting he wanted to talk to me about doing the music for the masked ball scene and the orgy scene.
JO: Which [the orgy scene] is your ‘Migrations’ piece, is that right?
JP: Well it became that, but it wasn’t originally. I did lots of sketches for it. In fact, for the masked ball he wanted me to try something else. He loved the atmosphere of the ‘Backwards Priests’, but he was also suggesting that I did something choral, and I tried lots of different things. And also for the orgy scene. Talking to Yolande Snaith, who was involved in the choreography, it changed, and it became very stylised, whereas originally it wasn’t going to be. But he left that one very open because he really didn’t know what he wanted for the orgy scene, and he just kind of said ‘sexy music’ you know [laughs]. It was a really hard brief!
JO: That does sound difficult.
Jocelyn Pook — Untold Things (Real World Records, 2001)
JP: And I wrote my piece ‘Dionysus’. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it?
JO: That’s from your album…
JP: Yes, it’s from my album Untold Things.
JO: The first track on it.
JP: Yes.
JO: The one that’s used in Gangs of New York?
JP: Yes.
JO: Great piece!
JP: I wrote it for that orgy scene.
JO: Oh, that’s when you originally wrote that piece?
JP: Yes, and in the end he didn’t use it, but I was really pleased with the piece so I put it on my album.
JO: I’m not surprised, that’s a great piece of music.
JP: It was a really fruitful time in a way. Anyway, so at that point he wouldn’t tell me anything about the film except what was happening in that scene and describing the atmosphere of it.
JO: I was going to ask you what you knew of the film at that stage?
JP: Nothing. And he showed me pictures of the masks and just described it. But it was pretty hard. In a way it was possible because it was, you know, very specific — a self-contained scene.
And then that was that and I don’t think I heard back for a really long period.
JO: Oh, so there was a big gap between working on that scene and getting further involved?
JP: Yes. It was much later that I worked on the rest of the music that I scored. It was about eighteen months or something.
JO: So did you think that that was the end of your role after that then?
JP: Yes.
JO: So did you get another call out of the blue?
JP: Yes [laughs]. I did. In fact, I think that originally Vivian [Kubrick] was supposed to be doing the music and decided not to in the end.
Anyway, when I was contacted about doing the rest of the music, first of all I only had a video of the scenes that I was going to write music for. And I tried to do that. I started working on it with just the specific extracts, like the naval officer scene.
JO: Did you have a sense of the overall plot, and had you read the script or anything?
JP: No, because they were really secretive about it.
JO: So you didn’t know how those bits fitted in with the overall picture?
JP: No. So I tried to write it — I really remember the naval officer scene — I tried to work on it without knowing the rest of the film, and I realised it was impossible. Because I just… I needed to know how loaded things were, you know. That was a pivotal moment.
JO: Yes, I mean that’s where the whole film kind of kicks off from that moment, doesn’t it.
JP: Exactly. And also the sense of her inner turmoil …
JO: And it’s a long sequence as well — I mean it’s about four and half minutes long, isn’t it. And especially with music that’s underscoring dialogue that’s quite a stretch.
JP: Yes, but it was a really interesting exercise as a composer for film music. It was different with the masked ball scene because that was very self-contained in a way, but with this… I just realised I had to know the context and to have a proper understanding of the film.
JO: Of what that moment was leading to?
JP: Yes. So I told them that. And then they said, “OK, well you can have the whole film, but we’re going to have somebody come and sit each day while you work on it and take the film away with them” [laughs]
JO: Sit with you each day while you work on it?!
JP: So that’s what they said at first [laughs]. And then in the end they didn’t do that, you know, but it was a hilarious idea.
JO: Was there a sense that the wider public knew the film was being made?
JP: Oh yes.
JO: I mean in the sense of wanting to keep it all under wraps, was there a sense of a wider interest in getting hold of details of it?
JP: Yeah, there was, yeah. And they were very afraid of that, you know. Very concerned about things being leaked out.
JO: But they did give you a copy of the whole film then?
JP: They did, yes.
JO: Was it [the edit] locked at that stage then?
JP: Probably not. But it was very near the final stages.
JO: So from that point were you scoring to picture then?
JP: Yes. It was tough though. Because it was my first film [laughs]. You know it was a pretty epic first film.
JO: It felt like being thrown in at the deep end?
JP: It really did. It was terrifying really. But in the end I just had to get on with it.
JO: How did you find the technical side of that — scoring to picture?
JP: Well I did it in a very crude way. I didn’t have synced picture at the time. I didn’t have that kind of setup. So I was just starting and stopping by hand.
JO: Were you working at the computer though, rather than at a piano?
JP: I did it on a mixture of piano, keyboard and computer, yes.
JO: So in terms of demo-ing it did you have string samples, to send demos?
JP: Yes, but very crude, you know. Very basic. I probably had the JV [Roland JV1080 — a synthesiser sound module].That’s how I was doing it then. I didn’t have Logic sounds.
JO: Were you working in Logic?
JP: Yes. I always worked on Logic. Because that’s what Harvey [Brough — who was Jocelyn’s musical collaborator/assistant at this time] had and I’d been watching him use it for years. I used to work with Harvey when I needed to put stuff down in a studio. I did the two big long sections and then I remember that Harvey came and did a bit of help with engineering for the shorter sections.
JO: The dream sequences, when he’s in the taxi and stuff?
JP: Yes.
JO: Because they’re derived from the material of those longer sections that are under Nicole Kidman’s dialogue, aren’t they?
JP: Yes, that’s right — ‘The Dream’.
JO: Both of those [longer] sections sound very closely scored to the dialogue, so were you taking a lot of care to shape the music around the dialogue?
JP: Absolutely. I mean I had a good amount of time and I spent a long time on it. And it was an incredible learning curve, you know. Even though I was doing it by hand, as it were, in terms of stopping and starting the video, which I must having been looking at on VHS. It was a really amazing thing to work on.
JO: The album version of that ‘Naval Officer’ track starts with solo cello, doesn’t it?
JP: Yes
JO: But that’s not in the soundtrack.
JP: No.
JO: So was that something you were trying and that didn’t fit under the dialogue?
JP: I think it sort of grew out of it. I was never going to start with the solo cello. Because it would have been too intrusive. But I think because the solo cello had crept in later in the film, I actually thought I wanted to develop it a bit when I looked at it as a piece away from the film.
JO: After you’d finished working on the film do you mean?
JP: Yes, but before I recorded it. I had the opportunity to record two versions — one with cello and one without.
JO: Because actually the second of those long cues in the film does have the solo cello line, with the orchestra, but later in the piece, doesn’t it?
JP: Yes. I developed it a bit more for a kind of ‘concert’ version. I guess that had been growing in my mind. And his daughter, Anya Kubrick, and her partner put on a concert of Stanley’s music at the Barbican — about ten years ago — and they performed those pieces, with solo cello and orchestra, which was really nice.
JO: There’s a little BFI guide to the film, written by Michel Chion, who’s a film theorist specialising in sound and music, and he suggests in that that there’s strong links, in a structural sense, between your music and some of the other pieces in the soundtrack. Particularly… well he suggests that having a major or minor second as a motif is a linking thing. I was really dubious when I first read that, but when I listened to it, actually it kind of made sense, because obviously the Ligeti [Musica Ricercata II, by Ligeti — the solo piano piece used prominently in the soundtrack] is very much about that second interval and then there’s a moment where it comes back to your dream cue after there’s been a few instances of the Ligeti and it does feel like one of your cues is combining the previous ‘Dream’ elements with this second interval from the Ligeti, so it did make me wonder whether that was a conscious thing?
JP: I don’t think so. In fact I don’t even know if there was any music on the cut I had.
JO: Right, so you don’t think you knew where the other music was being used?
JP: I don’t… because obviously I had very clear indications of where my music was being used… and I obviously watched it… I had to get into the film. But I don’t even know if I had music on it then. Because I know what you mean — it might have potentially influenced some of my music — certainly unconsciously. But I don’t think it did.
JO: Because it’s the moment when it makes sense within the overall structure of the music as a whole, because your music has been used for this narrative thread of their relationship really, and the Ligeti is much more about this outside threat.
JP: Yes
JO: And then you get this moment where those things are combined in the story. So it’s later on, after… I think it’s the point after Nicole Kidman’s character has recounted her second dream. And then he [Tom Cruise] goes off to his office late at night and tries to phone Marion, the character from earlier in the film. And so in the story you’ve got this sense of him thinking about the marital aspects of the relationship, but also this threat from the aftermath of the masked ball scene.
So when I watched it recently it seemed like a point where those things were being combined, so I wasn’t sure if that was something that you were consciously trying to do, or not. Musically this instance of your cue starts with an oscillating minor second, which is the same as what the Ligeti does.
JP: I think it was more I was always drawing from my own material — from ‘The Naval Officer’ and ‘The Dream’, not from the Ligeti. But I also don’t think I was aware of the Ligeti at that point.
JO: I was just wondering, because it seems like… and thinking of the way that Kubrick uses music in his earlier films, which often… well a lot of them don’t have a composer… and so he’s very specific about using existing music in places. And so through the film there’s different music for different strands of the story and your music is really attached to his [Tom Cruise’s] specific strand of the story, so it just made me wonder about this moment where these different strands come together — whether that was maybe something that he [Kubrick] directed you to do?
JP: No. It was very much a toing and froing. He was very much for leaving me to it. But occasionally he’d say, you know, “Try it without voice” — for instance with the masked ball. He might suggest certain kinds of textures or something, but he was pretty hands off — he’d just allow me to play and then he’d respond to my sketches. In the normal kind of way you work really, with a director.
JO: So how long were you working on it to picture then? How long was that process once you got involved at that later stage?
JP: It was quite a while. It was a few months.
JO: And you said that was, what, a year and half after you first got involved?
JP: Yes.
JO: And how much back-and-forth was there with sending him sketches?
JP: Quite a lot of back-and-forth. Yes, I’d be sending my DATs.
JO: No internet in those days.
JP: No [laughs], just this car that came to pick things up!
JO: Going back to the other music, I was wondering how often people mistakenly think that you wrote the Ligeti?
JP: Yes! [laughs]
JO: Do you get that quite a lot?
JP: I did at the time, when it came out. Some great faux pas! My American PR woman — I remember the first thing she said to me was, “I love that piano music you did!”
JO: Oh no!
JP: Yeah, I know. Often people say that, and I have to say, you know, I’m afraid it was Ligeti, not me.
JO: How aware were you of Kubrick’s previous films, when you got involved?
JP: Well I was pretty familiar with quite a few of his films. I mean like 2001: A Space Odyssey I’d seen, you know, and it was a BIG thing. I think I was a child when it came out actually.
JO: It’s an incredible film.
JP: Yes, it’s amazing. But I hadn’t seen — because I knew I’d find it too harrowing — The Shining. And I caught up with a few of his films… A Clockwork Orange and the army one.
JO: Full Metal Jacket
JP: Yes. I’d deliberately not seen those, and I saw them as soon as I started working on it — I started seeing the films I hadn’t seen. Forcing myself to watch The Shining!
JO: How did you find it?
JP: Yes, no, it’s great. It’s really good. I’m just one of these people… I just don’t like seeing disturbing films too much. But I’m glad… they’re amazing films… all really, really worth seeing.
JO: It is interesting that a lot of them didn’t have composers attached really. Before Eyes Wide Shut the main one to have an ‘original score’ as such is Dr. Strangelove, and that’s a long time earlier. You know that on 2001 the score got thrown out, Alex North’s? The legend is that he turned up at the screening and only found out then!
JP: Terrible! So awful. His original score got released, didn’t it?
JO: Yes, it’s been released more recently.
JP: Did you hear it?
JO: I haven’t heard it actually, no. Have you?
JP: No.
JO: He’s a great composer, so I imagine it’s really good, but I haven’t heard it, no.
The thing I always find amazing about Kubrick is that he basically made one of the seminal films in each genre. Each of his films is a different genre and yet it’s one of the key films of that genre.
JP: Yes.
JO: You know, for horror he made The Shining; for science fiction he made 2001; for war he made Full Metal Jacket; so it’s amazing.
JP: It is amazing, yes. And Dr. Strangelove is fantastic.
JO: I was going to ask you about the spotting of the film [‘spotting’ is the process of choosing the placement of music in a film], but I suppose that because you said that Kubrick sent you the scenes that he wanted you to work on that the spotting was very much decided in advance before you worked on it?
JP: Yes, it was. I didn’t have that kind of role, you know, because he’d already decided on music for certain sections.
JO: So you didn’t have a chance to suggest music for any other scenes?
JP: No.
JO: Watching it again, it is really specific how music’s used in the film and I think it works really well for that. There are a couple of moments where I thought in a more conventional film it would probably have score and it doesn’t, and it really works well not overusing music at those moments.
JP: Yes.
JO: Like the scenes where Tom Cruise drives back to find the mansion. There are two driving scenes like that where he goes in a taxi, and later on when he drives back, and neither of those is scored.
JP: It’s quite bold in a way, in its use of silence, and I love that. I like when music’s really thought out and used carefully.
JO: You really get that sense that he had a deep understanding of how music works in a film, and just a deep understanding of music I suppose.
JP: And the impact of it, yes.
JO: So it must have been amazing to work with him in that sense — working with someone who had that understanding of music.
JP: Yes, but considering that, he very much allowed you to kind of do your thing. He wasn’t a control freak. Whereas… I mean I have worked with — not many but you know — some very different kind of directors, you know, literally changing notes and stuff. He was totally hands-off in that way.
JO: Well I suppose if he really knew what he wanted and he had the confidence that he’d found the right composer for the project.
JP: Well I guess, yes. He trusted — there was a real sense of trust, yes. But really allowing you space to explore, and to experiment. I find that some other directors can also get very attached to temp music.
JO: Presumably there wasn’t any temp music on this?
JP: No, there wasn’t, thank God!
JO: I was going to ask you how you compare having worked on that film with your subsequent projects afterwards? Would you say that was one of the key things, having that freedom and trust in the relationship?
JP: I mean, you know what it’s like, every experience is different. Mainly I’m asked on board a project because they’ve heard my music and I’m asked for my voice. And I’ve found it’s more with less experienced directors that there can be less trust because they’re possibly less confident about their ability to judge. And that can be really quite inhibiting. I’ve had a couple of experiences like that, where if there’s a lack of trust then it makes you less confident. I find I’ve done much better work when there’s that really good exchange and trust. And mostly they’ve been like that, they’ve been really good experiences. Every project’s so different in terms of when you’re brought on board. With Eyes Wide Shut it was very unusual to be brought on board so early. But with Merchant of Venice, again I was also brought in quite early on, because some of the music had to be played to picture… to mime to.
JO: That was with Michael Radford?
JP: Yes, and that was a fantastic experience. And that ended up being a good six months because of being brought in before the shooting, and during, and then afterwards for the other music. But before editing, which was really nice, so some of it he edited to the music. So often — you know what it’s like — you’re brought in right at the end.
JO: Going back to recording sessions. Had you recorded any parts of it during the writing process, or was it all saved for sessions at the end?
JP: It was all saved. Certainly in terms of all the string stuff.
JO: I was just wondering, because sometimes you record stuff yourself.
JP: Yes, I had demo-ed it actually, with violas.
JO: Right, but none of that was used in the final recording?
JP: No, no it wasn’t actually. We recorded it at Abbey Road and it was a really beautiful facility.
JO: Was it all done at Abbey Road then — all the percussion and everything as well? Percussion’s just in the orgy scene isn’t it? Is that right?
JP: Yes. No, that was an unexpected thing — that was an existing piece.
JO: Oh, so all that percussion already existed?
JP: Yes, it was from my album Flood. It was a very last-minute thing that he didn’t go for ‘Dionysus’ in the end. And then I thought he was going to find something else. Because I tried a few things, but ‘Dionysus’ was what I was really pleased with. But then he went for ‘Migrations’. I was surprised, because I hadn’t suggested it. He found it on his own. Because I hadn’t thought of that as sexy! But, you know, I think it was a great choice.
JO: It worked really well.
JP: But… I don’t know if you know the story, but what happened was… It was recorded about two years earlier for my original album Deluge. For the original dance piece in Canada I had used the Koran — a guy singing the Koran. And then when I got the chance to put the album out with Virgin Records, as Deluge, I checked with the Muslim community — I can’t remember now, some official place — whether they’d mind me using that, and they said “Yes”.
JO: “Yes” they would mind?
JP: Yes. This was ’97, you know, this was way back. So luckily I didn’t put out that version. What I did do was some recording with Manickam Yogeswaran, the Carnatic singer I worked with, because he was singing on some other stuff. He did some improvisations to ‘Migrations’, which I didn’t think worked, but actually some stuff he’d done on another track, ‘Goya’s Nightmare’ which was in a different key, I was trying with ‘Migrations’ and it really worked well. And it was something he never would have sung, you know. He wouldn’t have naturally sung that scale for this piece, you see. And what he was singing — what I didn’t remember — was that he was singing words from the Bhagavad Gita. So the film came out in 1999 and it was released in the US and I didn’t know but there was this uproar from the Hindu community about the Bhagavad Gita being sung during an orgy scene.
JO: And this was once the film was completely locked and unchangeable?
JP: Printed. So what happened was it was in the tabloids and it all got a bit heavy and eventually I was asked to re-record it. And so they had to recall all the prints and I had to go back in the studio and re-record him singing without the words. And, you know, Warners were not happy! It must have cost them a fortune because they had to reprint the film.
JO: That must have been tricky!
So all the strings were recorded at Abbey Road. How big was the string orchestra?
JP: Not that big actually, when I think of it. I didn’t want to push it too much and I think it was fairly modest and we had about 20 strings.
JO: Presumably, budget-wise, you could have had what you wanted?
JP: Yes. I was kind of a bit naïve. But, I think it worked and it was a beautiful sound in that space — it was really beautiful.
JO: It sounds beautiful in the film. You certainly don’t feel that it’s too small a group.
JP: And there’s a kind of intimacy as well. Because occasionally you do hear the solo cello and stuff, which I quite like.
JO: How many sessions did you have.
JP: I can’t remember. I think it was over a few days including the mixing.
JO: Where was that done? Still at Abbey Road?
JP: Yes.
JO: Was anything recorded at other studios?
JP: No. Only obviously the ‘Masked Ball’ stuff because that had been pre-recorded. I did rework it, mind you. I can’t remember now whether we went back in the studio for the ‘Masked Ball’ or not. And that was originally recorded at the Church Studio in Crouch End.
JO: I think that’s just come into action again after being closed for a while.
JP: Oh great, it’s a lovely studio.
JO: It’s walking distance from where I live so I’ve walked past it so many times without knowing what it was.
JP: Oh really?
JO: I was reading about it one time and thought I’d work out where it was and suddenly realised that I’ve always been walking past it — well it just looks like a church from the outside, doesn’t it.
JP: Yes, it’s a great studio, it’s lovely.
JO: This is slightly changing the subject, but I was reading quite an old interview with you, from The Guardian in 2001, where you touch on the difficulties of being classified as a composer and whether you fall under ‘classical music’ or not, and how your albums weren’t eligible for the…
JP: Classical Charts, yes.
JO: So I just wanted to ask you a bit about that kind of genre labelling, and how you feel about that kind of thing?
JP: I mean it was just frustrating at the time, when Deluge came out, because it wasn’t right that it was deemed ineligible for the classical music charts. They were rival record companies on the panel who made that decision, and who were probably envious of Virgin Ventures (who released Deluge & Flood) — the label that had had real success, with “Adiemus” and Michael Nyman. There was some political stuff going on. Norman Lebrecht wrote an article for The Telegraph which was really supportive, and saying it’s not right, and just because she’s played in The Communards doesn’t mean this is a pop album. And just because there’s a drum on one track — it wasn’t a pop drumbeat. There was no good reason to exclude Deluge from being eligible for the Classical charts. Yet they got away with it. At the time I didn’t feel as outraged as perhaps I might have — because I was just very naïve about the whole way things worked, and I didn’t realise that it meant that I couldn’t be played on Classic FM, and couldn’t be part of those classical structures… there was no airplay, etc. So it had a huge knock-on effect. It was hugely disappointing for them, particularly for Declan Colganwho ran that label and who knew he could have done something better with it. And it was a real opportunity for me at that time. So it didn’t do as well as it may have.
JO: And in a wider sense how do you feel about genre labelling in that sense? Do you see yourself as a classical musician?
JP: Yes. I think these days… I don’t know… It’s always these blurred definitions.
JO: I think the more time goes on the more those divisions are blurred.
JP: My Real World album Untold Things was in ‘Folk’ in the record shops — it’s really bizarre. I still always feel that the album should have been more in the ‘Classical’ department. I mean maybe with Real World I could have understood if it was in ‘World’, but it was in ‘Folk’! That I couldn’t understand. And it was frustrating as I tried to get something done about it and then I just pissed somebody off, so I learnt my lesson. Again they were not happy that I… You know, people don’t like people — especially young girls — making a fuss. They were really pissed off that I tried to get something done about it. That I was interfering.
JO: The record label were pissed off?
JP: Virgin, yes. Anyway, it’s all… you learn by these things.
JO: And narrowing that down further from ‘Classical’, do you see yourself as a ‘Minimalist’ composer? Do you think you belong to that school?
JP: That’s certainly part of my background and a strong influence on my music, yes. I think my music’s been informed by all sorts of influences, but definitely minimalism was one of them, yes.
JO: In Eyes Wide Shut, in the dream cues — you call it ‘clocking’ don’t you, the kind of oscillating pattern? [This reference to ‘clocking’ comes from having worked with Jocelyn and her having referenced repeating patterns (normally 2-note patterns) in this way] You can feel the link to minimalism there. Do you see that as one element that you’re drawing on from many?
JP: Yes, I do, yes. I tend to work very intuitively. I don’t set out to do something in a particular style. But when you look back on your work, in my own work I feel there’s quite a few different genres. The Ingerland opera, and some of my vocal music, is leaning towards very different influences. It’s all to do with context. Hopefully there’s a voice that is constant… You know I was very pleased when a couple of people have said, “You know, I always know it’s you”. I really do work very intuitively — I’m not trying to be, “I’d better be a bit more minimalist” or “a bit more modernist”.
JO: I suppose also your background means you’ve absorbed a lot of different influences, because of the pop session work and stuff before. Like you’ve said before, you’d had quite a performing career before you moved into composing. You must have absorbed a lot of different stuff through that.
JP: I had really, and I’d played in many diverse groups and ensembles including a really interesting minimalist/post systems band, or “New Music” — Jeremy Peyton Jones was the main composer — called Regular Music. And with Andrew Poppy. And then a band called the 3 Mustaphas 3. They played Balkan and Lebanese music, Eastern European music, and that’s when I was introduced to those string styles. I loved it, it’s amazing, and I got really into that kind of music and it really influenced me a lot playing with the 3 Mustaphas 3.
JO: In terms of what you were saying about people saying they know it’s you and that kind of thing, when I think of your music, in terms of textures, I think of strings, vocals and electronics. Do you think those are the three areas that inspire you the most?
JP: Yes, I guess. I think so. I mean more recently — the last few years — I’ve had the opportunity to do a bit more orchestral exploration, particularly with that BBC Concert Orchestra piece I did. More recently I’ve worked with The Aurora, and brass as well as strings. But yes, I’m very much at home with those elements, definitely.
JO: In that same Guardian interview that I mentioned, that was from quite a while ago, you said that not having had a conventional composition education you think has helped prevent you from being… you feel that that [conventional composition training] might have inhibited you as a composer.
JP: I think possibly, yes. I think particularly at that time it was really frowned upon, simplicity and melody. I enjoy simplicity. And I think I might have felt the music should be more ‘clever’ — more cerebral. I think, knowing my character, I might have been more inhibited having had that training, because of knowing how I am as a player. I don’t feel I had that freedom as a player, when you really go deep into something — because at one point I was very serious about being a viola player, which I did enjoy. But I was so weighed down, and one gets so self-critical. And it was a shame when I played with some of the bands I played with and I had the opportunity to improvise it was very hard to do that having had the training I had. I’m always amazed at Nigel Kennedy and how he’s managed to be such a good improvisor, with his classical training. It’s quite hard sometimes to shake that off.
JO: Any final thoughts, looking back on Eyes Wide Shut, now that it’s — where are we — fifteen years later?
JP: Gosh, is it fifteen years? I don’t know… it was a fantastic experience. I’m always very grateful, you know. Just amazing. It really was terrifying at first though, and I just felt this real weight of responsibility. But I’m glad I feel ok about it. One has to live with it, you know what I mean! Yes, it was an amazing thing.
JO: Did you feel like a ‘film composer’, in inverted commas, at that time?
JP: At the time I wasn’t a film composer, because I’d never scored any films! That’s the thing. I’d only done dance, theatre and… some documentary — I’d done quite a few documentaries on TV. It was a really crazy thing to happen. It was really lovely to be part of such an amazing film.
[session photos courtesy of Jocelyn Pook]