Iceland review - 2019, Qupperneq 38

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Iceland Review
Hildur Guðnadóttir talks about
music as a physical process. Her
classical training is a “trampo-
line to jump from,” while listen-
ing to doom metal is “like get-
ting a full body massage.” Yet
for the composer of HBO series
Chernobyl and upcoming Hollywood
film Joker, this physical approach
doesn’t make the art any less
intellectual. On the contrary,
the body serves as a way into the
complex characters and plots, and
into the essence of the musician
herself.
I’m on the phone with Hildur, who speaks to me
from Berlin, her home for the past 16 years. I’ve caught
her on the morning after her seven-year-old’s birthday
party, and in the midst of the heat wave hitting Europe.
“We had decided to have the party in an outdoor park
but that just wasn’t possible, so at the last moment
we had to get a pool for our backyard where there was
some shade,” she laughs.
Planning a seven-year-old’s pool party is a different
sort of challenge from Hildur’s daily bread: deep-div-
ing into music. It’s been a productive and varied year
for the musician, whose atmospheric soundtrack
for Chernobyl has recieved an Emmy nomination. If
there is such a thing as a storytelling spectrum, her
two recent projects surely sit on opposite ends. While
Chernobyl retells a historical event of immense scale,
Joker is the deeply personal story of an internal strug-
gle. Yet both scoring a nuclear disaster and the mind of
a violent criminal require total immersion – just like in
a swimming pool on a hot day.
Body language
Her physical understanding of music stems in part
from Hildur’s instruments of preference. “I started
playing cello when I was four or five, and I have always
sung since I can remember,” she tells me. “When it
comes to instruments, you can’t get any closer to your-
self than with the voice. The cello as well, it sits against
your chest, so there’s a direct connection with your
lungs and your expression.”
While many film composers find the piano practical
for writing, Hildur has never particularly connected
with the instrument. “The intervals are so fixed. You
don’t have the freedom to bend the notes and the
intonation like you do on string instruments. I find the
compositional process more natural through my voice
or the cello, where I have a physical connection. I feel I
can express myself better that way.”
The sound of disaster
Yet engaging the body doesn’t always mean action. It
can also mean cultivating the crucial skill of listening.
To write the score for Chernobyl, Hildur visited the
shooting location – a nuclear power plant in Lithuania
– and put her ears to work. “I wanted to explore what
a nuclear disaster sounds like – to go into the plant,
put on the gear, walk through the huge spaces, smell
how it smells.” Alongside sound engineer Chris Watson
and score producer Sam Slater, Hildur observed and
recorded the plant’s hums, echoes, and thuds, pro-
duced by everything from dosimeters to doors.
It’s these recordings that were moulded into the