Composer Vik Sharma on finding creative fulfilment alongside work in TV and film

When asked to describe the relationship between director and composer in TV and film, I always say, ‘It’s their world, we just live in it’. What I mean by that is, the role of composer is subservient to the director’s vision. Our purpose is to help realise the director’s ideas; to drive the narrative, evoke emotion and reinforce characterisation. Sometimes, through the alchemy of music and the moving image, this can be much more, it can be transcendent, but this is the minimum we must set out to achieve.

Many directors or series producers will be clear from the outset that they know nothing about music, that they don’t know how to communicate in a musical language. Part of realising this vision, then, is to bring clarity and focus to something that feels imprecise and fuzzy. A commonly used shortcut is the use of temporary or reference music in post-production. This is music that the director and the editor, while in the edit suite, have decided works well with the cut, that hits the emotional, character or action beats of a given scene.

Consequently, a composer’s first exposure to an actual cut of a scene or film will already contain music written by someone else. This could be seen as limiting, even demoralising but it's something we have to navigate. Each of us does it in different ways: ‘I turn it off,’ says Michael Giacchino. Nice, but he's one of only a handful of A-list film composers who can do that and not irk the director.

More commonly, composers strive to achieve a delicate balance between composing music that pleases the director, the studio and, ultimately, the audience. It demands the exercise of a particular skill set — near saint-like patience, a sensitivity to the human condition and a finely honed creative instinct — that exceeds musical ability.

In the midst of this, composers also have to find their own creative fulfilment; produce work that we feel proud of, that — in some way — is also an expression of who we are as artists. But a composer knows that, ultimately, this is not necessarily a priority for anyone other than themselves.

That’s why I think it’s important for any composer to work in parallel on projects of their own design. It gives us the opportunity for artistic self-expression that is completely free from the demands of a film or TV production. It helps us build a sense of who we are as artists and figure out what we’re really good at, but is also allows us to explore new pathways, navigate unknown waters and skirt the outer limits of our imagination.

These are not endeavours that should exist in opposition to our work. On the contrary, they feed back into it; enriching our musical vocabulary and creating a more distinctive sonic palette with which to tackle the creative challenges composers face when writing for the screen. Simply put, maintaining your own creative focus will make you a better film composer.

Take the classical composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, for instance. He achieved great success as a film composer in Hollywood in the 1930’s and 40’s by using his mastery of the romantic tradition to define the musical landscape in the golden age of Hollywood.

Or Jonny Greenwood, the guitarist for Radiohead. He’s also — of course — a celebrated film composer. Listening to Radiohead’s albums chronologically, as his parallel career in composition flourished, one can hear an increasingly bold and prevalent use of classical arrangements — reminiscent of his two great influences, Penderecki and Olivier Messiaen. It has helped elevate Radiohead into a musical realm admired by classical, popular and jazz musicians alike.

My latest personal project, 24 Splashes of Denial, which features the poet Ruth Padel, takes what I’ve learned from scoring the moving image and applies it to spoken word. I wanted to explore the possibility of scoring the poem — writing the music around the words, reflecting the emotional undertcurrent of Padel’s haunting delivery, placing her at the very front of the mix. There was no requirement to follow a defined tempo or time signature. This approach has clear cinematic resonances, where the purpose of music is to accompany the mise-en-scene — to follow and enhance what’s happening on the screen.

In Robert Louis Stephenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Dr. Jekyll writes, ‘…even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.’ This, I think, is salient advice for any composer who moves between realms, who operates in that duality of creative expression, who embraces classicism, perhaps defines themselves in those terms, but who also writes for film and television. Be not one thing, or the other. Be radically both. By committing to both, one discipline interleaves with the other, producing an artistic symbiosis of rich musical possibility.

Vik Sharma’s latest release,24 Splashes of Denial, is out now on Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube.