The Composing Career of Justin Hurwitz

One of the constants of Oscar-winning filmmaker Damien Chazelle’s directorial career from the feature film he made as his thesis at Harvard to his recent epic Hollywood-set period piece Babylon, is his collaboration with Justin Hurwitz. The two were students and bandmates together at university, and the composer has scored every film Chazelle has directed, and interestingly, Hurwitz has never been credited for scoring a project for anyone else in his professional career. Despite his relatively small body of work, the multi-Academy Award winner is still one of the most respected artists in his field. To mark the release of Babylon on digital formats, we thought it would be interesting to look back on his work thus far.

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Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

Chazelle’s first feature, a musical about two ex-lovers, likewise contains Hurwitz’s first feature film score. As is to be expected when one of the lead characters is a jazz trumpeter, the trumpet is one of the central instruments around which much of the orchestration of the original score and songs revolves. Even when the trumpet is not being utilised the score still takes cues from jazz, both through the rest of its instrumentation, as well as its somewhat loose, jaunty nature. More surprisingly, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench also contains a lot of tap-dancing, the sounds of which Hurwitz weaves into his compositions as a form of percussion. Although this score lacks a touch of the bombast of his later works (likely in part due to budgetary constraints), it nonetheless serves as a great introduction to his identity as a composer.

Whiplash

When people think of the music in Whiplash, a thriller about the adversarial relationship between a young drummer and his abusive mentor, their memory is likely first drawn to the pre-existing jazz pieces performed by the Shaffer Conservatory Studio Band in the movie – such as John Wasson’s Caravan, or Hank Levy’s composition from which the film draws its name. Whilst these pieces soundtrack many of the film’s most memorable musical scenes, Hurwitz nonetheless manages to craft a distinct and effective soundtrack in keeping with the film’s focus on jazz music, drawing inspiration from the genre by utilising expressive brass arrangements and frenetic percussion in the score’s most explosive moments.

However, what’s most interesting about Hurwitz’s compositions for Whiplash is the way he creates tension in sequences that rely on underscoring, rather than utilising the main theme. Instead of scoring the entire movie with big band jazz, or even orchestral arrangements, Hurwitz and Chazelle decided to compose a score that takes its cues from electronic music, combining layers of sound to create ambient sound-beds that conjure feelings of extreme dread and discordance. These layers consist of individually recorded tracks played by the instruments which make up a jazz band, allowing the music to retain a more organic touch that matches the film’s setting. Hurwitz’s pursuit of this sound is a large part of why the film is successful, as it subtly shoulders much of the burden of creating the film’s tense atmosphere.

La La Land

In many ways the crown jewel of Hurwitz’s career, the composer’s work on Chazelle’s beloved musical about the romance between two artists in Los Angeles netted him two Oscar wins for Best Original Score and Best Original Song, with the latter being awarded for Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling’s romantic duet “City of Stars”. Just as Chazelle keeps making films about musicians, Hurwitz keeps tailoring his instrumentation to each film’s characters, with La La Land’s main theme being both piano driven, and (on occasion) diegetically performed by Gosling in his role as an aspiring jazz pianist.

Hurwitz has spoken publicly about how crucial it was for his compositions for La La Land to capture the right tone – happy without feeling saccharine, and sad without feeling depressing, with both emotional states often having to share the same song or cue. This is achieved in the main theme by switching notes from major to minor and back again within the same key, with the rest of the score also featuring playful key changes and shifts in time signature, all with the goal of lending a sense of narrative complexity to the music. As for the musical numbers themselves, Hurwitz has stated that they were inspired by two kinds of musicals – classic MGM musicals, which the film was marketed as a throwback to, as well as French director Jacques Demy’s works in the genre (such as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), which have served as inspiration for much of Chazelle’s directorial career. | our review 

First Man

Hurwitz’s score for First Man, which follows Neil Armstrong’s (Ryan Gosling) participation in the space race, is in many ways a contrast to his work on La La Land. Where his work on the latter film was often exuberant and joyful, his work on First Man feels more introspective and melancholic. This is very much by design, as Chazelle specifically wanted the musical accompaniment for the film to echo the grief felt by Neil Armstrong after the early death of his daughter in the film, as well as the losses of colleagues who worked on the Apollo programmes.

In an attempt to create this tone, and match Gosling’s reserved, introspective performance, Hurwitz pursued a very different sound to his other collaborations with Chazelle. As well as composing for an orchestra, Hurwitz also utilised the more electronic sound of the theremin, both as a nod to its use in film scores for 50s and 60s sci-fi movies, and also because the instrument can be played to sound like a mournful wail. Vintage synthesisers were also used for their genre connotations, as they evoked the visions of the future conceived during the time period depicted in the film. As for the orchestra itself, more than any other score Hurwitz has composed, his work here leans on using the strings section, and the result is a collection of sweeping main themes that evoke the grandiosity of space-faring endeavours. | our review

Babylon

For the most recent score of his composing career, Hurwitz has seemingly returned to the well of jazz inspiration from which his first two scores originated, and nowhere is that influence more apparent than in the trumpet heavy compositions soundtracking the raucous and debaucherous Hollywood party that forms the meat of Babylon’s opening act. In many sequences, the musical accompaniment to the movie is as energetic as the editing, as Chazelle assembles montages that rhythmically cut from one location to the next with rapid speed. This boisterous sound is fitting for a film billed as a Hollywood epic, that follows a variety of ambitious characters navigating a quickly evolving film industry in the roaring 1920s.

Whilst this may be the standout mode the score operates in, and will likely be the way it is ed and talked about in popular consciousness (for reference see the popularity of the track Voodoo Mama’s use in online circles discussing Babylon), much like the film it soundtracks, Hurwitz’s compositions contain a great deal of contrast. This is exemplified by the soft and tender theme shared by two of its principle leads Manny and Nellie (Diego Calva and Margot Robbie), two kindred spirits who arrive in Los Angeles with dreams of making it big in different parts of the film industry. Created by blending three piano tracks together, this theme forms the backbone of the movie’s sweet and emotional centre, which stays with you even longer than Babylon’s many scenes of drug-fuelled depravity.

Babylon is available to own now on Digital, 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, and DVD. | Read our review