Noah

Noah (Music from the Motion Picture) is the score album to the 2014 film of the same name directed by Darren Aronofsky. Featuring music produced by Aronofsky's regular collaborator Clint Mansell, the album features 22 tracks from the score and an original song written by Aronofsky and performed by Clint Mansell. The album was released by Nonesuch Records on March 25, 2014. Development On December 11, 2012, at the Marrakech International Film Festival, Aronofsky confirmed that Mansell would score Noah in their sixth film together. While discussing about the film's music, Aronofsky did not want typical epic music, but needed to have that epic scale and wanted to figure out "something timeless". He did not want ethnic instrumentation and specific feel of time and place as the story takes place before culture and "more primal and connected to the earth". They deviated from piano and brass and held a day-long choir to avoid sounding it like "church music" but can be from any period. Mansell and Aronofsky examined the scene where Noah's family were under captive by the Watchers. He recalled that the Watchers theme should sound primitive which Aronofsky agreed, saying that he need an Ornette Coleman's free jazz-kind of score, reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix's style, as it should be "tension-building, fear-evoking, and mind-expanding". According to Aronofsky, "[t]he creation sequence was so hard, but he [Mansell] came up with this sweet melody". Mansell created several themes that relate to different characters. He needed a theme for Noah (Russell Crowe), which is about living at peace with the planet, a theme for Ila (Emma Watson), which was "the mother of humanity". Along with the orchestra, Mansell roped in Kronos Quartet to contribute to the film score. While the orchestra recorded each portion, Mansell had recorded the score with the Kronos Quartet for a week, blending and mixing the score similar to Jimi Hendrix playing violins, "ripping, shredding and make crazy sounds with their instruments". Although Mansell felt it as a "big budget" and "high calibre", he found the demands to be "burdensome, and even offensive and insulting". He recalled the executives from Paramount Pictures wanted to fire him as "they didn't feel they were getting what they wanted" although Aronofsky retained him in the project, which he described "Filmmaking at that level is not about art and expressing yourself. It's about maximizing your box office potential.