When it comes to writing music for the plays of William Shakespeare, few living composers can claim as much experience as Patrick Doyle, the two-time Academy Award nominee who has collaborated with Kenneth Branagh on screen adaptations including “Henry V,” “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Hamlet.”
Doyle has written music for more than 40 movies, most recently Disney’s live action “Cinderella,” which was released earlier this year. His latest effort represents a return to his roots on the stage: He has scored the new London production of “The Winter’s Tale,” co-directed by Branagh and Rob Ashford, which will be simulcast to cinemas in the U.S. on Monday.
The Scottish composer said that writing music for Shakespeare wasn’t any more intimidating than scoring other movies or stage productions.
SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter >>
“The music shouldn’t try to emulate the great master himself,” he said during a recent trip to Los Angeles.
It’s a “vehicle for helping the audience into the strange, unorthodox language.
It’s a conduit. I think when you approach it from that point of view, it’s not as daunting.”
For “The Winter’s Tale,” which co-stars Branagh and Judi Dench, Doyle has composed songs and dances as well as thematic music. He said he usually takes his inspiration from the actors’ delivery of Shakespeare’s verse.
“A good actor with good technique picks up the beautiful rhythm in the words. Once the rhythm is established, it becomes a musical world of its own and one that I pick up on,” he said, adding that he treats Shakespearean soliloquies as operatic arias.
In person, Doyle, 62, is friendly and animated. He speaks at an allegro gallop, with a thick Scottish accent that itself is often musical in its tonal variations. Growing up, he studied piano, singing and the tuba, and he graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music.
Early in his career, he worked as a music director and actor in the British theater and joined Branagh’s Renaissance Theatre Company in 1987. Their first collaboration was a stage production of “Twelfth Night.”
A good actor with good technique picks up the beautiful rhythm in the words. Once the rhythm is established, it becomes a musical world of its own and one that I pick up on.
— Patrick Doyle
“It was clear that I was part of this team instantly,” Doyle recalled. “I could read his mind. I got him. There’s a kind of telepathy between us.”
“The Winter’s Tale” is part of Branagh’s new company at London’s Garrick Theatre. Doyle is scoring the entire season, which includes Terence Rattigan’s “Harlequinade,” currently in repertory, and an upcoming staging of “Romeo and Juliet.”
Working with Branagh, Doyle is often on set with the director and is sometimes required to come up with music on short notice. For “Cinderella,” he received a call the day before a big ballroom scene was shot asking for a waltz to be performed on playback as cast members entered the room.
“It was finished by 10 p.m. that night because it had to be ready for the sound department the next morning,” recalled Doyle.
For “The Winter’s Tale,” he had to write most of the score in the first week of rehearsals. “It’s like writing a musical in three or four days,” he said.
1/28
When the Mariinsky Ballet performed “Cinderella” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Oct. 8, even the wondrous Diana Vishneva as Cinderella couldn’t bring unity to the movement, but she danced with flawless, fearless authority. Read more >>
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 2/28
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins leaves a rehearsal of his play “Appropriate,” opening Oct. 4 at the Mark Taper Forum, to eat first with a reporter, then later with his agent and some unspecified Hollywood people, who presumably hope to lure him away from the field and city where he has experienced meteoric success in the last five years. Read more >>
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 3/28
Soprano Abigail Fischer performs Oct. 7 in the opera “Songs from the Uproar” at REDCAT in Los Angeles.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 4/28
Moisés Kaufman’s muscular revival of “Bent,” which played at the Mark Taper Forum, opening on July 26, renders what many had written off as a parochial drama about the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany into a gripping tale of love, courage and identity. Read review >>
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 5/28
Malaviki Sarukkai performing at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica on July 19, 2015. Sarukkai is the best-known exponent of South Indian classical dance.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 6/28
Bramwell Tovey conducts the L.A. Phil with pianist Garrick Ohlsson in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the Hollywood Bowl on July 14, 2015.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 7/28
Argentine dancer Herman Cornejo performs in the West Coast premiere of “Tango y Yo” as part of the Latin portion of BalletNow.
(Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 8/28
Jake Shears plays Greta in Martin Sherman’s play “Bent” at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles through Aug. 23, 2015.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 9/28
Dancers rehearse a one-night-only performance choregraphed by Raiford Rogers, one of L.A.’s most-noted choreographers. This year the dance will be to a new original score by Czech composer Zbynek Mateju.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 10/28
Oscar-winning actor Ben Kingsley in Los Angeles on July 9, 2015.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 11/28
Mia Sinclair Jenness, left, Mabel Tyler and Gabby Gutierrez alternate playing the title role in the musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda” at the Ahmanson Theatre. The three are shown during a day at Santa Monica Pier on June 16, 2015.
(Christina House / For The Times) 12/28
American Contemporary Ballet Company members Zsolt Banki and Cleo Magill perform a dance routine originally done by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. This performance was presented as part of “Music + Dance: L.A.” on Friday, June 19, 2015.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 13/28
Miguel, a Grammy-winning guitarist, producer, singer and lyricist, is photographed in San Pedro on Wednesday, June 10, 2015. His new album “Wildheart,” explores L.A.’s “weird mix of hope and desperation.”
(Christina House / For The Times) 14/28
Los Angeles-born artist Mark Bradford is photographed in front of “The Next Hot Line.” This piece is part of his show “Scorched Earth,” installed at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, June 11, 2015.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 15/28
Paige Faure, center, plays Ella in “
Cinderella,” which opened at the Ahmanson Theater on March 18.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 16/28
The Los Angeles Opera concluded its season with “The Marriage of Figaro,” with Roberto Tagliavini as Figaro and Pretty Yende as Susanna, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 17/28
“Trinket,” a monumental installation by Newark-born, Chicago-based artist William Pope.L, features an American flag that is 16 feet tall and 45 feet long. The work is on display at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA through June 28.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 18/28
Conductor
Gustavo Dudamel’s contract with the Los Angeles Philharmonic has been extended to mid-2022.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 19/28
Alex Knox, from left, Carolyn Ratteray, Lynn Milgrim and Paige Lindsey White in “Pygmalion” in spring 2015 at the Pasadena Playhouse.
(Mariah Tauger / For The Times) 20/28
On March 17, Google celebrated the addition of more than 5,000 images to its Google Street Art project with a launch party at the Container Yard in downtown Los Angeles.
(Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 21/28
Los Angeles architect Jon Jerde, who was outspoken about his opinions on the
state of public space, died on
Feb. 9. The CityWalk at Universal Studios is among his famous designs.
(Christina House / For The Times) 22/28
Diana Vishneva as Princess Aurora in
American Ballet Theatre‘s production of “
Sleeping Beauty” that premiered at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in March.
(Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times) 23/28
Los Angeles Philharmonic assistant conductor
Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla leads the orchestra in her first L.A. Phil subscription concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall on March 1 in a program of Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 24/28
Rachele Gilmore as Alice and Christopher Lemmings as Mouse with supernumeraries in “
Alice in Wonderland.” Susanna Malkki conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in this collaboration with the L.A. Opera at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 25/28
Marcia Rodd, left, and Dick Cavett reprise their roles in “
Hellman v. McCarthy,” a play inspired by actual events on “The Dick Cavett Show,” at Theatre 40 in February. The production starred Cavett as himself and Rodd as literary celebrity Mary McCarthy.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) 26/28
Irish playwright
Conor McPherson‘s latest play, “
The Night Alive,” ran at the Geffen Playhouse from Feb. 11 through March 15.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times) 27/28
Ric Salinas, left, Herbert Siguenza and Richard Montoya, of the three-man Latino theater group Culture Clash, brought their “Chavez Ravine: An L.A. Revival” to the Kirk Douglas Theatre to mark the group’s 30th anniversary. The play ran from Feb. 4 through March 1.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) The Branagh-Doyle partnership is similar in some ways to the close collaboration between Laurence Olivier and composer William Walton, said Peter Holland, a Shakespeare specialist at the University of Notre Dame.
Walton worked with Olivier over three decades and wrote music for his film adaptations of “Henry V,” “Hamlet” and “Richard III.”
“Both have tended to work with one particular director, so they build up a kind of relationship with a shorthand and set of expectations,” Holland said.
He cited a soliloquy in Olivier’s “Hamlet” — “O, that this too too solid flesh” — as an example of the score finding the right balance with Shakespeare’s words. “It’s the voice harmonizing into the music,” he said.
Doyle said he adheres to Branagh’s mission to make Shakespeare more accessible: The music is “another means for the audience to understand this wonderful language.”
When he wrote the music for the rousing St. Crispin’s Day speech in “Henry V,” Doyle said he followed the rise and fall of Branagh’s voice, leading up to the words “to the ending of the world.”
“He sort of swings that line up. I felt the orchestra could do the same thing, like an orchestral burst,” the composer said.
When writing the opening music for “Much Ado About Nothing,” which is heard over Beatrice’s line, “Sigh no more, ladies,” Doyle said he adapted an unused melody from his score for Branagh’s 1991 thriller “Dead Again.” The reworked tune became a recurring theme throughout the movie.
“You learn by experience,” said Doyle.”You come up with a strong theme. That’s part of your technique as a dramatic writer. That’s the joy of it.”
ALSO:
‘Straight White Men’ gently wrestles with the meaning of privilege
‘Grey Gardens’ replaces ‘Titanic’ in the Ahmanson’s current season
John Patrick Shanley’s ‘Outside Mullingar’ is just the thing for a happy cry
