The 2023 biopic “Oppenheimer,” directed by Christopher Nolan, is a historical thriller recounting the ethical and psychological implications of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s work on the atomic bomb. The scientist’s moral quandaries, which ultimately shape the world thereafter, are explained through tense and intimate scenes.
“Close-up after close-up shows star Cillian Murphy’s face staring into the middle distance, off-screen, and sometimes directly into the lens, while Oppenheimer dissociates from unpleasant interactions, or gets lost inside memories, fantasies, and waking nightmares,” explains Matt Zoller Seitz for RogerEbert.com.
The lack of physical action puts all the emotional weight onto the actors’ faces, but also onto the score. Composer Ludwig Göransson worked with Nolan to create an immaculate soundtrack that went on to win Best Score at the 66th Annual Grammys as well as Best Original Score at the 96th Academy Awards.
The work as a whole is incredible, but the song “Can You Hear the Music” has stayed in our collective consciousness ever since the film premiered.
Its swirling string lines and rhythmic complexity served as the perfect montage piece to portray swelling emotions in an analytical mind. Göransson pulled ideas from the sounds of the film, but what he came up with became more intense than even he expected.
“The most challenging part of this piece of music is how the hell are we going to be able to record this live with an ensemble with real musicians,” he explains.
Ludwig Göransson’s Vision for “Can You Hear the Music”
“Oppenheimer” was Nolan and Göransson’s second film together, following 2020’s “Tenet.” After the composer read the script, he met up with the director for input. Nolan didn’t have much direction to give Göransson, but he did have one idea: use the violin to portray Oppenheimer himself.
“The violin [can be] the most expressive instrument, depending on the performance,” the composer explains. “You can have this beautiful, somber, romantic note in vibrato, and depending on the intensity of the vibrato, you can switch it to something horrific. You can go between those emotions really, really quickly, and that was something that resonated with the script, and with the nature of Oppenheimer and his complex character.”
Göransson’s wife, Serena, is an accomplished violinist, so together they quickly began working on the music. After long days of trying to create complex sounds and recreate sirens on the violin, Göransson sat at the piano and wrote a simple, four-note bass line to set the tone. He then wrote an equally unadorned six-note melody over top.
“I realized after spending a lot of time recording these sirens, and recording these noises and sounds, that what I really needed to capture first is the emotional core of Oppenheimer’s journey,” he reflects. “And I’m not gonna do that with production and sound design – I need to do that with the melody. There was something about this kind of feeling of loneliness that I got from the script and from the story. That’s something that I wanted to portray in this song.”
Christopher Nolan and Ludwig Göransson’s Creative Collaboration on Oppenheimer
A countermelody would help to fill out the emotion, but watching the film in an IMAX theater gave Göransson the idea to represent the atoms on the screen with sound. The swirling violins were written to reflect just that, and he combined mathematics and music theory to create the effect.
He wrote a demo called “Hextaonics,” which plays on a six-note scale. Using the notes of a B minor triad and a C major triad, you get a six-note scale. “It’s a very simple pattern. You just go up the scale and you go down again,” he explains. However, the pattern felt too safe, so he added an element of danger with a distorted synth to glide in for suspense.
The song grows again by moving the pattern to 16th notes and then upping the tempo to build tension. Every seven bars it gets 20bpm faster. “At a certain point in time in the music, you stop thinking about rhythm, and you stop thinking about tempo,” the composer explains. “You kind of just kind of get swept away in the feeling.”
The original melody reappears in the synthesizer to tie all of the emotion together.
How the Oppenheimer Score Blends Math, Emotion, and Sound
All of this leads to the problem originally posed: how do you record all of that in a live situation? With a piece that accelerates by 20bpm every seven bars, it would be nearly impossible to capture that cleanly. “The way the music grows and the tempo changes is very irregular,” the composer admits.
Göransson was recording the music in Los Angeles with top-shelf studio players, but it still wasn’t coming together. They first tried recording the piece seven bars at a time and splicing it together in a digital workstation. It worked to a degree, but didn’t sound authentic.
“We wanted this whole line to feel like we’re flying, to feel connected, and not choppy like that,” he explains. “Then we said, ‘Okay, well let’s write all of this music out in the same note value: 16th notes.’ Which meant that we also needed to have double as many tempo changes.”
From there, it still took studio prowess to make everything work. Serena suggested creating a click track to be played in the musicians’ headphones that would change tempo before it happened on the page.
The Recording Challenges Behind “Can You Hear the Music”
“Can You Hear the Music” from “Oppenheimer” proved to be one of the most spellbinding pieces of cinematic music in recent history. It blends artistry and technical skill to be an aural representation of the emotional turmoil in the film. However, one of the big takeaways from Göransson is that making the most meaningful soundscapes doesn’t require an immense amount of music.
I think a lot of times you get sort of ‘up’ with what you’re doing, and you feel like you have to add things the whole time to make it sound bigger, to make sound grand and cinematic,” he says. “But that’s not really what it’s about. Instead of adding too many sounds and make it to feel like you have to fill up the air with different elements, just focus on the things that really grab you the most. And I think you can make the most out of that.”
Watch Göransson Explain “Can You Hear the Music” and Follow the Score
