Stillness of the music: an analysis of
Abel Korzeniowski’s score for
A Single Man by Tom Ford

Alessandro Mastroianni

Berklee College of Music,
Valencia Campus

M.M. Scoring For Film, Television and Video Games
2013 - 2014

How did Abel Korzeniowski, with his classical background, manage to
effectively combine 20th century minimalism and 19th century romantic music
to create his most successful score to date?

A short outline of the work
A Single Man by Tom Ford represents the first Abel Korzeniowski
soundtrack for a big budget Hollywood film. He achieved an important
success that brought him a number of prestigious awards and this film
represented a meaningful turning point in his career as a film composer.
As a student of Krzysztof Pendercki, Korzeniowski had a strong
background in classical music education and, in A Single Man, he achieved
extraordinary results with very simple yet intelligent music played by a fairly
small ensemble, delivering a score of incredible elegance and intimacy.
This work will provide an analysis of the score with a specific focus on
the influences of minimal music and romanticism on the composer’s writing
style, evaluating at the same time the dramatic role of the music in the film.
After giving a general overview of the film, I will focus my attention on
the main theme, the cue named by the composer ‘Stillness of the Mind’. I will
then use two of the cues that lack a proper thematic writing – ‘mescaline’ and
‘Going Somewhere’ – as analysis material to stress the influence of
minimalism on the composer’s writing style. To conclude, I will briefly analyze
one of the cues written by the composer credited for the additional music,

Shigeru Umebayashi, to see how it fits with the general sound concept of the
score.

The director: Tom Ford’s cinematographic debut
Certainly known more as a fashion designer than as a film director,
Tom Ford launched his film production company in 2005, Fade to Black, of
which A Single Man is the one and only product so far.
The film, largely produced by Ford, achieved significant standing, being
nominated for a Golden Lion at the 66th Venice International Film Festival.
Freely based on the novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood – the
main difference being the impelling suicide attempt of the main character - the
screenplay was adapted by Ford and David Scearce.
Colin Firth was recognized in the film and nominated for an Academy
Award and for a Golden Globe, going on to win the Coppa Volpi and to
receive the BAFTA award for Best Leading Role.

Plot
A Single Man takes place in 1962 in Los Angeles, at a time when the
world is in the grip of fear of a nuclear war. George Falconer is a homosexual,
middle-aged British professor who looses his longtime partner, Jim, in a car
accident and suffers both grief and depression.
The film covers a single day (30 November, a month after the Cuban
missile crisis) in the life of the main character, the day in which George will
attempt to commit suicide.

After awakening from a dream in which he finds the dead body of Jim
at the scene of the car accident, just like every morning since he lost his
lifetime partner, George gets ready to go to the college where he teaches. He
goes through the process of ‘Becoming George’, the person that he needs to
pretend to be in order to hide his pain and to avoid the scandal of being
homosexual.
Surrounded by a number of characters – Kenny Potter, a student who
crosses the conventional boundaries of a student-professor relationship;
Carlos, a Spanish male prostitute and Charley, George’s oldest and closest
friend – who will offer him a chance for deep reflection on his crisis, George
will go about his day focusing on the beauty of isolated events, with the sense
of enjoyment of a man who sees things for the last time.
That evening George will have dinner with Charley and he gets upset
by her desire of a deeper relationship with him and by her failure in
understanding his relationship with Jim.
Full of anger and confused, George goes to a bar in which he meets
his student Kenny who previously showed interest in him. They have few
drinks and a night swim in the sea. Back to George’s house, they continue
drinking and George falls asleep.
As he wakes up alone in his bed, he finds Kenny sleeping in another
room, holding George’s gun in his hand, which he had taken from his desk, in
order to keep the professor from committing suicide.
This experience relieves George from his grief and convinces him to
lock the gun away after burning his suicide notes. A voiceover then explains

how he has rediscovered the ability ‘to feel, rather than think’ but, whilst going
to sleep, he suffers a heart attack and dies.
The cast features Colin Firth as George Falconer, Julianne Moore as
Charley, Matthew Goode as Jim. Nicholas Hoult as Kenny Potter and Jon
Kortajarena as Carlos.

The composer: Abel Korzeniowski
Abel Korzeniowski is a Polish composer with a solid background in
classical music. Under the supervision of the most important living polish
composer, Krzystof Penderecki, he graduated from the Academy of Music in
Krakow completing his studies in cello and composition.
He reached success in his home country as a composer for films like
Big Animal, Tomorrow’s Weather, An Angel in Krakow as well as in
Hollywood, having scored Battle for Terra, Tickling Leo, W.E. and Escape
from Tomorrow in addition to A Single Man.
His score for A Single Man is probably his most successful one up until
now, considering the San Diego Film Critics Society Award won in 2009 for
this work and the nomination for the Golden Globe the same year.
After A Single Man the composer was called for many other important
films but he still considers Tom Ford’s movie as the real turning point of his
career. The proof of this is the fact that Madonna, when hiring him as the
composer for W.E., used a lot of the music from his A Single Man soundtrack
as a reference in the script.
Despite his classical music background Abel Korzeniowski declared
several times that his main career aspiration has always been to become a

film composer and that his academic studies were only a medium to acquire
better skills in film music composition, which has always been his main
interest.
For the purpose of my analysis, the composer’s use of repetitions and
simple harmonies in his music are particularly important. In an interview to the
German online magazine www.original-score.de, Korzeniowski declared,
talking about his relationship with his master K. Penderecki:
“I doubt that one could find a direct reference to Penderecki in my music, be it
film music or concert pieces. I never tried to mimic his style, my approach to
music is much more minimalistic. If you are looking for some references, you’ll
find me closer to Philip Glass, in terms of repetitiveness and a small number
of elements in my scores. But the main lesson that I learned from my master
is the way I think about counterpoint and melody. And there is this specific
attention to detail he thought me. We started from working on solo pieces first,
and then duets, quartets, a small ensemble and so on. Because of him I
learned about the importance of each single line in music. I learned to think
about the individual players performing the score. Will it be inspiring for them?
Will they become emotionally involved in this music? This is what I call the
classical approach.”
Another noticeable work of the composer, prior to his Hollywood career
– even if of minor interest for my analysis - is his rescore of the magnificent
Fritz Lang silent film Metropolis, dated 1927.

Approaching the temp track
“Tom Ford really loved my music from the beginning. And he used a lot
of what I had done before in the temp track. This was a bit of a problem for
me, because it is difficult for a composer to have a temp track with his own
music. With someone else’s music in the temp, it makes a healthier
competition. You want to beat that cue, you want to write something better
than the other composer. But you want to do it in your own way. When the
temp track is based your music, it already is your language, your style. It can
become very hard to find another way in your vocabulary to achieve a better
expression of the scene, especially when a director loves his original find.”
Korzeniowski highlights the common problem that composers face
when approaching a temp track1 using their own music.
As he attempted not to copy himself, Korzeniowski was able to
preserve the same energy and pace of the temp track in his cues, avoiding
any possible reference to melody or motives and looking, instead, for
similarities in the general feel.
During the production process, the composer also asked if he could
write the main theme without restrictions or references and, as it was the first
part to be written, it became the leading path for all the other cues.

Style and characteristics of the score
The main characteristic of the score is the minimalistic instrumentation
used. As a specific choice, Abel Korzeniowski adopted a medium ensemble
comprising a string section and a solo violin, alongside a small number of

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1
 Existing
 music
 used
 in
 film
 production
 during
 the
 editing
 phase,
 which
 serves
 
as
 a
 guideline
 for
 the
 mood
 the
 director
 is
 looking
 for
 in
 a
 scene
 

woodwinds, percussions, piano and harp that were added at a later stage of
the orchestration process.
The director’s desire for a romantic and elegant score was fulfilled
strictly by the beautiful melodies and warm tone of the instruments used,
avoiding any superfluous orchestral device.
This is the description of the score by the composer:
“Sir Alfred Hitchcock once said “a good film should start with an
earthquake and be followed by rising tension”. Tom wanted exactly that, only
with a thrill of passion and beauty instead of fear. So the movie starts with this
incredible underwater image of a naked man, who, we can’t be sure, is either
drowning or dancing or locked up in a dream. For this scene, Tom asked for
music to be of exceptional beauty and strength, something that would
overload our senses with the complexity of its emotion reach. The piece I
wrote (Drowning) has a lush, extremely romantic melodic line, stylistically
suspended between the past and the present. After that, we only proceed to
get deeper and deeper into the mind of Professor Falconer.”
The musical language is, to use the composer’ s words, somehow
suspended in time, mixing features of the 20th century minimalism – e.g. the
obsessive repetition of rhythmic cells and the oversimplified, consonant
harmonic content - with the 19th century romanticism from which Korzeniowski
borrows the hyper-expressive use of the string orchestra and the sinuosity of
the melodic lines.

No click track, please. Notes from the recording session
In his Hollywood Reporter interview, Abel Korzeniowski disclosed a
variety of details about the recording session, which are indeed worth
mentioning: the ensemble was made of fifty players, mostly strings, and the
score has been recorded at Warner studios in Los Angeles in two recording
sessions of three hours each.
As I mentioned before, the film required a lush melodic movement and
the string section, with its expressiveness, was the means by which
characteristic features of romantic music were conveyed.
The solo violin has a predominant role in the score – it is the main
instrument in the ending theme ‘Stillness of the Mind’ – and Korzeniowski tried
to emphasize its role by surrounding the player with a concert-like setting and
asking him to stand up in front of the orchestra.
In a score that makes such extensive use of repeated rhythmical cells,
the greatest risk would be a result that sounds extremely mechanical and
unnatural: one of the details that made the score sound so organic and
natural was the complete absence of a click track during the recording
session: every cue was rehearsed with a click track through the headphones
and then played without it. The result is a naturally flowing tempo, also helped
by the lack of any obvious hit points throughout the film, making the otherwise
mechanical and unnatural sounding melodic cells appear far more subtle to
the audience. The composer himself conducted the orchestra.

Writing the right theme for the ending: Stillness of the Mind
A Single Man is about isolation and the inability of the characters to
connect with the external world, which is reflected in the deep solitude of their
life. The music plays an extremely important role in this sense, working on
one side to dramatically emphasize the static status of pain (the title chosen
by Korzeniowski for the most important cue, ‘Stillness of the mind’, is a clear
indication of this) and, on the other, to stress the aesthetical beauty of the
picture.
As stated before, Stillness of the Mind is considered by the composer
the most important musical moment in the film, happening in the emotionally
intense last scene, as the theme that would determine the whole conceptual
direction of the music in A Single Man.
A deep analysis of this track is essential to not only evaluate the
compositional devices used to underline the dramatic feel of this scene for the
audience, but also as a way to define the general concept behind the entire
soundtrack.
Considering the freedom left to the composer – no temporary music or
references of any kind – it was natural to start writing from the most important
theme, an approach that he seems to keep in every film he scores2.
Stillness of the Mind uses a very simple melody in 3/8 exposed by the
solo violin (Ex. 1).


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
2
In his interview to www.scorenotes.com, Korzeniowski explained that he
always starts writing the main theme when working on a new score because
this “implies to get rid of the previous project”.

Ex. 1
The first theme is developed over the two simple triads of D minor and
G minor – I and IV degree of the key - in a symmetric pattern:
4 bars of D minor – 8 bars of G minor – 4 bars of D minor.
Considering the static nature of the music and its almost unnatural,
academic symmetry, it is impressive how a meticulous melodic writing, the
orchestration within the single string section – e.g. at bar 25 first and second
violin repeat the theme previously exposed by the soloist with a new
harmonization (Ex. 2) – and an expressive, romantic style of playing, bring an
unexpected variety to the score.

Ex. 2
Stillness of the Mind is in itself is strong evidence as to the importance
of the role played by music in the film. The minimalistic writing comes always
as the result of a crafting process in which the musical material is carefully
chosen to avoid any excessive lyrical gesture rather than as a background
device.

This characteristic attention to details, declared by Korzeniowski
himself as heritage of his academic background, gives a strong personality to
the music that may appear oversimplified on paper but that works perfectly in
accompanying the picture with outstanding beauty.
During this ending cue, Korzeniowski uses a highly effective
compositional technique which consists of setting a steady pulse that is
suddenly changed, evoking a deep emotional impact: the meter change from
a compound meter (3/8) to a simple one that is still in a triple pattern (3/4),
allows him to add variety and yet to still be consistent.
At this point of the film George Falconer starts to reconnect with reality
and to free himself from the grief of his pain. He falls asleep and he starts to
dream of a man in the sea, moving in a way that is not clear whether he is
drowning or freely floating, as though almost dancing in the water. The cue
starts at the beginning of the dream with the obsessive repetition of a D minor
triad by cellos and violas (Ex. 3). Some harp glissandos, and a fast phrase in
the flute are the only added colors to the string section and the soloist.

Ex. 3
The soloist exposes the first theme as I explained above and, when
George wakes up the music goes back to the introductory bars to prepare the
meter change. As soon as the character moves from the chair to go in the
other room to find Kenny sleeping holding his gun the music meter changes to
¾ and introduces a new theme (ex.4). In this scene the variation in music has

a significant dramatic impact, since it works as a turning point between dream
and reality3, reflecting an inner change of the character state.

Ex.4
The music has the power to mirror the grief of Prof. George Falconer
using a simple background and a lush, melodic theme as a foreground.

Mescaline and Going Somewhere
The influence of 20th century minimal music in the score becomes more
evident in the cues without the solo violin or more generally that are lacking in
important melodic content.
This approach has been used extensively throughout the whole score
but it becomes clear when the piano, with the triadic, very simple
accompaniment of the strings, has the foreground.
This is the case of two cues in particular that are very close in the film –
they appear only few minutes away from each other – and that share the
same musical building blocks.
Mescaline, the track that we can hear during the first personal
conversation between the Prof. Falconer and Kenny Potter is the first of these
cues that I am going to analyze.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
3
It is not a case that the bars used for the introduction are also used at the
end of the dream, before the meter changes, as if they were a kind of
punctuation to indicate to the audience the beginning and the end of the
oneiric activity.

The music starts when the student almost chases George out of the
college after an intense class about the feeling of fear that all of us, as human
beings, experience in our lives. Kenny is somehow surprised about the way
his professor spoke for the first time frankly in class and he follows his
professor to talk with him about it. The music uses two-note melodic cells
which are continually repeated by the piano while the strings provide an
extremely simple yet very effective harmonic accompaniment (ex.5).



















































































































Ex. 5






























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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The same melodic cell that appears in the second part of ‘Mescaline’,
when the cellos in staccato give a new pace to the music, is used as the

building block for the next cue ‘Going Somewhere’, in which the dramatic
effect of the music is very powerful.
Following a phone call with Charley to schedule a time for their dinner
together, George starts to clear out his office and to tidy up his affairs, setting
the scene that friends and colleagues will find after his suicide.
When he finishes, he contemplates for a moment the large clock on the
wall as though he were questioning himself about the meaning of the passing
of time. Then he gives a last look to the room and he closes the door.
The hit point for the music to come in is exactly the shutting of the door
and this repetitive, obsessive rhythm of the piano mirrors the sound of the
clock, building the tension for the audience as George reaches his car in the
parking lot where he meets his student Kenny.
The harmonies are still predominantly minors and, again, the repetition
of small melodic cells is the main feature of the music (ex.6). It is also
interesting to note that in these two cues the symmetrical repetition of the
notes is in group of six and the variety is, in a very subtle way, achieved by
small musical expedients: the change from tremolo to a simple legato
articulation in Mescaline and the simple change of the chord position in Going
Somewhere.

Ex. 6

Additional and Source Music
The soundtrack of A Single Man features a number of licensed songs4
that are not of particular interest for our analysis, being usually simply
historically appropriate (it is mostly background music that the characters
listen to in few scenes). It is interesting however, to consider briefly the music
of the composer of all of the additional music in the movie: Shigeru
Umebayashi.
Considering the lack of information regarding the collaboration between
Umebayashi and neither the director Tom Ford nor the main composer, I think
is safe to consider the possibility of the presence of his music in the temp
track.

Shigeru Umebayashi
Umebayashi is a Japanese composer who started his career in the
new wave - rock band EX. He began his journey in film scoring in 1985, with
more then fifty films – mostly Asian – to his credit.
At least in the western world, he is best known for his work with the
Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai (he is the composer behind In The Mood
For Love and 2046) and for his score for House of Flying Daggers, directed by
Zhang Yimou.
Umebayashi’ s contribution to A Single Man is represented by three
tracks in which he is credited as composer: ‘George’s Waltz (I)’, ‘George’s
Waltz (II)’ and ‘Carlos’. He is also credited in the track ‘Variation On Scotty

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
4
 La
 Wally
 sang
  by
  Alfredo
  Catalani;
 Stormy
 Weather
  sang
  by
  Harold
  Arlen
  and
 
Ted
  Koehler;
  Green
  Onions
  by
  Booker
  T.
  &
  the
  M.
  G.’s;
  Blue
  Moon
  by
  Richard
 
Rodgers
 e
 Lorenz
 Hart
 

Tails Madeleine’, which takes its theme from the Bernard Hermann score for
the movie Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock.
I will be taking into consideration the cue ‘George’s Waltz’ as an
example to evaluate the ways in which Umebayashi’s writing style fits the
general concepts and ideas for the soundtrack.

Ex. 6 – Piano reduction

The theme is in a tonality that is common to many cues in the movie, D
minor, and it shares the same characteristics of simplicity and stillness of the
harmony. Even if the composer’s voice is unique and different in the harmonic
choices (it is evident an impressionistic tendency to use chord extensions),
the consistent instrumentation (string orchestra with a soloist) and a general
similarity in the sound achieved by recording the music of the two different
composers with the same orchestra and on the same scoring stage, endows a
certain degree of coherence to the cues.


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Ex. 6



















Conclusions
A Single Man is an emotionally intense film that aims to explore the
complex feelings of pain and fear.
The aesthetic choices for the film – cinematography, colors, costumes are also of extreme importance and represent a powerful statement of Tom
Ford’s view of the Christopher Isherwood’s novel.
The music perfectly fits this overall concept of the movie and Abel
Korzeniowski was able to create an elegant and romantic score with an
incredible parsimony of elements, both instrumental and musical, delivering a
masterpiece of minimalism and showing a maturity in his writing which is hard
to find in young composers.
A deep analysis of the score reveals that the composer’s skills were
chosen to achieve a specific effect and to exploit his peculiar voice rather then
to have an average dramatic score for a genre film.
As for Abel Korzeniowski A Single Man represented an important
turning point in his career and a way to open new doors, it important to
remember that the film was the first experience as a director for Tom Ford as
well.
It is interesting to consider the possibility that this scene brought a new
approach for the entire production process of dramatic films, which was
reflected in the choice of a composer who was not well known at the time but
who had, indeed, a unique concept for the film.

This paper analyzed the composer’s influences and his mastery in
orchestral writing and I tried to underline the way in which romantic music

devices have been combined with a more contemporary minimalistic
approach. It can be said that Korzeniowski’s score for A Single Man is a
triumph in that it is harmonious with the film on various levels, whilst at the
same time adds a unique, personal touch to the story.

Selected Bibliography

Web Sites
www.original-score.de
www.abelkorzeniowski.com
www.hollywoodreporter.com
www.scorenotes.com

Books
‘On the Track: A Guide To Contemporary Film Scoring’
Fred Karlin, Rayburn Wright; Routledge Edt.

Various podcasts and interviews with Abel Korzeniowski were used to
obtain information regarding the production process of the score for A
Single Man.