BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE VIA LEVEL AND GAIN
It’s pretty special when your compose your first feature film and it’s released on Netflix starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes. But Stefan Gregory is pretty special, after all. The Helpmann Award-winning composer, who studied mathematics before switching to a career in music theatre, has now made his feature film score debut with The Dig.
In this interview, we chat with Stefan about how he came to compose. He tells us how his background in STEM informs his work — and how it doesn’t. Having also collaborated with The Dig director Simon Stone for 10 years across 30 theatre productions, Stefan reveals a little about how stage can be different to screen.
Here’s how this Australian composer helped construct a BAFTA-nominated cinematic world.
Stefan, we’re going to start at the beginning because you have a fascinating background. You studied mathematics in college. Of course, there are certainly parallels between maths and music. But the industries are fundamentally different. How’d you choose your career path as a composer?
I studied mathematics out of love, without a clear idea of a career path. There were many things I wanted to do with my life, and one of them was to be a composer. So after I graduated, I was working for a bioinformatics company in Silicon Valley, when to my surprise I was accepted into the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, despite being mostly self-taught.
I studied jazz for a year and a half, then dropped out to join a rock band, which was fun for a few years — we had some commercial success and played some big festivals. I gave it up in order to perform a two-hour live electric guitar score for a theatre show, by a director I admired, called Benedict Andrews, which starred Cate Blanchett.
I’ve been working as a composer and sound designer ever since, perhaps because it’s the most challenging and stimulating job I’ve done.
There is a widely discussed divide between STEM and the arts (though in recent years, we can see them coming together through STEAM). As someone who has studied mathematics (STEM) and worked in music (arts), how do you feel about the relationship between these disciplines?
University maths and physics departments in particular are full of musicians. One of my algebra lecturers was previously a concert pianist. However, the cultural divide between arts and science is something I’m all too aware of. It’s the reason I have never felt fully at home in either camp — I’ve always felt like an outsider in both. It’s such a shame, because there is so much potential for collaboration and shared knowledge that is missed.
Implicit bias plays a role. I didn’t used to tell most people about my background in science as I found it drastically altered the way they interpreted what I said, usually for the worse. If I told them I used to play in a rock band then it altered it too, in a very different way.
The thing I find shocking about the arts community is how many people almost take pride in their ignorance of science and maths. We desperately need to be making art about the dangers of a post-truth world. We need to be reminded of the importance of rationality and reason — and at the same time wary of how ‘knowledge’ has been used historically as a tool to wield power.
I think people should study more widely and inquisitively, outside their discipline, outside their beliefs. There’s a big overlap in concepts between maths and music, and I think a similar overlap can be found between many, many subjects.
I suspect that so-called vocational degrees might prepare you less effectively for your vocation than if your study had been more wide-ranging. To put it mathematically: learning about X almost always makes you better at Y.
There seems to be an expectation in our society that if you’re serious about a discipline, you should dedicate yourself to it. [… But] you can’t deeply understand your discipline unless you understand its broader context, and if you want to be a paradigm shifting thinker, you must do that. I wonder if part of the problem is this false idea that artistic ability and mathematical ability are purely innate, and can’t be learned.
Studying is just wandering about in abstract beautiful universes
There’s also that old foolish notion that studying something diminishes its beauty. It’s such rubbish. Ideas are just stories with characters, and studying is just wandering about in abstract beautiful universes, so of course the imagination becomes full and rich.
So, how does your education in mathematics influence your understanding of music or your approach — even if philosophical — to composition? Can we hear any structure or ‘formula’ to your music?
Studying mathematics is not what most people think it is. There are rarely any numbers. It’s about exploring patterns, which is a lot like composition.
Composing is certainly not about applying formulae, in fact it’s the opposite — most of the time, you’re trying to break the formula by coming up with a pattern no one else has before.
No matter what your underlying approach to music, influenced by your background or not, ‘time’ is a major element of your work. From your music theatre work, now to your screen work, you’re creating music based on cues and fitting your score — and its narrative — into a finite amount of time. How have you enjoyed composing your very first film score The Dig? And what were some of the biggest challenges in writing for this new-for-you medium?
Theatre is ephemeral, and is different every night, which is its beauty and strength. But it’s somewhat of a relief to finally make something that is permanent.
I love how integrated and close the relationship between vision and sound is in film. I think film pulls off the trick of creating ‘truth’ better than any other medium, and not just because it’s based in photography. When you hear something and see something, that’s when you know it’s real; otherwise, it could just be an aberration of one of the senses, like tinnitus or an afterimage. Fake foley footsteps in a film can ironically make it seem ‘more real’.
Many of the challenges in film scoring are actually the same as theatre scoring. One difference is that film music needs to be very precise in its timing, whereas for theatre it is often the opposite — the music needs to accommodate shifts in the timing every night.
Tell us about how you approached this story. The era is 1939. In what way did you accept or reject this timeframe, and create your own moment in time?
The original brief for The Dig was to reference orchestral music of the era, and I wrote a lot in this vein, trying to channel the spirit of Vaughan Williams and Arnold Bax and others. When we tried it with the first rough assembly of the film, it didn’t work — the contemporary style of the storytelling, editing, and camera work needed to be matched by a more contemporary score. Yet the music still needed to be sympathetic to the era. So I kept the instrumentation traditional, and borrowed some harmonic ideas from the era, which are so rich and diverse, but structurally the music is mostly quite contemporary.
So you’ve used piano, chamber, and orchestral sounds. How can we hear the patterns of their occurrence through this soundtrack? And how did you decide what these sounds should represent?
I foolishly resisted using piano for a long time, as it felt too obvious. But when I finally did, it unlocked everything. The orchestral moments are about the landscape, and the immensity of time and the earth. The chamber stuff is about the deeply personal. Basil Brown [played by Ralph Fiennes] has a string sextet for some of his emotional journey.
The piano is the most intimate because it’s a solo domestic instrument, and is used a lot with Mrs Pretty [played by Carey Mulligan]. The piano writing is deliberately awkward at times and cold, and at other times its oscillations are effortless and soaring.
At the end of the day, you now have a feature film under your belt. How does it feel knowing your first feature film was such a grand one?! And what have you discovered about scoring and about yourself?
I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to work on a film with such beautiful cinematography, acting, and design. It was a gift. I learnt a lot about the process of making a film score.
What advice would you give to other Australian composers looking to make it big with their own first feature films?
Don’t let your ego get in the way. Don’t try to make something impressive at the expense of the best interests of the film. I’ve seen this happen a lot in theatre. You’re a collaborator, so serve the greater good of the project. Find like-minded people to work with, directors and designers whose vision you share. Make something you believe in.
This story was first published in Level and Gain, our sister magazine for all things screen!
Images supplied.
