Carter Burwell on Twilight, Breaking Dawn & his Inspiration

It was like a scene out of a movie. Film score composer Carter Burwellwrote the final cue to The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Part I) at his piano in the country by the flickering light of an oil lamp.
“I was out at my place in Amagansett trying to finish up the score when Hurricane Irene hit and took out my power,” Burwell describes. “And it stayed out for four days. So I ended up writing the ending in this darkened, boarded up house.
“It was interesting and painful at the same time,” he says, with a laugh. “But it worked out.”
Being forced to compose the old-fashioned way is not as extreme an exercise for Burwell as it might be for another composer; he does write most of his themes at the piano. And the storm made a perfectly dark and romantic setting in which to conjure the final scene’s music, where Burwell reprises the soaring “Bella’s Lullaby” theme from the first Twilight, with liturgical sounds. Without spoiling the ending, it’s a heavy, most climactic scene.
Looking over your filmography, it seems like you haven’t scored a sequel before. You did the first Twilight but not the second and third. Can you tell me about how you came to doBreaking Dawn, the fourth of the Twilight films?
It’s true, I’ve never scored a sequel. But it’s pretty simple – I’ve worked with this director – Bill Condon – before [on Kinsey]. Bill wanted me to do the scores, but he wasn’t sure I would want to because they’re such huge melodramas, and that’s really very different than what I normally do. But he is entirely a pleasure to work with so I definitely wanted to do it.
When I was composing music for the first Twilight, I don’t think any of us knew that it would be thatpopular… that it would have this cultural resonance. There was such an enormous response. There have been thousands of emails people have written me, wanting to know how to play the themes on piano. And that has been really nice.
Oh that’s really cool – the fans genuinely engaging with the film’s score. Wow. So, in scoring this latest film, did you reprise any of those themes from the first? How did you continue that work you’d done on the first one, or did you not approach it like that at all?
Well, I did to some extent. The intervening two films were directed by different people and composed by different people and they didn’t use any of the musical themes from the first one.
But there’s this one love theme called “Bella’s Lullaby” that was on the Twilight soundtrack album and that’s the one that most people respond to from the first movie. And when I first talked to Bill Condon, he was excited to bring back “Bella’s Lullaby” – so we have brought it back, judiciously. There’s a hint of it here and there, and then in the last scene of this movie, we actually play it out. And it’s pretty dramatic.

Read the entire interview HERE
Source : Sonic Scoop via Robert Pattinson Life