CARTER BURWELL TALKS ABOUT THE STORY BEHIND “BELLA’S LULLABY”
Carter Burwell, the composer for “Bella’s Lullaby”, has written an entry on his website about what it took to create the melody. He starts from the beginning, before he was even signed on to help with Twilight and ends with the completion of “Bella’s Lullaby”.
Here’s an excerpt from his entry:
My concern, as a composer, is to make the film as a whole compelling, dramatic, emotional and cinematic. But in this case other extraneous concerns quickly started to pile on, all driven by the fans of the book. The piano scene was added because Summit was becoming aware that fans wanted to hear Edward play the melody referred to as “Bella’s Lullaby.” Because I hadn’t started writing yet there was a musical vacuum into which other music started to be pulled. Rob improvised a tune for the shoot. Matthew Bellamy, of Muse, sent in his idea of “Bella’s Lullaby.” And there were countless readers who already had their own ideas. None of this made my job easier.When I finally began writing music for Twilight, in early July, I moved myself, my family and my studio from New York to Los Angeles to work more closely with Catherine and the editorial team – Nancy Richardson the film editor and Adam Smalley the music editor. I began the score with Bella and Edward, specifically the scene in which he carries her into the treetops. I wanted to capture the excitement but also the challenge of this love which spans barriers of time and species. The film had been edited so that the piano scene followed the treetops scene, and the whole montage had very little dialogue so it was a good canvas on which to paint Bella and Edward’s love theme.
After trying many different approaches with mixed success I put the tune I wrote years ago for my ecstatic and tormented love against the picture and it seemed quite perfect. It has an “A” theme which is a bit ambiguous, like two people trying to find a common ground, climbing to a high and then tumbling down, and a “B” theme that is forthrightly joyful (at least as joyful as my music gets). I showed it to Catherine Hardwicke and she found it “thrilling,” “exhiliarating.” And so this unnamed tune became “Bella’s Lullaby.” It’s worth noting, though, that neither Catherine nor I ever called that. We always referred to this tune as the “Love Theme” and I think it makes much more sense if you think of it this way. It’s more complex and emotional than any lullaby I’ve ever heard.
To read the complete article, click here.
(Thanks Hugz and KrazyEm)
“Bella’s Lullaby” is very special anyway, because of it’s back story, but hearing the story about how the melody was created somehow makes it even more special. Later on in the article, Carter talks about how it was originally written for his wife, so you can’t get much better than that.
What did you think of the story? Were you surprised at what it took to create the lullaby?
