acclaimed feature film ‘Hamnet.’ The score earned nominations for both the Critics Choice and Golden Globe Awards, plus a shortlist placement for the Academy Awards upon its release. From Academy Award-winning writer and director Chloé Zhao, Hamnet tells a powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece Hamlet, featuring acclaimed performances from Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. The film has already garnered significant recognition, including the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, with Buckley recently taking home the Critics Choice Award for Best Actress. Buckley praised Richter’s contribution, saying, “He helped to transcend to another plane. And to be able to do that, whether you’re just listening to on your own or in a concert hall with a thousand people that you’ve never met and actually feel like you’re all going to someplace else, that is an extraordinary feeling.”
Richter explains his approach to the soundtrack: “In composing the score for Hamnet, I decided to use the basic atoms of Elizabethan musical practice; the period instrumentation, grammar and sensibility of the time, but to apply these materials in a way that springs directly from the psychology of the story.” He notes that he made sketches responding to the overarching themes of familial love and loss prior to the shoot, which Zhao used during filming and in the edit, giving them a starting point for the overall musical architecture. Richter developed a choral language for the character of Agnes that underpins much of the story, using women’s voices both in ways an Elizabethan composer would recognize and as pure color emanating from the psychology of the moment. One of the most influential composers of his generation, Richter blends traditional orchestrations with modern electronic elements throughout the sweeping Hamnet score. His catalogue has amassed over three billion streams to date, and Hamnet marks one of more than 50 projects that Richter has scored, following collaborations with directors Denis Villeneuve, Martin Scorsese, and Ari Folman. Richter is co-founder of Studio Richter Mahr alongside his partner, visual artist Yulia Mahr, built inside a former farmhouse in Oxfordshire and powered with cutting-edge solar and heat-pump technology.
Tracklist:
Of Agnes
Of Orpheus
See things that others don’t
Look at me
In all my philosophy
Of earth and heaven
An abysm of time
Of the heart
Of remembrance
Of the sky
I was the more deceived
Inward
Who are you looking for?
The great globe itself
Of a ghost
On The Nature Of Daylight
My Robin to the greenwood did go
Of the undiscovered country