„There is freedom in collaboration” – An Interview with Elliot Goldenthal

During the 2024 Film Music Festival in Kraków, legendary composer Elliot Goldenthal returned to the city to mark a milestone – his 70th birthday and a renewed connection with Polish audiences. The festival featured two major concerts highlighting his work: Traces of Memory, which included his emotionally charged Symphony No. 3 inspired by the poetry of Barbara Sadowska, and the International Gala: Individuals, where his energetic Grand Gothic Suite – drawn from his scores for Batman Forever and Batman & Robin – was met with standing ovations.

Amidst rehearsals and celebrations, Goldenthal sat down with our redactors, Daniel Aleksander Krause and Paweł Stroiński, to reflect on his creative process, his lasting bond with Kraków, and the role memory and identity play in his compositions. We invite you to read the interview below.

Daniel Aleksander Krause: Thank you so much for sharing your time with us. It’s a pleasure. This is your fifth time at the Film Music Festival, right?

Elliot Goldenthal: I think so, yes.

DAK: It seems like you have a very special connection with Kraków and with Poland in general. Could you tell us a bit more – how did it start that you found a place for yourself in Poland?

EG: It started with Robert and Agata. They were running the festival when I first met them at the Ghent Festival in Belgium. It must have been around 2010 or 2012. They said, “You must come to Kraków. It’s a great festival. You’ll love it.” So I said, “I trust you, let’s see.” They arranged a series of my works to be performed, and I had a great experience – not only with the orchestra and the administration, but with the city in general.

My love of Polish avant-garde music goes back to when I was a little boy. The history of literature, art, and music here – it’s an honor to be represented in a city with such a rich and beautiful tradition. Also, I’m half-Jewish. My father’s family is Jewish. My mother’s family is Catholic and from this city. So on the Catholic side, my DNA is here. And the sad legacy of the Holocaust is on my father’s side. Either way, it’s a very significant connection with this part of the world.

I’ve found it a great environment to study, to work, and to appreciate the art form of film music. It’s a new art form – only about 100 years old, if you think about it. Opera, for example, began with Monteverdi and the Renaissance in the 16th century. In comparison, 100 years is very young for any art form. So the fact that this festival supports and recognizes composers in this field is a very welcome thing – more than in the United States.

DAK: Until recently, film music hasn’t really been recognized as an equal form of art, especially compared with concert music. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago, some academics still looked down on it. Did you experience anything like that?

EG: Academics used to look down on composing for ballet, too. They thought it was a second-tier or second-rate form of music – and also music for dramatic works like plays. But you can imagine how many wonderful things came out of that. In the 18th and 19th centuries, even Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed great music for spoken plays, not just opera – like Egmont and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Paweł Stroiński: You met Krzysztof Penderecki at one of the festival editions.

EG: A few times. Each time he was very warm and friendly. But the last time, I was invited to have lunch with him and spend time at his house, with his wonderful wife. Madame Penderecka took me around his beautiful labyrinth of trees – Lusławice – and his conservatory. We spent four or five hours just talking and walking. He was very warm and very generous with his time.

DAK: That must have been an amazing experience, meeting your idol.

EG: One of my heroes. It really was. I had many questions – I asked him about Shostakovich, about whether they met, and about Soviet times and censorship. We talked about many subjects.

DAK: In many of your works, I noticed this kind of writing for French horns – those oscillating sounds – which feels familiar from Penderecki’s works too. Did his music inspire you, for example in Batman?

EG: The horn oscillations – I’m not sure where they came from. It might have been the influence of John Corigliano. But I also heard a work by Penderecki called The Pittsburgh Overture. It’s not a famous piece, but it’s for wind instruments, and he uses a lot of clusters – many ideas that involve the brass and strings in interesting ways. It was extremely influential for me, especially when I was introduced to it in my late teens. I was really drawn to his advances in orchestration, his ideas, and his notation.

DAK: A lot of your works seem connected to military themes or war – like the oratorio Fire Water Paper, the symphony we heard two days ago, which was dedicated to martial law in Poland. And the trumpet concerto for Kościuszko, who was a war hero too.

EG: Yes. I have a house – like Penderecki’s house in a way – outside the city. It’s on the land where Kościuszko built forts during the American Revolution. He spent a lot of time there. I always say hello to him when I take my morning walks. I know he was there, in that same area of New York, near West Point, which he designed. It was his contribution to the American Revolution.

I wish things today were as true to his aspirations. His friendship with Thomas Jefferson, his support for education for former slaves, free education – his social ideas were way ahead of his time. In Poland too, with his views on the Jewish population, the serf population, taxation, and individual freedom. He is a very important figure.

When I was writing the trumpet concerto, of course I was also thinking about the trumpet players here – 24 hours a day. How a simple trumpet call is part of daily life in Kraków, and has been for hundreds of years.

DAK: Yes, I lived here for six years, and I heard that trumpet every day. You can hear it from kilometers away.

EG: Yes. So, your question was about war… Fire Water Paper was written for the 20th anniversary of the first peace treaty in Vietnam. I was politically and morally against that war. If I had been a soldier, I would have refused to participate. It was important to me to reflect on my generation’s feelings – both those who protested and those who went and lost their lives, and the Vietnamese who lost their lives.

The piece uses Latin, French, English, and Vietnamese. The French and English are important because of the history of colonization and war. The Latin is important because the text was inspired by a Buddhist prayer for peace by a woman named Nhat Chi Mai. She set herself on fire in protest. One side of her was the Virgin Mary, and the other was Guanyin.

The first half hour of the piece is entirely female – soprano and women’s chorus, all in Latin. Then the male chorus takes over. It’s deeply rooted in both Buddhist and Catholic traditions. The second part mixes languages, but the text is very important. Sancta Mater is a key part – the poetry in that section. The chorus is by a poet called Yusef Komunyakaa, who was a soldier and a Black American poet.

DAK: I think the final part of the oratorio has a very cathartic sort of feeling with the choir singing. It also reminded me a lot of your other works where we also have this cathartic resolution. Titus, or the Adagio piece from Alien 3, and many other works actually – Final Fantasy, Michael Collins… It seems like there are a lot of great resolutions in your music. Do you have some sort of pattern that you follow when you’re trying to create a finale for your work?

EG: Sometimes. In my third symphony, which is based on the martial law here – that work was a very, very modest way of expressing something. For Barbara Sadowska, it was very horrific. Her impressions in the poetry have a shadow of horror, a shadow of captivity. And I didn’t want to end that piece triumphantly. I wanted to end it very gently. And with the Vietnam oratorio, it’s similar in that respect. If you listen to the rhythm in both – Boża krówka rakowiecka… Stabat mater dolorosa… the text in both pieces has a very similar rhythm of scan. And I know she was thinking about it in the back of her mind, possibly because of the rosaries, possibly something… those pieces are related in that way with Virgin Mary. Also, I should say, I’m not particularly religious in any way. However, I’m very inspired by the heart and the mysticism of those religions.

PS: I’ve been thinking – having listened to the Gothic Suite yesterday – I noticed for the second time, because I’ve heard it twice now, that suite…

EG: The mistakes in bar 53? [laughs]

PS: I wish I could. [laughs] But I was thinking a lot about the humor, which is a part of you that I think isn’t really appreciated much outside of some track titles. So maybe let’s start with those titles – when you don’t take everything too seriously. One that always comes to mind is the Demolition Man cue called “Obligatory Car Chase,” which is just…

EG: Exactly what it is. The composer is obliged to write a car chase – so there it is. [laughs]

PS: And it really fits the satirical bit of the movie. But also, the fun you had with the very humorous, I would say sarcastic, bits in the Gothic Suite. A great part of the funny stuff is written for the villains, right? So, you can have a lot of fun with the material – and yourself at the same time. Do you tend to use those moments to instill as much humor as you’re allowed to, by your commissioners and the subject matter, of course?

EG: Well, it’s always a collaboration with the directors. So it’s not enough to have your own sense of humor – you have to share it with the director, and the director has to be on the same page. With Joel Schumacher, he had a big sense of humor, and it was easy to be as sarcastic and ironic as I wanted with him. Other directors aren’t as funny. Even Frida has a lot of humor. The scene with the skeletons and Frida in the bed… Humor is important.

DAK: And I think – at least according to me – the most fun score that you’ve made is maybe a not-so-well-known one, The Butcher Boy.

EG: The Butcher Boy is really funny. And it’s very ironic.

DAK: Yeah, especially the final piece with those choirs.

EG: “Francie Brady is Our Lady.” Our Lady comes up again.

PS: And in between the funny, humorous bits that Joel Schumacher made with you, he made a very serious movie: A Time to Kill. And what’s very interesting there is that, because of the civil rights-related subject matter, what you did was essentially deconstruct what you call Americana, by Aaron Copland, right?

EG: Even more in the movie called Cobb, which is based on a baseball player, also a racist. And it was a very good movie, and I liked the score very much. But especially in that film, it’s very “Americana,” in the sense of the stylistic approach that Aaron Copland started. His film music as well as his ballet music.

DAK: In your music, you’ve also incorporated a lot of modern elements…

EG: When did modern start? And when did modern end? [laughs]

DAK: That’s a good question. Let’s say, second half of the 20th century. Maybe even “popular” in some terms like rock music, or electronic music. I was particularly interested in your use of distorted guitars – for example, in Heat, The Tempest, S.W.A.T… I felt like you might have been inspired by Glenn Branca?

EG: Yes. His guitar orchestras – I liked the idea that he was able to take many guitars – sometimes 50, even 100 guitars – and play together to create overtone interactions between the instruments. And of course, at 14 years old, the first guitarist I heard live was Jimi Hendrix. So that was a good start – welcome to distortion. That type of electronic music was always part of growing up. And also, in a more popular–academic mix, there was a gentleman named Morton Subotnick, who was an electronic synthesist. He used to play music with light shows and synthesizers. It was part of the whole zeitgeist growing up.

DAK: You’ve made a lot of Shakespeare interpretations, particularly with Julie Taymor. Your approach to Shakespeare is very non-classical in a way. There’s a lot of – I’ll use the word again – modern elements in that music. I was especially fascinated with The Tempest. There’s a lot of guitar sounds and the dramatic voice of Beth Gibbons, which is a very interesting approach to that particular work. Where did that idea come from – especially the use of Beth’s voice?

EG: Well, it came from the poem and the text of Shakespeare. I wanted a woman’s voice that matched the character of Prospera, which was Helen Mirren playing Prospero as a female character. And it was a person who had a lot of experience, maybe a person in their fifties or sixties. I wanted a middle-aged sounding woman, a very rich female sound. And I thought she was very expressive and heartfelt in her approach to that song.
And the idea of guitars is also continuing the tradition of composers in the 16th, 17th century. When Shakespeare was performed, quite often the songs would be played on lute. And lute is a sister or grandmother of the guitar. The string instruments, the idea of that brings it to a timelessness that Julie Taymor likes to bring in her Shakespeare productions. I only found it fitting to include amplified, strong guitars. In Heat and The Tempest – it’s multiple guitars, tuned very, very strangely. Tuned with as many notes as possible on one guitar and then overdubbed note by note, so the overtones have a significant role in the resulting sound.

DAK: Beth Gibbons has a very heartfelt voice.

EG: Heartfelt, yes. She was absolutely perfect. I love her singing on that.

DAK: She also sang in the third symphony of Henryk Górecki, which was conducted by Penderecki. And that was probably my favorite version of that symphony. Very…

EG: Haunting.

DAK: Haunting, yes. Her voice is very broken in a way.

EG: Yes.

PS: It has cropped up a bit in our discussion, but I can’t help but notice that you are one of only two composers – or in one case, a music group – who managed to work more than once with Michael Mann. The other being Tangerine Dream in the ’80s. They did Thief and The Keep.

EG: But at least it was they, not one person. [laughs]

PS: How did you approach the film? Because Heat is a very interesting combination of the more violent guitar works that we discussed, very dramatic pieces like Of Helplessness or that trumpet solo that opens the movie in a kind of noir way. And on the other hand you have Public Enemies, which is in a way a more classically dramatic score. How did you manage to discuss this with such a difficult collaborator?

EG: So in the first movie, Michael was generous enough to let me experiment with those types of guitar choirs – even before the movie. I recorded about 45 minutes of experiments with percussion and guitars. He liked the idea very much, and gave me the financial opportunity to record those experiments. Some of those ideas made their way into the movie, like Condensers. And for Public Enemies, he wanted it to be a very classic movie sound. He didn’t want experimentation. He wanted licensed blues singing. And for the rest, he wanted to sound very classical – with a symphonic score. And some cues he wanted to sound like they were written in that period – he wanted that Gershwin feel to it.

PS: It’s interesting, juxtaposing that style of music with the very contemporary digital camera style of the film.

EG: Well, he was experimenting with lenses. It was maybe new to have digital, but for him, he still wanted that classic movie look. A Storaro kind of cinematography, with that, you know – magic hour effect…

DAK: I suppose we have time for one more question. Maybe summing up your career in a way. You’ve made music for so many different forms – movies, ballets, operas, concertos as well. Do you find that all those forms are equal in terms of how you can express yourself? Or do you differentiate between them on purpose?

EG: Well, there are different forms of expression – and different kinds of freedom. There’s freedom of expression within the context and lexicon of collaboration. It’s collaboration in theatre, in cinema, and in ballet, whereas in the concert stage, in opera – it’s usually not.
Sometimes in opera, you have a librettist. In musical theatre, you have a lyricist, or a director with a vision – like in my case, with Julie Taymor. But there’s also freedom in collaboration. It’s just a different kind of freedom. It’s the freedom of co-mingling ideas…

DAK: Is there any form you haven’t tried yet but would like to?

EG: I don’t know… I’m not attracted to video games. I don’t know why – I’m just not attracted to the look of them. But maybe I’ll change.

DAK: Thank you so much for your time. It was our pleasure listening to you.

EG: Thank you very much!