The fourth and final season of The Descendants is getting a lot of talk, according to Mr Gray. But at the same time, he wonders: what would this series be like if it didn’t have this particular background music?

Mr. Gray insists that there was no talk of exquisite music “decorating” the show. Composer Nicholas Brittel gives his own show based on the main title theme, and in a short video released by Vanity Fair, he explains at the piano how he wrote the music.

In the video, Britel makes it very clear what he had in mind when he wrote the show’s dramatic, idiosyncratic cool central theme: the duality that characterizes the narrative itself. On the one hand, there is an element of grotesque and absurdity, on the other hand, an exciting, humane, tragic and comic drama. On the one hand, the intrigue of industry, the cannibalism of politics, and on the other, the cannibalism of blood ties and their underground complexes, in which there is neither attachment nor revenge.

“The main melody goes away, like a family on a show,” says Nicholas Brittel.

According to Mr Gray, the show’s power relationships are reminiscent of dark Shakespearean schemes where almost no one will stop at nothing to get what they (think they want) – but that doesn’t mean they won’t have a ghost or a ghost knife. to deal with him later, she pursues him because of his choice.

Based on a very dramatic tonal scale, in C minor (climate of Beethoven’s 5th, Grand Mass, and Mozart’s 24th Piano Concerto, among others), Brittel sometimes “adds” some deliberate dissonance in the black key through depression. or recession, undermining the very coherence of a particular scale. According to him, he wanted to capture the essence of the series’ situations from the opening bars of the title theme. “The main melody goes away, like a family on a show,” he says.

From the dark, menacing main theme (which develops through an almost out-of-tune piano and a large string orchestra), very interesting variations unfold over the seasons, culminating in a dramatic ostinato (manic repetition of chords) and a “swirling” minuet. that play at key moments in the series.

Anyone can watch the corresponding video here