Caroline Shaw Nominated for Emmy for “Leonardo da Vinci” Score
Composer Carline Shaw was recently nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special (Original Dramatic Score) for her score for Ken Burns’s Leonardo da Vinci docuseries. Although she did not take home the Emmy at the September 14 ceremony, the soundtrack, released by Nonesuch Records last October, is worth a listen and stands on its own as an album.
Leonardo da Vinci—which premiered last November on PBS and is available to stream on the PBS App with PBS Passport—is the first Ken Burns film on a non-American subject. With its frequent use of split screens with images and video from different periods to contextualize Leonardo’s art and scientific explorations, the film marks a stylistic shift for the acclaimed director. Plus, it is his first film to include an entirely original score.
“To help give depth and dimension to Leonardo’s inner life, and to carry our viewers on his personal journey, we enlisted the composer Caroline Shaw,” co-director David McMahon writes in the liner notes of the soundtrack. “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern. A fully original score, we believed, would add crucial connective tissue to areas where the record of Leonardo’s life is thin and it’s possible to briefly lose his trail. The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder.”
Shaw’s score helps reveal Leonardo as a complex human being—one who is both strikingly modern yet of his time—as opposed to what McMahon calls a “wizard shrouded in mystery.” Whereas other documentarians might have used Renaissance polyphony or other music contemporaneous to the fifteenth-century polymath, Shaw’s modern score demonstrates how the questions Leonardo was asking are still pertinent today.
“Shaw . . . might be Leonardo’s soulmate from across time,” McMahon continues. Like Leonardo, Shaw is not content to pigeonhole herself into one form of musical expression. The winner of several Grammy Awards and the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, she has collaborated with a range of artists across genres, from Yo-Yo Ma and Renée Fleming to Rosalía and Kanye West. In addition to composing, she is also an active performer as a violinist and vocalist, and recently formed a pop duo with singer-songwriter Danni Lee called Ringdown.
For Leonardo da Vinci, Shaw assembled a supergroup from three of her longtime collaborators—the Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth—plus bassist John Patitucci. The soundtrack bears all the hallmarks of Shaw’s compositional style, such as soaring wordless vocals that shapeshift between unexpected harmonies, characteristic marimba chords, and rapid string arpeggios.
Despite being immediately recognizable as Shaw’s handiwork, the score has plenty of textural variety. For instance, the string pizzicatos of “Optics, Light & Shadow” evoke the restless ticking of Leonardo’s brilliant mind, while the soaring soprano vocals in “The Mona Lisa” capture the soft femininity of the enigmatic subject.
Check out this video for a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the recording process as Shaw helps bring her composition off the page.
Can’t wait for the next Ken Burns documentary? You’re in luck. Tune in November 16 for The American Revolution, airing on WILL-TV and streaming on the PBS App.
