Composer Spotlight: Jacob Mühlrad on his score for ‘Burn All My Letters’
Jacob Mühlrad has the output of a composer twice his age. At just 31 years old, he’s already produced several solo piano works, numerous pieces for chamber ensemble, choir and orchestra, and a full-length score for Alex Schulman’s 2022 solo theatre piece Tröstrapporter.
Following the success of REMS, his award-winning full-scale orchestral work, Mühlrad was invited to compose the score for Burn All My Letters, starring Asta August, Gustav Lindh and Bill Skarsgård. This new offering from esteemed Swedish playwright, author and filmmaker Björn Runge explores the lasting impact of a martial affair over 70 years. We caught up with Jacob to discuss his approach to the film’s glimmering piano-led score.
Far Out: This is your first score for a feature film. How did you come to be involved?
Mühlrad: “Björn Runge actually took part in the REMS live stream premiere, and he was texting me throughout the performance, telling me what he liked about the piece. After the premiere, I turned on my phone and found that I had something like eight texts from Björn commenting things like: “3.02 – I love what’s happening in the strings”.
“After that, we met again, and I tried to convince him that I might not be the composer he was looking for. Still, I felt secure because he actually really appreciated my musical language and just let me be who I am. I really appreciated that. I also really like his work. Bill Skarsgård is one of my favourite actors, too.”
After watching the film for the first time, did you immediately have ideas, or did it take a little bit more digging?
“Actually, some of the most important themes were composed before I even saw an edit for the movie. I remember speaking with Björn, who’s extremely good at describing his characters and their emotional conflicts, and feeling really inspired. That conversation led to me writing ‘Karin’s Waltz’, which is one of the main themes, and when I saw the first edit, they’d already put it in. It was the perfect fit and actually worked better than some of the music specifically composed for those scenes.”
“The fun part about writing music for film is that it’s really hard to know exactly what will fit and what won’t. Sometimes music has its own way of affecting what’s happening, and I enjoyed being surprised by how the sound coloured the action unfolding on the screen”.
You’re quite unique among composers today in that you compose using pen-and-paper rather than plugins. Why does that method work for you?
“To be very honest, because I’m the worst electronic composer – the absolute worst. I remember that Ligeti, who composed a little bit of electronic music himself, said that it was hard enough to learn one craftmanship. I tend to agree.”
“I didn’t learn analogue electronic music, so I chose to immerse myself in acoustic music. I’m also enjoying making these soundful, very thick textures using acoustic instruments. Sometimes it’s easier to reflect or imitate electronic music with acoustic instruments than with synthesisers. It might sound paradoxical, but you can get far richer sounds with acoustic music and extremely interesting sound effects”.
Are there any musical elements that are omnipresent or recur throughout your work?
“I’m very attracted to microtonal textures, which can be produced in strings but also in percussion because of the inharmonic spectrum of some percussion instruments. One of the others is glissando, which I used a lot in Burn All My Letters, but not in the way you’d expect. At one point, we had a huge bowl of water, and the percussionist was sinking a tubular bell into the water to make the bell sing”.
It sounds like you were working very closely with your ensemble. Did the musicians have a level of control over their parts, or was everything dictated by you?
“When I wrote REMs, I was extremely detailed. Like, to the point that I was noting down how close the mouthpiece needed to be to the player’s mouth and what part of the bow the string players needed to be using. I was less particular with this score, but some things were very detailed. However, at the end of the recording session, I created some improvisation instructions for the players, so it was a combination really.”
“I think it’s interesting to be very detailed because you have far more control of your overall vision. Of course, sometimes, it’s really nice to be surprised as well. That’s the beauty of music, after all”.
Were there any aspects of Björn’s script you were seeking to highlight with your score?
“With Björn, the script is a layer used to hint at things, but it’s really the character’s actions that are important. Take the scene where the young Sven Stolpe uses a play he’s written to torture Karin about her past. That action was powerful enough on its own, so I used the music to tap into Karin and her sorrow and the way her husband basically tortured her. Interestingly, that’s one of few scenes where you can hear the choir music, which is a piece I wrote back in 2014, which I just felt fitted so perfectly with Karin’s inner world”.
You’ve worked a lot with choirs in the past. What is that you like about working with voice?
“For me, the voice is the most universal instrument. Everyone has a relationship with the human voice, and I think it’s such an interesting, primitive and yet complex instrument. Just thinking that the sound is made of human flesh gives me goosebumps. It just moves me. There’s an argument that all other instruments are an attempt to capture that same sound – It’s the very core of musical expression. I can’t sing. I have a terrible voice, but when I’m writing a melody, I tend to hum it because the human voice is such a great way to feel a piece of music”.
What did working on Burn All My Letters teach you about your process?
“I learned to have a lot of patience [laughs]. As a composer, you’re often waiting for the cuts from the director, and then you get new cuts even though you just composed in a way that you were happy with. Music is so fragile that if you change just a second or two, it might alter the whole expression of the piece, so then you need to reinvent that music for the scene.”
“I think I also learned a lot about how to be efficient. I sat with my symphonic piece for one or two years. During this process, I needed to be quick, which activated a different part of my brain, a different part of me, which I enjoyed. It was a relief not to overthink, be intuitive, and just solve problems”.
Finally, do you have any advice for young composers looking to step into the industry?
“Just start. People tend to prepare themselves too much and not actually make anything. A mantra for me, in life generally, has been not to ask how to make a symphony but to make a symphony”.
Jacob’s score for Burn All My Letters will be out on Warner Classics UK on the 9th of December. You can check out his choral piece, ‘Time’, conducted by Ragnar Bohlin and Fredrik Malmberg, below.
