Jóhann Jóhannsson
Jóhann Jóhannsson was an Icelandic composer (19 September 1969 – 9 February 2018), who created the score for the film The Theory of Everything (UK 2014, D: James Marsh) which won him the 72nd Golden Globe award for best score.
In 2015 he composed the evocative soundtrack for the Icelandic TV series Trapped (Ófærð (orig. title) Iceland 2015 D: Baltasar Kormákur) together with colleagues Hildur Guðnadóttir and Rutger Hoedemaekers. The music, electronic soundscapes and drones create an atmospheric mood that is the perfect match of the icy, cold and forbidding landscape of Iceland. One could argue that this landscape itself is one of the main characters in the crime drama. The music rarely follows or comments the action or psychological state of the protagonists directly.
One of Jóhann's trade marks is the seamless blending of orchestral textures and electronic sounds. In a video about his music for Prisoners (USA 2013 D: Denis Villeneuve) Jóhannsson states:
In 2015 he composed the evocative soundtrack for the Icelandic TV series Trapped (Ófærð (orig. title) Iceland 2015 D: Baltasar Kormákur) together with colleagues Hildur Guðnadóttir and Rutger Hoedemaekers. The music, electronic soundscapes and drones create an atmospheric mood that is the perfect match of the icy, cold and forbidding landscape of Iceland. One could argue that this landscape itself is one of the main characters in the crime drama. The music rarely follows or comments the action or psychological state of the protagonists directly.
One of Jóhann's trade marks is the seamless blending of orchestral textures and electronic sounds. In a video about his music for Prisoners (USA 2013 D: Denis Villeneuve) Jóhannsson states:
It was clear very early on what kind of instrumentation I wanted to use. It was clear that we needed an orchestra and strings would be very important, but very cold strings; we didn't want to milk the emotions. It is not about heavy vibrato and emotional string music, not at all. We tried to keep it very cold. ...
I recorded a lot of solo cello that is layered and manipulated and processed electronically to create a kind of electronic soundscape which hopefully blends quite seemlessly with the acoustic instruments, so it doesn't sound electronic even though it is electronically created. So the ideal is that you don't really hear where the orchestra starts and the electronics end. It is all one electronic sound world.
It is striking how Jóhann's musical sensitivity seems to be shaped by the harsh Icelandic landscape. During his formative years Jóhann worked mainly in Iceland and Denmark.
Further Information
- Personal website.
- Reviews of his music
- John Rogers: "Does Jóhann Dream Of Electric Sheep? The Rise Of Jóhann Jóhannsson" (article on Jóhann's approach to creating film music in the Icelandic magazine The Reykiavik Grapevine, 9 Sept. 2016)