Journal of Film Music 3.

2 (2011) 155-170 ISSN (print) 1087-7142

doi:10.1558/jfm.v3i2.155 ISSN (online) 1758-860X

ARTICLE

A Source-Studies Approach to Michael Nyman’s

Score for The Draughtsman’s Contract

David Cooper
School of Music, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, West Yorkshire, UK
[email protected]

Ian Sapiro
School of Music, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, West Yorkshire, UK
[email protected]

Abstract: The composer Michael Nyman has donated a unique collection of his original sound materials and other
documentation to the University of Leeds on long-term loan for scholarly investigation. There are more than 500
individual items in the archive, which includes film, television and concert music, as well as associated items of
paperwork, and the films directed by Peter Greenaway feature strongly in the collection.

Evidence for the underlying creative processes in film composition can be found within the source materials which
include the source recordings and stereo mixdowns of cues, materials often disposed of by film and television
companies after a film’s release or TV program’s broadcast. This article questions the extent to which the surviving
audio and supporting documentary materials reflect the development of the score and the relationships between
Nyman’s music and Greenaway’s images as exemplified in the non-mainstream film The Draughtsman’s Contract.

Keywords: Nyman; The Draughtsman’s Contract; film score; source studies; archive

FOX: I suppose […] you still haven’t worked with your ***
ideal film collaborator in the shape of a director?
NYMAN: […] no film apart from a Greenaway film is
open enough to accept any kind of music.2
NYMAN: I’m constantly asked this question. It would
have to be Greenaway because, you know, in the five
or six feature films that I did with him, the music is
allowed to breathe, and as a composer I was given Introduction
freedom to create with as few restraints as possible at
the point of composing. At the point of synchronising Although Michael Nyman has achieved considerable
the music with the picture then it’s sort of taken out of success as a composer for both experimental and
your hands.1 mainstream cinema, he found the most significant
creative autonomy in his collaborations with the
1 David Cooper, Christopher Fox, and Ian Sapiro, eds., CineMusic?
Constructing the Film Score (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008),
179. 2 Ibid., 171.

© Copyright the International Film Music Society, published by Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield, S3 8AF.
156   THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC

director Peter Greenaway, as the opening quotations interest in experimentalism. The latter is illustrated
suggest. The films on their own give little indication by his score for Peter Greenaway’s 1-100, for which
of the processes by which their scores were crafted, the director apparently requested music that would
and in this paper we draw on the evidence provided provide a rhythm to which he could edit the film.
in an archive of primary sonic, textual, and visual This Nyman describes as “a kind of numerical piece,
materials held by the University of Leeds, and a arranged so that there was a series of 1 to 100 chords
model of conventional scoring practice, to theorize which got longer and longer and longer, because 100 is
Nyman’s approach in his music for The Draughtsman’s longer than 1.”7 For Pwyll ap Siôn:
Contract.
We argue that, while the underlying technical A key element in understanding the Nyman–
phases of this model of production may be broadly Greenaway collaboration lies in the unique
retained, the elaboration or refinement of the relationship formed between sound and image in their
musical material in relation to the visual component work. The role of film music traditionally has been to
is significantly different in this film, notably the enhance and heighten the film’s visual and emotive
absence of documentation relating to spotting and qualities. Nyman and Greenaway established a radical
synchronization. Other materials in the archive alternative approach where music existed separately
indicate that this approach is characteristic of and autonomously from the visual narrative.8
Nyman’s working methods for Greenaway’s films.
This view of the interactions between the visual and
Michael Nyman and Non- auditory fields appears to be confirmed by Nyman’s
publicly and privately expressed views about the
Mainstream Film Scoring working relationship between Greenaway and himself.
Elsewhere, we have described how evidence
Michael Nyman’s career as film composer began in for the underlying creative processes in film
1976, with his score for the bawdy British comedy film composition can be found within the source
Keep it Up Downstairs, a spoof of the popular British materials, and how their “archaeology” can reveal
television drama series Upstairs, Downstairs. This valuable interpretative insights.9 Similarly, recent
followed a period of twelve years of compositional publications by Miguel Mera and David Burnand
silence during which he worked in a series of art have drawn on testimony from composers to further
schools and as a music critic for The Spectator and elucidate the creation, development, and function
Music and Musicians. In 1974 he wrote his influential of their film scores, and are part of a growing
monograph on the experimental tradition Experimental body of scholarship which utilizes a source-studies
Music: Cage and Beyond.3 Nyman has remarked that approach.10 Given the distinctions between Nyman’s
period music was required for Keep it Up Downstairs, approach to film scoring and that generally adopted
and that the recovery and discovery of “low-grade in the cinematic mainstream, it seems appropriate
music” was a “collective interest” of an influential to question the extent to which the surviving audio
group of experimental composers, including Hobbs, and supporting documentary materials reflect the
Shrapnell, Skempton, and White.4 In discussion development of the score and the relationships
with Christopher Fox, Nyman noted that “when I between Nyman’s music and Greenaway’s images.
was asked to do a mainstream film that involved We consider here the approach exemplified by
Edwardian music I knew it, so all I had to do was take Nyman in The Draughtsman’s Contract, but before
an Ezra Reid piece from out of this Scratch Orchestra this can be addressed, the context of the source
context and put it into an EMI film context; from materials and their place within the film-scoring
there, as a resourceful composer, it was pretty easy to process must be established.
do my own Edwardian pastiche.”5
Nyman brought to film scoring both what he
considered as “calculated re-articulation of the
classics,”6 and a concern for musical process from his 7 Cooper et al., CineMusic?, 167.
8 Pwyll ap Siôn, The Music of Michael Nyman: Texts, Contexts and Intertexts
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2007), 85.
3 (London: Studio Vista, 1974). 9 See Authors’ chapter in Cooper et al., CineMusic?, 17-32.
4 Cooper et al., CineMusic?, 166-67. 10 Miguel Mera, Mychael Danna’s The Ice Storm: A Film Score Guide (Lanham,
5 Ibid., 167. MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007); David Burnand, “Scoring This Filthy Earth,”
6 Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2nd edn (Cambridge: in European Film Music, ed. David Burnand and Miguel Mera (Aldershot:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), 162. Ashgate, 2006), 178-90.

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 Cooper AND SAPIRO    157

The Michael Nyman Archive Huddersfield during the 2006 Bradford International
Film Festival at the National Media Museum. He
The composer Michael Nyman has donated a unique was the keynote speaker at the event and was
collection of his original sound materials and other interested to hear about the recent donation to the
documentation to the University of Leeds on long- University of Leeds of around 400 session tapes and
term loan for scholarly investigation. There are associated documentation by Trevor Jones, who was
more than 500 individual items in the archive, the featured composer at the first Film and Music
which includes film, television, and concert music, Conference held in the previous year.12 Around 20
as well as associated items of paperwork (see Table percent of the material in the Trevor Jones Archive
1). Films directed by Greenaway feature strongly in was subsequently digitized as part of a small Arts
the collection, and these include: 1-100 (1978), The & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research
Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), A Zed and Two Noughts award, and this provided important insights into the
(1985), Drowning by Numbers (1988), The Cook, the technical and creative processes surrounding film-
Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989), and Prospero’s score production, particularly the developments which
Books (1991). There are also artefacts relating to took place between the various spotting sessions and
mainstream feature films such as The Piano (directed final mixdown.13 Nyman suggested that his material,
by Jane Campion, 1993) and Christopher Hampton’s which at that stage was held in a private storage
Carrington (1995). The television resources include facility, could offer researchers and students an
the two series of the comedy drama Fairly Secret equally valuable resource, and his generous offer was
Army (1984 and 1986), the television opera The Man accepted by the University of Leeds Library. The audio
who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (1986), and a number tapes, hard drives, and related documentation are
of themes for advertisements. The audio resources, now retained in temperature- and humidity-controlled
which include the source recordings and stereo conditions.
mixdowns of cues, are stored on a wide range of
analog and digital media formats, some of which
are virtually redundant and as a result are largely
A Source Model for Film Scoring in
inaccessible in their current form. Mainstream Cinema
Materials relating to the works of some prominent
film-score composers such as Max Steiner and In our use of the term “mainstream” we are
Bernard Herrmann are held at university libraries in simultaneously referencing the commercial drivers,
the United States,11 but holdings such as those at the the aesthetic characteristics and the systems of
University of Leeds, which relate to scores by Trevor production of films. Many of the pictures that Trevor
Jones as well as Michael Nyman, are extremely rare Jones has scored (for which materials are held in the
in the United Kingdom. Such resources can also be Jones Archive at Leeds) and that Nyman has scored
found in private collections, particularly those of since the end of his collaboration with Greenaway
the composers themselves, and it is possible that were written for a broad popular audience, produced
resources are retained in some studio libraries, though by major companies and released into “first run”
the extent of such collections is currently unknown cinemas. They generally have had significant budgets
and very difficult to estimate. Such materials have with large casts led by high-profile actors, and
little or no value to film and television companies technical crews which are strongly segmented by
after a film’s release or TV program’s broadcast, and their production role. Underlying processes tend to be
accordingly they are often viewed as waste products highly specified and carefully documented, and are
and are disposed of on completion of a project; when usually (for commercial as much as technical reasons)
they are retained, items held privately or by the very methodical and tightly managed. Discussion
studios are rarely made available for scholarly scrutiny. with Jones and a number of other film composers
Nyman donated the resource to the University
12 Jones’s keynote interview is published in Cooper et al., CineMusic?, 1-14.
of Leeds as an outcome of a joint Film and Music He is the composer of a number of successful “mainstream” films such as
Conference held by the Universities of Leeds and The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Sea of Love, Arachnophobia, The Last of the Mohicans,
Cliffhanger, In the Name of the Father, Brassed Off, Notting Hill and The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen.
11 For example, Bernard Herrmann’s materials at the University of 13 The application of this research to Jones’s score for Sea of Love (1989) is
California, Santa Barbara; the Max Steiner Collection at Brigham Young examined in the Authors’ chapter in Cooper et al., CineMusic?, 17-32; and to
University, Utah; Roy Webb’s scores at Syracuse University, New York; and In the Name of the Father (1993) in David Cooper, “Trevor Jones’s Score for In
the Warner Brothers’ Archives at the University of Southern California, Los the Name of the Father,” in Derek B. Scott, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion
Angeles. to Popular Musicology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 29-42.

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Table 1. Film and Television Source Materials Held in the Michael Nyman Archive

Title Non-audio materials (all titles have audio materials)

A Zed and Two Noughts
Adidas Cue sheet
Albacete
Alice and Elsa Sonic solutions sheet
And Do They Do
Annabel and Dorothy
Andrex 2 cue sheets
Audi
British Rail 2 cue sheets
Cadbury’s Whole Nut Cue sheet; AMPEX grand master audio mastering tape;
performance uniformity chart
Carrington Spotting notes; cue sheet; notes; recording & mixing schedule;
drawing of recording layout for ensemble
Child’s Play Cue sheet
Citizen Interiors Cue sheets
Coca Cola
The Cold Room
The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover Cue sheets
Dadarama 8 cue sheets
Death in the Seine Cue sheets; 6" floppy disk
The Diary of Anne Frank Eastcote Productions Producer’s and Engineer’s Cookbook
(contains pitch ratios and BPM  click tables, etc.); cue sheets; 3
pages of cues with timings/spotting sheets
The Draughtsman’s Contract Cue sheets; press cuttings; concert program
Drowning by Numbers Track listing sheets
Enemy Zero Cue sheets
Ericsson Cue sheets
Fairly Secret Army I & II Track sheet with details of musicians present at morning and
afternoon recording sessions; cue sheets
Fall of Icarus 2 take listing sheets
Final Score 2 cue sheets; 4 hand-written A4 pages of takes with timings
Flying Lines
Gaudi VHS cassette
Gerolsteiner
Goodbye Frankie, Goodbye Benny Cue sheets
Guinness Recording & mixing schedule
The Hairdressers’ Husband Cue sheets; lists of takes

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 Cooper AND SAPIRO    159

Happiness
Harpsichord Concerto Full score
Hewlett Packard
Hybrid Kids
Il Palio Cue sheet
Italian Straw Hat
Jingles Cue sheets; list of takes; track sheets; notes on seating arrangement
Kingdom Come
The Kiss Cue sheet
La Sept
La Traversée de Paris
Lincoln Cars
London Brass
Lorca
Madrid
Making A Splash
The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
The Masterwork
Memorial 6" floppy disk
Mesmer Cue sheet
Michael Nyman Band
Musique à Grand Vitesse Cue sheet
Miserere Cue sheet; timing information
Nestle Pet Foods Cue sheet
Not Mozart Cue sheet
Nuns 3 unlabelled 6" floppy disks; take lists
Nurofen Recording & mixing schedule
The Ogre
Orpheus’ Dockter
Out of the Ruins
The Piano
The Princess of Milan Tape strip from mixing desk; effects settings; list of takes
Prospero’s Books Photographs
Rome Scene/music/action sheet
Russian Mass
Self Laudatory Hymn of Inanna & Her Take lists
Omnipotence

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Snarl Up
Son of Brid List
Song Book CD liner; written music
Splash
Strange Attractors
The Tempest Written music for “When the Bee Sucks,” “Before you Can Say,”
“Full Fathom Five,” and “from L’Orgie Parisienne on Paris Se
Repeuple/Rimbauld May 1871”; cue sheets; three 3.5" floppy disks
Touch the Earth
Toyota
Traversée
Trombone Concerto Full score
Vanity Faire
Miscellaneous A large amount of as yet uncategorized press cuttings relating to
Michael Nyman and his scores

and orchestrators active in the UK has demonstrated twelve potential steps running from the composer’s
the extent to which such long-established practices first engagement with the film to its dubbing and
and supporting documentary source materials still release. There are naturally some activities which
underpin the film-scoring process (though they may may postdate the cinematic release, such as the
be mediated in different ways by new technologies). production of soundtrack albums, and the creation
These are illustrated in Table 2, below. and performance of concert versions of cues, though
The theoretical source chain model we describe we ignore these in this model on the grounds that
here follows the example of that presented by László the music serves a different function when detached
Somfai in Béla Bartók: Composition, Concepts, and from the film. Table 2, below, places the 12 potential
Autograph Sources.14 This model is particularly suitable steps derived from Karlin and Wright within the four
for investigating film-scoring processes since it enables phases of activity identified by Somfai, and provides
the inclusion of a broad range of source types—textual, examples of the range of source materials and types
visual, and aural—and is also sufficiently malleable associated with each step.
to allow for the flexibility inherent in film-score The twelve steps involve various source types,
composition. For Somfai, the generic source chain including:
model for Bartók’s work incorporates eight source types
• text;
and involves four discrete phases of activity:
• symbolic encoding of music (whether in
• the primary creative process conventional staff notation or as computer
• fixing and testing data for software such as Sibelius, Finale or
• editing Logic);
• correcting (including the correction of errors, • graphical representations (for example of mixer
and late revisions to the work). or outboard equipment settings);
• audio and video (which in both cases may be
In the model presented here, which is extended from
analog or digital).
the chronological description of standard scoring
processes given by Karlin and Wright,15 we identify Individual links in the source chain may be missing,
and some steps may be omitted or occur in a slightly
varied order, but, as shown in Table 2, the entire
14 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 28-32.
15 Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright, On the Track (New York: Schirmer process of score production can be loosely defined
Books, 1990), 11.

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 Cooper AND SAPIRO    161

Table 2: Generic Model of Scoring Processes and Sources

Phase Step Film-scoring process16 Source material Source type

1 1 Meeting filmmakers a) Shooting script Text
b) Contract Text
2 Initial spotting a) Spotting notes Text
(placement) b) Temp track Audio
c) “Locked picture” Video
3 Planning a) Budgets and schedules Text
4 Timings and a) Timing sheet Text
synchronization
5 Conceptualizing a) Sketches Music/MIDI (audio)
2 6 Composing/ a) Drafts Music/MIDI (audio)
programming b) Short scores Music/MIDI (audio)
c) Electronic “toolkits” Audio
7 Recording a) Demos/“Gigastrated” Audio (MIDI  Music)
mock ups (multitrack)
b) Cue sheets Text
3 8 Second spotting (demo) a) Second spotting notes Text
b) Edited cue sheets (from Text
7(b))
9 Composing (revisions/ a) Drafts Music/MIDI (audio)
additions) b) Short scores Music/MIDI (audio)
10 Orchestration (unless a) Full score Music
purely electronic) b) Parts Music
4 11 Recording a) Takes (multitrack) Audio
b) Take cue sheets Text
c) Marked up/new parts/ Music
score
d) Outboard equipment Text/diagrams
settings
e) Mixdowns (multichannel Audio
stereo)
f) Mixdown cue sheets Text
12 Editing/Dubbing a) Sync pop placement Text
b) Theatrical release Video and audio

as falling into four phases of activity (which may16 encompassing such elements as the
potentially overlap) in alignment with Somfai’s model: employment of electronic “toolkits” and the
1. an initial preparatory period including creation of demo recordings);
technical groundwork and conceptualization; 3. editing and revision;
2. a primary creative period, including 4. recording and mixdown.
composition and orchestration (adopting The apparent rigidity of the film-scoring process
a broad definition of the latter term as outlined in Table 2 seems at odds with Nyman’s
“freedom to create with as few restraints as possible”
16 Derived from Karlin and Wright through study of source materials from
a mainstream score by Trevor Jones. See Authors’ chapter in Cooper et al.,
when composing music for Greenaway’s films. The
CineMusic?, 17-32. following case study of The Draughtsman’s Contract

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uses source materials to evaluate Nyman’s approach Enclosed in the last see-through envelope in this folder
to film scoring, with particular regard to mainstream is a 45 rpm disc of a “transfigured” Mozart theme by
Michael Nyman (Side A).
processes as outlined above. A music scheme being considered is to take twelve
such original music themes by Purcell, Handel (to keep
it English—if naturalised English) Lully or (to cheat
The Draughtsman’s Contract a little on dates) Bach and Mozart, and “transfigure”
them for “The Draughtsman’s Contract”—one theme
for each drawing.
Set in 1694, shortly after the accession of the
And use this presently recorded “transfigured”
Protestant William of Orange to the throne of
Mozart (remixed perhaps to minimise the horn) as
England as William III, the narrative concerns the
an overal [sic] signature—for titles and credits and as
Catholic Jacobite draughtsman Mr. Neville, who
ironic accompaniment for the long montage sequence
is commissioned by Mrs. Herbert, the mistress of
called “Reconnaissance” in the plan of the film.17
Compton Anstey, to create 12 ink drawings of her
country house and estate while her husband is absent
on business. The contractual terms set by Neville That a director should have such clearly formulated
include strict rules about access to the views he will ideas for the music at this early stage of a film’s
draw and sexual liaisons with Mrs. Herbert as an development (while still pitching for finance) is
element of the fee. relatively unusual. Equally, his conception of the
Political and religious animosity is engendered function and character of the “music scheme” (itself
between Neville and Mrs. Herbert’s son-in-law, Mr. a revealing expression) was remarkably elaborate.
Talmann, a German Protestant who has designs on Nyman’s transfiguration of Mozart in his In Re
Compton Anstey, though his wife is childless and Don Giovanni (1977), a concert piece that draws on
he has no heir. After Neville has completed six of the first section of Leporello’s Act 1 “Catalogue”
the pictures, Mrs. Talmann confronts him with the aria “Madamina, il catalogo è questo,” had obvious
allegation that they contain evidence of the death intertextual resonances with the draughtsman’s
of her father, and could be taken to suggest that he sexual liaisons with mother and daughter.18 More
was an accessory to murder. She offers Neville her importantly, perhaps, it illustrated the malleability
protection through a parallel contract to that of her of Nyman’s music, which could offer Greenaway
mother in which he will provide her with his sexual an expressive language that did not rely on close
favours. synchronization to image, and from which different
When the drawings are completed, Neville leaves length sequences could be extracted without adversely
and Mr. Herbert’s body is found in the lake. The Estate affecting their musical coherence. While the stylistic
Manager, Mr. Noyes, blackmails Mrs. Herbert because anachronism between the late-seventeenth-century
of the contract (to which he was a witness), and the narrative and late-eighteenth-century score (albeit
drawings are sold to Mr. Talmann in order to pay reconfigured through the lens of the late twentieth
Noyes off. Neville returns to Compton Anstey with the century) apparently caused the Mozart to be
desire to produce a thirteenth drawing—of the area rejected in favor of earlier (and English) sources,
where Mr. Herbert’s body was found—and in agreeing the underlying principle of art-music ground basses
Mrs. Herbert offers him a final, non-contractual transformed by minimalist techniques became the
liaison. It is then revealed to Neville that he has been guiding principle.
the victim of an elaborate stratagem of both Mrs. In an interview with Christopher Fox, Nyman
Herbert and her daughter to provide them with heirs. outlined the process of composition of the score:
That night, Neville is blinded and killed by Noyes,
Talmann, and an accomplice, and the drawings burnt. FOX: I’ve heard you say in interview that you wrote
It is a visually rich film with a sophisticated and twice as much music as anybody else would have
written for the film.
highly literate screenplay that bristles with religious,
political and sexual allusions. At once an erotic
country-house murder mystery and historical drama, 17 British Film Institute, The Draughtsman’s Contract (ND) http://www.bfi.
org.uk/ greenaway/_dvd_bonus/
arguably it allegorically refers to the artist who blindly index.php?theme=2&type=Original%20Proposal&title=draughtsman [4
records but fails to comprehend. Appendix 4 of Peter June 2009].
18 In a Guardian interview, Nyman comments that Greenaway heard In
Greenaway’s original proposal to the BFI outlines his Re Don Giovanni at a concert in 1977 and approached Nyman to work on
initial ideas for the music for the film: his films as a result; The Draughtsman’s Contract is mentioned explicitly in
this regard. The Draughtsman’s Contract, dir. Peter Greenaway (British Film
Institute, 1982).

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 Cooper AND SAPIRO    163

NYMAN: Yes, but also a long time before the film was shooting commenced reveals how different the
made… So the music was sitting around in a state of approach was to that of mainstream film production,
75% completion for a year or so before he [Greenaway]
started shooting […] where the composer still tends to have relatively
As the film starts, the first exterior that you see little input before post-production. In an interview
is the draughtsman’s assistant pushing sheep around, conducted with Nyman by Ann Perego Richards as
so I thought for the music we’d have the most basic part of an undergraduate music project at Kingston
version of this ground bass that wasn’t a real ground Polytechnic in the mid 1980s, he discussed both his
bass that I took from King Arthur or something. But in overall approach and his relationship with Greenaway:
the meantime Peter had listened to the music not as a
dictator of structure but just as a punter. He listened So if he gives me a basic outline of the film, I then go
to the piece that we know as “Chasing Sheep is Best away…write the music according to that plan, allowing
Left to Shepherds,” which is the most evolved of the six myself to be a composer rather than a film composer,
so I have within the limits of the structure that he’s
versions of this particular ground bass, and said, “This
[Greenaway] set down and the sort of general overall
would be an amazing opening for a film.” We have the function of the music. I just go away and write music as
interior scene with the cocktail party and the singing, though [I’d] actually made those decisions to use that
with the counter-tenor singing a Purcell-corrupted particular material, which of course I didn’t. You see,
song, corrupted by me, and then all Peter’s filmmaking since I’m writing the music before he’s shot the film…
while he’s shooting the film, while he’s editing the film
instincts suddenly came into play, you come out in the
independent of all these activities, the relationship is
light and you whack the audience on the head with the distant, because again what happens in a “normal” film
most evolved version of the music for the first drawing. is that the director has completed the film, he knows
So structure goes completely out of the window in more or less precisely where he wants the music, and
terms of the way the music is used and the kind of what kind of music he wants, therefore he comes to
me and says cue one goes from here to here, so many
perception in the film.19
seconds, has to do such. So with Peter we’re working
in reverse order, since he hasn’t shot the film he can’t
In Nyman’s approach in his work with Greenaway, give instructions as to (a) the length of the material
and (b) the mood, character qualities or whatever. So I
“connotative value” is attached to large musical just literally sat down with these instructions, with the
units rather than to discrete localized signifying material I’d selected…and wrote music, which satisfied
gestures.20 While it may be possible to read particular me as a composer and which I would then give to Peter
iconic connections between music and images, any and he would use as a film-maker.21
apparent close synchronization that emerges is
largely fortuitous or the design of the director. So, Nyman’s account outlines some significant departures
for example, while an entire cue such as “Chasing from mainstream scoring processes, more detail on
Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds” may suggest swagger, which can be indentified through evidence drawn
arrogance, and pride in its organization of musical from the source materials in the Michael Nyman
material, Nyman was not in a position to create any Archive as we discuss in the following section.
intentional localized relationships between score and
film because of his collaborative working method
with Greenaway. Musical material was cut to length
Evidence for the Process within the Michael
in the edit suite, and thus there was no necessity to Nyman Archive
write cues to the exactitude of duration conventionally
required by mainstream practice (as long as there was The Michael Nyman Archive includes six tapes relating
enough music in the first place). Spotting sessions to The Draughtsman’s Contract: five 24-track, two-inch
would have been superfluous (and in conversation, analog reels recorded for the film in February 1982 (see
Nyman has confirmed that indeed these did not take Table 3, below), and a 32-track DASH digital reel dated
place), and timing sheets were therefore not generated. April 1992, ten years after the film’s release, which
Arguably Nyman’s role in the production process was recorded for the soundtrack album. Table 3 lists
was similar to that of an art-music composer working the information contained on the tape boxes and the
to a conventional commission, and his comment associated tracksheets, and that is presented through
that the majority of the score was completed before spoken cue announcements on the tapes.

21 Appendix 2 of Ann Perego Richards, “A Conceited View: A Study of The

19 Cooper et al., CineMusic?, 171-73. Draughtsman’s Contract,” Year 3 “Interdisciplinary Perspectives of Music,” BA
20 Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Music Education, Kingston Polytechnic, n.d [c. 1984]. A copy of Richards’s
Press, 1976), 11. project is included within the Nyman archive.

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Table 3: The Five Analog Multitrack Tapes and their Contents

Tape no. Reel no. Date Titles on Tracksheets Cue announcements

boxes

C7500707650 1 17/2/82 1&2, 3&5 Drawing 1 Day 1/2

0000 1.25
Drawing 1 Day 3
0720 .56
Drawing 1 Day 4 on front of Drawing 1 Day 4
reel. Edited out.
1180 .24
Drawing 1 Day 5 Drawing 1 Day 5
3'28" 1400 1.50
False start 1465
Drawing 2 Day 1 Drawing 2 Day 1
5'25" 2190 1.10
Drawing 2 Day 2 Drawing 2 Day 2
2650
Drawing 2 Day 3/4 Drawing 2 Day 3
3241
Drawing 3 Day 1/2 Drawing 3 Day 1
3860
Drawing 3 Day 3 Drawing 3 Day 3
4190
Drawing 3 Day 7 Drawing 3 Day 7
4460
Drawing 3 Day 8 Drawing 3 Day 8
4710

C7500707726 2 18/2/82 Drawing 5, Drawing 5 Day 1

Return of 2:58 Drawing 5 Day 2
Neville 1310
4:08 Return of Neville The Return of Neville
Part 1 1840 Part 2 2350
Drawing 6 Day 1 Drawing 6 Day 1
3167-3663 .55
Drawing 6 Day 2
3505 1.06
Drawing 6 day 4 Drawing 6 Day 4
3870 5 /1
5 /21.11
Drawing 5 Day 4 Drawing 5 Day 4
4245
NB: END TUNE DELETE 1ST
TIME COPY 2ND
2.40 spare tape [?] end of reel

© The International Film Music Society 2011.

 Cooper AND SAPIRO    165

C7500707922 3 19/2/82 Herbert, Death of Herbert The Death of Herbert

. . . part B
A1 B1 B2 A2 C . . . B2
0000 0188 640 1115 1247 . . . A2
...C
Queen of the Queen of the Night Queen of the Night
Night, 1714 2260-2800
2950 – end
DAY 3
[Drawing 3] 3750
Day 3 DRAWING 3

C7500707651 4 20/2/82 Drawing 6 Drawing 6 Day 5 Drawing 6 Day 5

0000 1100 1600
Queen of the Night Vocal Queen of the Night -
Part 1 Mistakes Version
+ Part 2
2500 + Drawing 4 2nd set
The “other” song
3450
A more positive, er, track list
for, er, Drawing 5 6 [sic]
4160

C7500707649 5 21/2/82 Death of Death of Neville Part 1 [sic]

Neville 6:08 8:42 Section C [sic]
A B C Part C
0000

In Table 4 the sources of Nyman’s transformations of practicalities of film length, the editing process and
music, and in particular the ground basses by Purcell the invariable problems of balancing the demands
and Croft, are cross-referenced with the track titles of dialogue, sound effects and music: so that some
from the soundtrack recording and the cue titles on of the music prepared was not composed, some
tape and in the documentation. composed and not recorded, some recorded and not
Nyman has described how the individual drawings used, some used only in part.22
each had an associated ground bass and that, as a
structural conceit, they were originally intended The essence of the musical scheme Nyman describes
to appear in increasingly complex versions which here matches that which Greenaway included in his
mirrored the draughtsman’s artistic process and original proposal to the BFI (see above), yet it was
progress. In a program note for a concert performance Greenaway who decided to dissolve this strategy
of the score at St. Paul’s Church, Hammersmith, in once filming was complete and he came to combine
February 1983, he states that: Nyman’s music with the images. In an interview with
Alan Woods, Greenaway says that:
The initial plan for the score was to assign a different
ground bass to each of two sets of six drawings
(to help with the “reading” of each of Neville’s
designated viewpoints) and allows each piece to 22 Michael Nyman, “The English Premiere of the Complete Score of Michael
grow and develop as each drawing progressed over Nyman’s Soundtrack for Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract
Performed by the Michael Nyman Band.” Unpublished document housed in
the six days. This fine plan was shot to pieces by the the Michael Nyman Archive, University of Leeds (1983), 4.

© The International Film Music Society 2011.

166   THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC

Table 4: Cues in The Draughtsman’s Contract and their Sources

Nyman cue title Soundtrack title Source23

“Queen of the Night” “Queen of the Night” Purcell, “So when the glitt’ring Queen of
Night,” The Yorkshire Feast Song
“Drawing 1” “Chasing Sheep is Best Left Purcell, King Arthur, Act III scene 2, Prelude
to Shepherds”
“Drawing 3” “The Disposition of the Purcell, Secular Song, Z413, “She loves and
Linen” she confesses too”
“Drawing 5” “An Eye for Optical Theory” Ground C minor (D221) (attr. William
Croft)
“Drawing 6” “The Garden is Become a Purcell, “Here the deities approve” Welcome
Robe Room” to all the Pleasures (Ode)/E minor Ground,
Henry Playford: Musick’s Handmaid (Second
Part)
“Death of Herbert,” “A Watery Death” (second Purcell, Chaconne in G minor for keyboard
Section C part, from 1' 45")—first ZT680 (arrangement of the “Curtain Tune
part of “A Watery Death” is on a Ground” from Timon of Athens, Z632)
“Return of Neville”
“Death of Neville” “Bravura in the Face of “The Plaint,” The Fairy Queen, Act V
Grief”

[I]n the early days with Michael [Nyman]…we tried to pieces” in the released version of the film. In the
to find an equivalence of image and music to move23 interview conducted by Richards, Nyman discusses
towards a useful collaboration—not just a music- one of the specific omissions from the score and the
servicing relationship—so that music was essentially fortuitous nature of the result:
structural. I think The Draughtsman’s Contract proves
the potentiality of that, the music and the images are
[I]n the very final sequence in the garden at night, the
often equally complementary.24 death, the murder, you hear the beginning of “The
Death of Neville” and that piece was actually designed
to last the whole length of that sequence. Now since
Greenaway’s primary concern was clearly that the I wrote it before he’d shot that sequence or edited
music and images would complement each other, that sequence, the musical changes that occur in that
and it would seem that this aim overrode any other piece…were decisions I’d made independently of the
scheme by which the music had been written. It is film, but I assumed that this whole piece of music
would go through it. And it was found that the music
possible that he felt a strict matching of ever-more was sort of too heavy and too portentous and took
progressive cues, and drawings would, paradoxically, away from the dialogue…
relegate the score to a mere supporting role So you hear only the “book ends” and so the
(something he was clearly keen to avoid), though since interesting thing to me is that since it was composed
as a continuous piece of music. You know the second
Greenaway does not elucidate further on the score section arose because I’d written the first, and the third
to Draughtsman, this is only supposition. Table 5 lists section because I’d composed the second and in fact
the basic cues in the order they appear in the film, I couldn’t have the third section, which is the section
and demonstrates how the original scheme was “shot with the burning of the drawings, I couldn’t have
written that unless I’d written the beginning. So it was
useful to me, and essential to me as a composer rather
23 For further details regarding the sources for Nyman’s score see ap Siôn, than a film composer, to write the piece continuously.
The Music of Michael Nyman, 85.
24 Alan Woods, Being Naked, Playing Dead (Manchester: Manchester
And it so happened that this great sudden change
University Press, 1996), 275. that I brought into the music at the beginning of the

© The International Film Music Society 2011.

 Cooper AND SAPIRO    167

third section, where the ground bass becomes the

melody and it’s harmonized differently and you get the
21 Drawing 1
harpsichord. And Peter heard that harpsichord music 22 Drawing 6
and thought it would be ideal for the fire. And looking
at it you think “God, how did the composer and the 23 Death of Neville Section B (sax)
film-maker come up with this brilliant combination
of visual and musical imagery?” Where I have to say 24 Drawing 3
we didn’t. It was pure luck that that harpsichord was 25 Drawing 6
there.25
26 Death of Herbert Section A (twice)
Since the musical cues for The Draughtsman’s Contract 27 Death of Herbert Section C
were composed neither to fit a tightly defined timing 28 Death of Neville (sax)
scheme, nor a final set of visual images, there are
many such fortuitous combinations that can be found 29 Return of Neville
in this film and throughout the Greenaway–Nyman 30 Death of Neville
collaborations.
32 Drawing 1 (closing credits)

Table 5: Cues Used in A Draughtsman’s Given Nyman and Greenaway’s unusual working
Contract in Running Order. relationship, and the truncation of the film to less
Italics delineate the various cycles or par- than half its original planned length, it is perhaps
tial cycles of cues. unsurprising that material was recorded and included
in the tapes listed above but not used in the final
Name cut of the film. Attention has already been drawn to
Cue
the truncation of the cue “The Death of Neville,” a
1 Queen of the Night complete version of which appears on the soundtrack
2 Drawing 1 album. There are, however, several other examples of
sections of cues that were recorded but neither dubbed
3 Drawing 2
onto the film nor issued on the soundtrack album.
4 Drawing 3 Perhaps the most striking of these is found in the “B
5 Queen of the Night with Mistakes section” of “The Death of Herbert,” whose slurred
couplets have a rather different musical “feel” to much
6 Drawing 5 of the rest of the score (see Example 1, below, for the
7 Drawing 6 fundamental melodic material underlying the music).
It is arguable that the multitrack tapes held in
8 Drawing 1
the Nyman Archive constitute rather more than the
9 Drawing 2 simple realization of a score to be mixed down to
10 Drawing 3 a set of film stereo (left-centre-right) music tracks.
They can also be considered as holding a role that is
11 Drawing 5 equivalent to the audio “toolkits” that Trevor Jones
12 Drawing 6 employed as a resource for the director, allowing
13 Drawing 1 the combination of individual tracks at will.26 Thus
we find that the solo soprano saxophone track from
14 Drawing 2 the cue “Death of Neville” (played by John Harle)
15 Drawing 3 is extracted and used to form the twenty-third and
twenty-eighth cues. Equally, an ingredient that is
16 Drawing 1
missing from all the mixes is the drum machine
17 Drawing 5 rhythm that is recorded on track 1 and underpins all
18 Drawing 6 the multitrack recordings. Arguably the rhythmic edge
of the music results from the presence and absence of
19 Drawing 1 this rhythmic component (which the performers used
20 Drawing 6 as both click and guide track).

26 For further insight into the use of toolkits in scores by Trevor Jones, see
25 Richards, “A Conceited View,” Appendix 2. Authors’ chapter in Cooper et al., CineMusic?, 17-32.

© The International Film Music Society 2011.

168   THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC

Example 1: “The Death of Herbert Section B,” Soprano Saxophone Melody

Conclusions and in post-production Greenaway took the lead,

selecting and reordering the elements (see Table 6).
As will have become apparent, the creative approach Nyman clearly enjoyed his artistic relationship with
taken by Nyman and Greenaway was fundamentally Greenaway, as indicated by the comments cited at
different from that of mainstream practice, and this the beginning of this article, and he went on to score
is reflected in the source materials that are held in a sequence of further films for him. However, their
the archive. Although there were arguably three partnership broke down after Prospero’s Books partly,
phases in the score’s development (phase 2 from the perhaps, as a result of the artistic autonomy of the two
above model is omitted owing to the nature of the individuals. Nyman remarks that:
Nyman/Greenaway working relationship and the
relative independence of the creation of the music [W]hen I saw the film [Prospero’s Books] I realised that
and the visual film), there are two focal points. In all the artistic agreements that we had made had gone
pre-production Nyman was given very considerable by the board. Again he perceived the music differently
freedom to act as a “composer” rather than as a because the film had changed, and my beautifully
“film composer” (using his own terms) through his crafted soundtrack was hedged around with some
complete independence from the visual component, rather juvenile student electronics that no-one had

Table 6: Adaptation of the Source-Chain Model to Nyman and Greenaway’s Approach

in The Draughtsman’s Contract

Phase Step Film-scoring process Source material Source type

(Michael Nyman: The
Draughtsman’s Contract)
1 1 Meeting filmmaker Shooting script Text
Contract Text
3 Planning Budgets and schedules Text
5 Conceptualizing Sketches Music
6 Composing Drafts Music
Short scores Music
10 Orchestration/realization Parts Music
10a Feedback from Greenaway on
final film shape
3 11 Recording Takes (multitrack) Audio
Take cue sheets Text
4 12 Editing/Dubbing Theatrical release Video and audio

© The International Film Music Society 2011.

 Cooper AND SAPIRO    169

warned me about. It’s kind of strange, there’s a large

element of the unknown—you present the score to the
director, you don’t know where it’s going to appear,
how it’s going to appear, what the mix is going to
be like—but if there’s an added element that is a lot
closer to music than to sound effects, you might think
that the director would actually have the consideration
to let the composer know, especially a director who
had been a personal friend for thirty years.27

While it is clear that in some regards the

unconventional working patterns of Nyman and
Greenaway enabled the composer to work “in
precisely the same way [he does] when writing
[his] ‘concert music’,” the evidence drawn from the
session recordings and other documentation for The
Draughtsman’s Contract show that, once recording
was finished, Nyman was left with even less control
over the use of his material than a composer working
within the mainstream scoring process.28 The above
quote reinforces this seemingly paradoxical situation,
whereby increased autonomy at the outset leads to
near total musical impotence when the score and
images are finally combined.
We believe that the Michael Nyman Archive
provides a valuable resource for tracing and evaluating
further the interactions between the composer and
the directors he has worked with, both within non-
mainstream and mainstream cinematic contexts, and
that film-score sources such as those employed in this
study help to elucidate the ways in which the place
of music changes and develops through the entire
production process.

27 Cooper et al., CineMusic?, 174-75.

28 Nyman, “The English Premiere,” 4.

© The International Film Music Society 2011.

 References

ap Siôn, Pwyll. 2007. The music of Michael Nyman: Texts, contexts and intertexts. Farnham: Ashgate.

British Film Institute. n.d. The Draughtsman’s Contract. http://www.bfi.org.uk/greenaway/_dvd_bonus/index.

php?theme=2&type=Original%20Proposal&title=draughtsman> [4 June 2009].

Burnand, David. 2006. Scoring This Filthy Earth. In European film music, ed. David Burnand and Miguel Mera.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 178-90.

Cooper, David. 2009. Trevor Jones’s score for In the Name of the Father. In The Ashgate research companion to
popular musicology, ed. Derek B. Scott. Farnham: Ashgate, 29-42.

Cooper, David, Christopher Fox, and Ian Sapiro, eds. 2008. CineMusic? Constructing the film score. Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Eco, Umberto. 1976. A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Greenaway, Peter, dir. 1982. The Draughtsman’s Contract. British Film Institute.

Karlin, Fred and Rayburn Wright. 1990. On the track. New York: Schirmer Books.

Mera, Miguel. 2007. Mychael Danna’s The Ice Storm: A film score guide. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

Nyman, Michael. 1974. Experimental music: Cage and beyond, 1st edn. London: Studio Vista.

———. 1982. Session recordings from The Draughtsman’s Contract. Michael Nyman Archive, University of
Leeds.

———. 1983. The English premiere of the complete score of Michael Nyman’s soundtrack for Peter
Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract performed by the Michael Nyman Band. Unpublished
document housed in the Michael Nyman Archive, University of Leeds.

———. 1999. Experimental music: Cage and beyond, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Richards, Ann Perego. n.d [c. 1984]. A conceited view: A study of The Draughtsman’s Contract. Unpublished
dissertation, Kingston Polytechnic.

Somfai, László. 1996. Béla Bartók: Composition, concepts, and autograph sources. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.

Woods, Alan. 1996. Being naked, playing dead: The art of Peter Greenaway. Manchester: Manchester University
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.