W.E. composer Abel Korzeniowski
Music and soundtrack
Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski composed the film's music. Madonna had heard Korzeniowski's work on the soundtrack of the 2009 drama film, A Single Man. The singer remembered being "struck by the score's 'bittersweet' qualities, this melancholic, romantic, sweeping emotional kind of heartbreaking beauty." She asked A Single Man director, fashion designer Tom Ford, about Korzeniowski and decided to sign him to compose W.E.'s score. Madonna had incorporated parts of A Single Man's score into the screenplay and rough cut of W.E. The score features strings, electric guitar, harp, viola and piano, and the combination of instruments was used to bridge the film's two time periods.Korzeniowski and conductor Terry Davies recorded a 60-piece orchestra at London's Abbey Road Studios in April 2011, concentrating on the characters' emotional states; he was not very concerned with differentiating the film's time periods. The composer said in a Variety interview that for the scenes featuring Simpson, he tried to make the score more modern than for those with Winthrop. Madonna wanted Korzeniowski to keep the score simple and direct, thinking that as a classically trained musician he would overcomplicate the score. "It is not the type of score where you go through crazy harmonic changes and modulations," said the composer. "This was one of the very precise notes I got from Madonna, that I was not supposed to over-think this music." The score was inspired by the film's irrational love, which Korzeniowski said could be "just an illusion". He wanted the music to reflect the film's powerful and conflicting emotions through the melodies, which alternated between despair and sorrow and hope and joy.Madonna contributed "Masterpiece", a new song produced by William Orbit which she co-wrote with Julie Frost and Jimmy Harry, to the soundtrack. In the song, she sings about the pain of being in love with someone who is a great work of art: "If you were the Mona Lisa/ You'd be hanging in the Louvre/ Everyone would come to see you/ You'd be impossible to move." A Billboard writer described "Masterpiece" as a "slowed-down, moody ballad" which was "simple, direct and reminiscent of her sound in the 1990s". Its lyrics echo the film's love story: "And I'm right by your side/ Like a thief in the night/ I stand in front of a masterpiece/ And I can't tell you why it hurts so much to be in love with a masterpiece." The song plays over W.E.'s end credits and was later included on Madonna's album, MDNA. The soundtrack was released digitally through Interscope Records on January 31, 2012.
author songwriter creator maker writer