In this week’s New Yorker, Alex Ross profiles Oscar-fêted Lost composer Michael Giacchino, who just days ago finished the music for the show’s finale. The whole story (not online, sadly) is pretty great — we like the part where J.J. Abrams asks Giacchino to stop ending scenes with trombone glissandos because “it sounds like a clown’s going to come out” — but it ends with an especially interesting bit about the score for Lost’s two-hour finale. Huge musical spoilers ahead!
Last week, Giacchino sent Ross sheet music from the score of the show’s last-ever episode (possibly the final scene?). This doesn’t bode well for a satisfying conclusion:
On May 6th, Giacchino was completing the music for the final two episodes of the show, which will air in a two-and-a-half-hour marathon. A double recording session was scheduled for the following day. In midafternoon, I received an e-mail containing a cue entitled “Parallelocam” — forty-four bars in slow, elegiac C major, with a piano playing against a soft wash of strings. Giacchino’s chords of perpetual ambivalence seemed to be tilting toward some soulful resolution. In the final two bars, though, I saw a low, solitary C for the harp, which, like the best mysteries, could be read any number of ways.
No crash cymbals? Where’s the timpani solo? And the gospel choir? Lost was all just Hurley’s dream, wasn’t it?
The Spooky Fill [NYer]
