When directors
Rob Epstein and
Jeffrey Friedman approached composer
Carter Burwell about scoring their film
Howl even before they had a finished screenplay,
Burwell cautioned them that he might not be the right choice if they were looking for jazz. It was a reasonable assumption, since
Howl is about the famous Beat Generation poem by
Allen Ginsberg and the obscenity trial that made it famous in the '50s. Beat Generation writers were closely associated with bebop jazz, as some writers enjoyed reading their works aloud in coffee houses to the accompaniment of a bebop horn player and openly admired their musical contemporaries.
Epstein and
Friedman went ahead with
Burwell, a writer with a sense of mood and nuance, if not jazz, who had worked with them previously on
The Celluloid Closet, and
Burwell has come up with another of his moody, nuanced scores for
Howl. He employs a small ensemble consisting of
Maya Beiser (cello),
David Torn (guitar),
Marc Ribot (guitar),
Laura Seaton (violin),
Bohdan Hilash (woodwinds),
Fima Ephron (bass), and himself on piano. As that instrumentation suggests, the music is a sort of cross between classical chamber music and cool jazz, with perhaps a touch of guitar rock here and there.
Burwell is interested in the ways the instruments interact, and he often sets up on playing a slow theme only to add another and another to provide contrasting colors. That's where the cool jazz part comes in, though it must be added that the effect is very cool and not very jazzy. Occasionally, only one instrument is heard:
"Weeping in the Parks" is a cello solo. If he eschews bebop,
Burwell does bring in another style of the '50s, using film noir sounds occasionally in the minor-key, lower-register playing of the bass and the piano. Inevitably, in any piece of music involving
Ribot, there is also some dissonant electric guitar, and that appears in
"Prophecy." Howl's music may be appropriate to the film it accompanies, if only because the writer-directors knew what they would get when they hired
Carter Burwell. (The actual film does add some jazz as well as concluding with
Bob Dylan and
the Band's
"This Wheel's on Fire" from
The Basement Tapes, but only
Burwell's music appears on this score album.) ~ William Ruhlmann
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