In one scene in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, László Tóth—played by Adrien Brody—observes Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The ceremony holds a special significance for Tóth, who has just escaped the Holocaust in Hungary and landed in Philadelphia. It also holds significance for the film’s now Oscar-nominated composer, Daniel Blumberg.
“It’s a prayer that I know,” says the London-born Blumberg, 34, recalling the day on set when he taught the cast how to sing the confessional chant “Ashamnu” (“We Are Guilty”). “I go to synagogue on Yom Kippur with my dad,” he says, “and it’s just a particularly beautiful moment in the service.”
“I was standing behind the camera and sort of conducting the prayer,” says Blumberg. He then overlaid the recording with his classical arrangement, blending Corbet’s cinematic world with his composition.
Blumberg crashed on Corbet’s couch for much of The Brutalist’s filming. During evenings post-filming, the director would explain a scene to the composer, and a few days later a corresponding original score would be “pumping out of the speakers on set,” he tells me.
Blumberg often turned to artists he had met at the London avant-garde performance space Cafe OTO, from saxophonist Seymour Wright to trumpeter Axel Dörner, to bring his vision to life. “The musicians I work with have this practice of improvising” rather than composing, he says, describing what these collaborative sessions typically look like.
John Tilbury, an 89-year-old British pianist whom Blumberg had previously looked up to, transformed the piano into something new by placing coins in the back frame so “it becomes this sort of percussive instrument,” Blumberg explains. That unique sound ultimately became a backbone of the film’s now Oscar-nominated score.
The Brutalist is not Corbet and Blumberg’s first partnership. The pair have been working together in one capacity or another for more than a decade. “As soon as [Corbet] finished the script” for The Brutalist, Blumberg tells me, “we started talking about what the music could be, sending each other ideas.”
The young composer has long led a double life as a solo artist. In 2018, he released his debut album, Minus, under his own name after having spent the decade prior in British rock bands Cajun Dance Party and Yuck and releasing solo music under a variety of aliases.
Unlike The Brutalist’s score, Blumberg’s personal music often features digital distortion and electronic-sounding instruments. His latest solo album, 2023’s Gut, features some of his most experimental sounds yet. In the song “Body,” for instance, Blumberg puts the entire microphone in his mouth. “The idea was that it almost goes inside the body,” he says.
“I got into films primarily through falling in love with directors.”
And yet, Blumberg tells me, his DVD collection is far bigger than his vinyl collection. “I don’t really have a record collection, to be honest.” It’s the films, rather than their scores, that drew him to his current work. “I got into films primarily through falling in love with directors,” he says.
As a teenager in London, he discovered the films of Robert Bresson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and, later, Peter Watkins. “I really didn’t pay attention to the film scores or the soundtracks; I didn’t tear the films apart. I was more navigating it through the director.”
He’s currently working with Brady Corbet’s wife (and co-writer of The Brutalist), Mona Fastvold, on her new film, a musical starring Amanda Seyfried as Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers. Blumberg wrote and produced the original music for the film. “I’m deep in that at the moment,” he tells me of the postproduction process.
Blumberg isn’t one to dwell on awards or the recent press circus of The Brutalist. Nonetheless, “it’s been nice to reflect on the work,” he says, moving right along.
The Brutalist is in theaters now
Zack Hauptman is a senior at Yale University
