Category: Classical in Media
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Classical Music in Modern Movies: What Directors Actually Use
Every couple of years a film shoves a two-hundred-year-old piece of music back into people’s ears and the same question goes round: what was that? Here is the answer for eleven modern films — the exact scene, what the director…
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Classical Music in the Hannibal TV Series: 10 Cues That Matter
Hannibal Lecter has had a Bach problem since 1991. In The Silence of the Lambs, the Aria from the Goldberg Variations plays while he takes apart two Memphis policemen, and ever since, “cannibal listens to Bach” has been shorthand for…
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Vivaldi’s Winter in John Wick 3: The Cue Not on the Album
The Continental has just lost its protection, John Wick has one hour before the hotel stops being neutral ground, and Winston’s answer to all of it is to pour himself a glass of wine and have Charon open the armory.…
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Classical Music in the Hannibal Movie: Every Cue, One Winner
Over the opening titles of Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, a crowd of pigeons shuffles across a Florence pavement and, for about two seconds, arranges itself into Anthony Hopkins’s face. Bach is playing underneath. That shot is the entire film in miniature:…
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Classical Music in Famous Movies: 10 Cues, One Overrated
Every list of classical music in famous movies names the pieces. That is the easy half, and where most of them stop. The harder half is which recording you are hearing, which frame it lands on, and what the director…
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Classical Music in John Wick 3: All 3 Cues, Explained
Every classical cue in John Wick: Chapter 3 — Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, Vivaldi's “Winter,” and Grieg's Sarabande: the exact scene each one scores, and where to hear it done right.
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Classical Music in John Wick: Every Cue and Why It Works
Watch John Wick pull a record off the shelf before the last stand at the Continental, drop the needle, and square up against a small army — and the thing scoring the bloodshed isn’t a synth pulse or a trap…