May 4, 2019
David Arnold’s GOOD OMENS Score Now Available
Composer David Arnold’s soundtrack to the highly anticipated TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s 1990 comic fable, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, has now released for streaming and download from Silva Screen.
The series, which premiered May 31st on Amazon Prime, follows the friendly adversaries, angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and demon Crowley (David Tennant), in their quest to sabotage the coming end of the World. Frances McDormand narrates the show as the unseen voice of God. Amazon Prime’s six episode miniseries delivers a tongue in cheek adaptation of this powerful and funny story.
From the Award-winning composer of TV’s SHERLOCK and James Bond’s TOMORROW NEVER DIES through QUANTUM OF SOLACE comes a soundtrack that perfectly complements the GOOD OMENS’ drama and visual sensibilities. At times nostalgic and eerie but always varied, beautiful and full of excitement, this robust, yet funny music entity has become another character in the story. Here, Arnold has created a contemporary soundworld for Heaven and Hell.
“As far as the idea of music for heaven and hell, if there is a kind of expected relationship between them, it’s presumably that heaven is harps and choirs, and hell is sort of metallic clangs, moans, and possibly heavy rock,” Arnold told Daniel Schweiger in an interview for Film Music Magazine.* “So, heaven doesn’t have a music of its own. It has a sound that I’d describe as a factory for love, while hell sounds like a factory for evil. So the sound for heaven, is made out of all the things that we normally expect heaven to be, but there’s something sort of industrial about it. It’s choirs and it’s harps and it’s bells and things of great beauty, but they’re messed with and mangled a bit and made to be functional in that it’s almost like a work environment where people are trying to produce ‘good.’ It’s the same for hell, with bells made awful with distortions and guitars and rock drums and moaning choirs.”
The series’ closing song is Tori Amos’ version of the romantic British popular song “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” written in 1939 with lyrics by Eric Maschwitz and music by Manning Sherwin. The song was a British wartime favorite and is referenced at the end of the book. Conjuring feelings of separation and pining for untroubled times, and including the lines “There was magic abroad in the air. There were angels dining at the Ritz. And a nightingale sang in Berkeley square.”
The 62-track digital soundtrack is now available via Amazon and other digital marketplaces. A double-CD soundtrack will be released on July 5.
* Read Daniel Schweiger’s comprehensive interview with David Arnold about scoring GOOD OMENS at Film Music Magazine.
Access the GOOD OMENS trailer in our earlier story, here.
