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There Will Be Blood

Film music / Minimalism & contemporary composition · 2007

There Will Be Blood

Jonny Greenwood

There Will Be Blood · 조니 그린우드

Why listen

Orchestral masses and the closer lines of a string quartet reshape the film’s landscape through changes of scale.

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Tracks · previews

English editorial edition

Album story

There Will Be Blood does not turn a broad landscape into a comfortable view. Open Spaces begins the programme, yet its sustained strings leave tension rather than an easy sense of release. Future Markets changes the movement, and Prospectors Arrive introduces another proportion. The listener’s surroundings keep altering. Even without recalling a particular scene, the contrast between a large surface and more exposed lines gives the album a direction.

Jonny Greenwood’s music for Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 film originally appeared as an eleven-track Nonesuch album. In the composer’s account published by the label, he described writing towards landscape and story rather than individual character themes. The programme places orchestral and smaller string pieces beside each other. Open Spaces is performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra under Robert Ziegler; Oil is played by the Emperor Quartet.

A large ensemble need not reassure

The opening pair, Henry Plainview, the title track and Proven Lands show different orchestral functions. Sustained sounds can seem to form a surface, while recurring movement can keep a destination uncertain. Scale does not automatically mean warmth or a triumphant conclusion. Holding a sound and dividing movement into smaller units are different ways for the same large ensemble to shape attention.

Oil changes the listening distance

After the title track, Oil brings the quartet into focus. Two violins, viola and cello make the relationships between lines easier to imagine individually. The reduction of forces is not simply a reduction of importance or tension. Proven Lands then changes the scale again, making the seventh track a useful point from which to hear the album’s contrasts.

The ending contracts rather than expands

HW / Hope of New Fields, Stranded the Line and Prospector’s Quartet form the final sequence. The longest piece, Prospectors Arrive, appeared much earlier; the closing works occupy shorter spans. There is no steady climb towards ever greater duration and orchestral weight. Having entered through an expansive opening, the listener finishes among closer instrumental relationships instead of a compulsory grand finale.

The album through its tracks

Compare the orchestra in Open Spaces with the quartet in Oil, then follow the smaller scale of the closing three pieces.

  1. Open Spaces

    The opening title suggests an unobstructed view, but the approximately three-minute-fifty-six-second performance does not offer uncomplicated relaxation. Robert Ziegler conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra, whose sustained string lines create tension through their proximity. Thinking of the sound as a surface that holds and changes can be more useful than trying to separate every instrument immediately. It also suits Greenwood’s stated interest in landscape and story over individual character themes. The next track, Future Markets, brings another kind of orchestral movement, clarifying the opening’s sustained character by contrast. Returning later from the quartet texture of Oil also makes the distance and weight of this first piece more apparent.

    Reference · Qobuz: licensed performance credits and expanded programme

  2. Oil

    The seventh track lasts roughly three minutes and five seconds and is performed by the Emperor Quartet: violinists Martin Burgess and Clare Hayes, violist Fiona Bonds and cellist William Schofield. After the larger orchestral surfaces, the relationships between four lines come closer to the foreground. A smaller ensemble does not automatically provide rest; exposure can create its own tension. The placement between the title track and Proven Lands makes the change of scale especially clear. This selection is the quartet recording on the original soundtrack album. It is distinct from the same-named movement later incorporated into the concert suite for string orchestra, whose instrumentation and recorded performance differ.

    Reference · Qobuz: licensed performance credits and expanded programme

Listen next

Philip Glass’s Koyaanisqatsi offers another way to build a film landscape through repetition and changing instrumental forces.

Koyaanisqatsi ↗
References & editorial note

Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.