German-born, U.K.-based Max Richter is one of the most successful composers in modern classical music, a gifted post-minimalist whose signature work, \u201cOn the Nature of Daylight\u201d from his classic 2004 album \u201cThe Blue Notebooks,\u201d has been heard in more than 20 films and TV shows since it was first recorded. It has most notably appeared in \u201cArrival,\u201d \u201cShutter Island\u201d (in a version intercut with Dinah Washington\u2019s \u201cThis Bitter Earth\u201d) and the first season of \u201cThe Last of Us.\u201d<\/p>\n
But when Richter began to write music for Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s \u201cHamnet,\u201d he had no idea that the climactic scene of that film \u2014 Jessie Buckley\u2019s Agnes Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre watching the first performance of her husband\u2019s \u201cHamlet,\u201d with its ties to the death of their young son a few years earlier \u2014 would be set not to his new music but rather to his greatest hit. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I heard it (used as temporary music) in the cut, I was like, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s fine. I\u2019ll replace that,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cSo I wrote a cue for it, and I fully expected \u2018On the Nature of Daylight\u2019 to be replaced.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Zhao, though, said she wanted to keep the song in that scene, to which Richter admitted that his initial reaction was \u201cAre you sure<\/em>?\u201d She responded with a story: Late in the film\u2019s production, when the director was racked with doubt and recovering from a breakup, Buckley had given her the composition, and she had listened to it incessantly on her way to work. <\/p>\n \u201cShe had a kind of epiphany,\u201d Richter said. \u201cThey played it on the set continuously for four days while they shot the last sequence, and it got embedded in the architecture of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n He shrugged. \u201cAnd when she told me that story, I was like, \u2018Sure. It\u2019s your movie.\u2019 I\u2019d seen her make good decision after good decision, and when somebody is that good, you have to trust them,\u201d he added. (The music he wrote to replace \u201cOn the Nature of Daylight\u201d now appears over the end credits.)<\/p>\n Besides, it\u2019s not as if Richter didn\u2019t already have a lot of new music to write for \u201cHamnet.\u201d (Plus, his latest album, \u201cIn a Landscape,\u201d consciously harks back to the feel of \u201cThe Blue Notebooks,\u201d so he was used to revisiting that era.) He loved the screenplay when Zhao sent it to him, and started composing right away. <\/p>\n \u201cI try to avoid reading scripts unless I have time to write music,\u201d said Richter, whose film compositions (\u201cWaltz With Bashir,\u201d \u201cNever Look Away,\u201d \u201cAd Astra\u201d) run alongside his original albums and ballet and concert works. \u201cAfter I read a script, I\u2019ll immediately have a bunch of ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n In the case of \u201cHamnet,\u201d one of those ideas was to use choral music as a framing device for the film. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of the amniotic fluid that holds the baby,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can evoke an awful lot with very little by using the voice. And because it\u2019s only women\u2019s voices, it connects with the overarching theme of motherhood.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it also became Mother Nature, the bigger world that the characters all inhabit.\u201d<\/p>\n Richter, whose most celebrated works include a \u201crecomposed\u201d version of Vivaldi\u2019s \u201cThe Four Seasons,\u201d also developed a musical vocabulary based on instruments from the late 1500s, when the film is set. \u201cI used the nyckelharpa (a keyed string instrument that originated in Sweden), the hurdy-gurdy \u2014 folk, period instruments. And I also used the musical grammar from that period, especially the kind of choral writing you get in that period, but not in a doctrinaire kind of way.\u201d<\/p>\n Along the way, he even threw in some musical Easter eggs. When young William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) is courting Agnes, he tells her the story of Orpheus. In that scene, Richter\u2019s score is led by the harp, the instrument that Orpheus played in Greek mythology.<\/p>\n![\"hamnet-jessie-buckley\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thewrap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/hamnet-jessie-buckley.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&quality=89&ssl=1\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Jessie](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thewrap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Hamnet-Trailer.jpg?fit=300%2C169&quality=89&ssl=1\")
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