Jonny Greenwood Scores the Western: Music as Generic Subversion in There Will Be Blood

Abstract

Of all film scores composed by popular musicians, Jonny Greenwood’s score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s western drama, There Will Be Blood (2007), is one of the most counter-intuitive and significant. Greenwood draws on his experience as both the guitarist of the monumentally successful rock group, Radiohead, and as a successful contemporary classical composer to create an iconic and genre-defying score. In tracing recurring musical traits through Greenwood’s three career streams (Radiohead, classical composition, and film scoring), I outline a musical identity in Greenwood’s works that is genre-bending and entirely idiosyncratic. Furthermore, through contextual and musical analysis of Greenwood’s pre-existing and original music used in the film, as well as music by other composers including Arvo Pärt and Johannes Brahms, I highlight the indispensable role of the film’s score in creating generic subversions in There Will Be Blood.