Max Richter announces 'Taboo' original soundtrack: Listen to 'The Onrush of Events' - premiere

Exclusive: Listen to the composer's track written for Tom Hardy's acclaimed BBC drama

Max Richter (Rahi Rezvani)

Max Richter, the composer who created the soundtrack for acclaimed series Taboo (created, written and starring Tom Hardy) is premiering one of the tracks via The Independent today.

Taboo is set in pre-Victorian London, and saw Hardy as James Keziah Delaney - an adventurer who was long-believed dead, and who returns to London after 12 years in Africa to inherit what is left of his father's shipping empire.

Richter explains: "The score for Taboo comes directly out of the trajectory of the central character: an avenging dark angel, as unstoppable as fate itself. The show plays as a kind of very dark fairy tale, populated and driven by Tom Hardy's character.

"These two aspects - the hallucinatory environment, and the irresistible force of Mr Delaney - are embodied by the two main themes. The first theme is a haunted waltz, based like hundreds of works since the 17th century, on a falling chromatic line called a 'lament bass'. Widely used in opera to evoke tragedy, for Taboo I have made a deceptively sweet-sounding version of it, so that we are lulled into a false sense of security.

"The second theme is that of our protagonist. His inexorable progress is evoked by the perpetual-motion ostinato figures in the orchestra, which pivot around a bass line that moves between the interval of a tritone - called 'Diabolus in musica' by 18th century theoreticians, because of its destabilising effect on harmony. Mr Delaney is certainly some sort of Diabolus himself."

Tom Hardy in Taboo (BBC Picture)

Listen to our premiere of "The Onrush of Events" from the Taboo soundtrack below:

Q&A with Max Richter

What are you listening to at the moment?

Kelsey Lu, John Dowland, Caterina Barbieri, Jlin, John Luther Adams

What are your plans for the rest of the year?

I’m working on a new large scale live project and composing the score for Josie Rourke’s upcoming feature film.

Did you watch footage from Taboo before composing the score - and do you have a typical approach to composing music for a visual piece of work?

I did watch the material - you have to do that to get a sense of the overall tone.

From there it is a series of experiments, made with the aim of finding things that speak in different ways to the material. Because of the almost operatic texture of the story telling I chose to use various technical processes from early opera, especially the use of the “Lament bass”, used by many 17th and 18th century composers, as the main theme.

What was the first concert you ever performed and what’s been the best so far?

My first gig was the premiere of my second album “The Blue Notebooks” at the 291 Gallery on Hackney road - a wonderful night - I expected nobody to come, but it was full. Its impossible to pick my favourite - every show is unique and I always discover unexpected things in each performance, so I guess my favourite concert would be the next one, the one I haven’t played yet.

The soundtrack for 'Taboo' is released on CD and digital formats on 15 September

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