‘House of Cards’ Composer Jeff Beal on Writing for Hollywood

Podcast

May 2

Even if you don't recognize the name Jeff Beal, you know his music. For more than 20 years, Beal has been one of the most prolific composers in Hollywood, his shadowy, hypnotic music amplifying the dramatic action of popular shows like House of Cards, Monk, Carnivàle, and Rome.

Long before he began amassing his collection of Emmy Awards, however, Beal's breakthrough moment came when he was asked to compose the film score for Pollock, Ed Harris's 2001 biopic about the artist Jackson Pollock. And as I learned in a recent conversation with Beal, his greatest challenge in that film wasn't writing music to accompany dialogue — but rather the silent act of painting.

"Often what we do as film composers is sort of hang out in the background and support and not try to be at the forefront of the viewer's conscience," Beal shared in our conversation.

"But in that film, there were two key scenes where Ed, who so brilliantly plays Jackson Pollock, paints a painting for two or three minutes at a time. There's nothing else going on, except for him in a room with a paintbrush, which is not a lot of sound. Enter music — it was just my job to swing for the fences. That film, that music, really put me on the map."

Now, nearly a quarter century after working on those silent scenes in Pollock, Beal has composed music for one of the early 20th century's most groundbreaking silent films, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. And as the final event in Carnegie Hall's Fall of the Weimar Republic festival, Beal will make his Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage debut leading the live-to-picture U.S. premiere of his score.

For a composer steeped in both jazz and classical music, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari proved a perfect vehicle for Beal's mysterious sound world.

"The idea of using jazz as a vehicle into this film was really fun. My image for this was like: What if Alban Berg was in Vienna and he had a gig writing big band music for the movies? What would that music sound like? I often think of writing that way — like this recipe where you throw something in and cook something up."

Reflecting on Beal's wide-ranging work for film, television, and the concert stage, I was curious about how he wants to be remembered as an artist. Turns out Beal's goal is simple: Help people transcend the everyday.

"I feel like my purpose as an artist is to move an audience and also to create something beautiful that is meaningful and hopefully profound, something that gives people a sense of the world that's beyond the normal experience of life. I hope there are a few minutes or a few seconds of my work that give somebody that."

Jeff Beal's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari will be performed at Carnegie Hall on Monday, June 3, 2024. His new album, New York Études, is available on Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you stream or download music.

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