What are your favorite violin scores in movies and television?
Today I binged all of Normal People on hulu, which I highly recommend. A bit of a slow start but by the end of the second episode it had gotten its hooks into me and I found myself anxious to get back to it while doing other things. Always a good sign. My only complaint was that 12 episodes of 30 minutes was way too short, especially because every other episode seemed to jump 6 months ahead. (Basic plot is an on-again off-again romance between the two leads from high school through college into post-graduate years.) I should have been asleep 3 hours ago but by the time I got halfway through I just had to watch the entire thing.
Anyway, somewhere around episode 8 a violin score kicks in that sounded so familiar to me it drove me nuts, and it continues showing up over the next couple episodes. Googling “best violin movie scores” turned up the answer, listed second below.
(If you want to hear the score that was driving me nuts, episode 10, starting at the 5:00 mark and lasting maybe 2 or 3 minutes, through the entire funeral scene. That funeral is largely incidental to the main story so you can listen to the score without really spoiling anything for yourself. I notice now that it goes from violin to piano, much like the score it reminded me of.)
That google search started leading me down a violin score rabbit hole in the best way possible. So I figured a thread might be fun. What are your favorite violin scores in movies and television? I’ll start us off with two.
Obvious first choice is obvious: Requiem for a Dream
And then I’m pretty sure the violin from Normal People was reminding me of The Leftovers, which may be my favorite score ever, both the violin and piano versions. It’s so good it appears in several “best violin movie scores” lists even though it’s a tv show:
Man, just listening to that gives me chills. I should re-watch all three seasons at some point.
So what are your favorite violin scores from film and television?
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