‘Gilded Age’ Score Is the Work of Musical Siblings Who Bring Class and Drive to the HBO Series

variety.com:

Jon Burlingame editorFrom the opening frames of HBO’s series “The Gilded Age,” the music of composers Harry Gregson-Williams and Rupert Gregson-Williams gives viewers a sense of the ambition and drive of “new money” in conflict with the “old money” of 1880s New York.The brothers — Harry based in Los Angeles, Rupert just outside London — generally work on different projects, and most often for features (Harry’s credits include “The Martian” and “The Last Duel,” while Rupert’s include “Wonder Woman” and “Aquaman”).But both are past Emmy nominees (“Electric Dreams” for Harry, “The Crown” for Rupert) and this is their second TV collaboration, after 2019’s Hulu series “Catch-22.” Given the sheer volume of music demanded by “The Gilded Age,” nearly six hours for the 10 episodes, they were happy to reunite professionally. “It was good to have two sets of hands on it,” says Harry. “Upwards or 35, sometimes 40 minutes of music [per episode] had to be written, approved, orchestrated and actually played live.

It was a big job, and it stretched us.”Finding the appropriate musical style was an intriguing challenge, says Rupert: “Coming out of the Americana period and into a certain period of New York, we used an orchestra, which was conventional, but then we brought in unconventional sounds that occasionally surprised, and helped to tell the story of old and new money meeting and clashing.”Those surprising sonorities included hammered dulcimer, ukelele and a Finnish stringed instrument called the kantele.