Jonny Greenwood's There Will Be Blood score is out on Nonesuch

Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's film with Daniel Day-Lewis, is out on Nonesuch today in the UK and tomorrow in the US. It is his second record in his own name; the first, Bodysong (2003), was also a film score.

Two of the pieces, “Henry Plainview” and “Proven Lands”, are lifted from Popcorn Superhet Receiver, the orchestral piece Greenwood wrote for the BBC and first played in London in 2005. Nonesuch places the score with his work as the BBC Concert Orchestra's composer in residence rather than with Radiohead. The BBC Concert Orchestra plays the big pieces under Robert Ziegler. The smaller chamber ones go to the Emperor Quartet, Caroline Dale on cello and Michael Dussek on piano. Ben Hogwood, reviewing the record for musicOMH, rates them below the orchestral ones in a four-star verdict.

NME first reported in September that Greenwood was scoring the film, which opens in American cinemas on 26 December and in British ones on 8 February 2008. The magazine added that Anderson is a fan of the band, and that Radiohead went to a private screening of Punch-Drunk Love in Los Angeles in 2002.

The first running order, published in October, ended with “Smear”, an earlier Greenwood piece written for the London Sinfonietta and nearly ten minutes long. On the finished disc “Stranded the Line” and “Prospectors Quartet” take its place.

I saw some fairly long sections of the film, read the script, and just wrote loads of music

Jonny Greenwood¹

, Greenwood says. He was after the film's menace and greed and its oppressive religious mood, with a child caught in the middle. I tried to write to the scenery, and the story rather than specific 'themes' for characters.¹

There Will Be Blood: tracklist