Jonny Greenwood takes a Silver Bear for the score the Oscars ruled out

Jonny Greenwood has won the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the Berlin International Film Festival, for his score for Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, his second full film score after Bodysong. The prizes were given at the festival's closing gala on Saturday 16 February, and Anderson took a Silver Bear of his own, as Best Director.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will not let the same score near the Oscars. On 21 January, the day before the nominations came out, it emerged that the Academy's music branch had ruled it ineligible for Best Original Score, because most of the music heard in the film was not written for it. About 35 minutes were, against roughly 46 that already existed. Part of that 46 is Greenwood's own. Beside pieces by Arvo Pärt and Brahms's Violin Concerto, the film uses about 15 minutes of “Popcorn Superhet Receiver”, the orchestral piece the BBC Concert Orchestra premiered in London in April 2005 and which won a Radio 3 listeners' prize the next year. On the soundtrack album it is heard as “Henry Plainview” and “Proven Lands”.

The rule shuts out scores diluted by tracked themes or earlier music, and is sometimes called the Godfather rule, after Nino Rota's Godfather score lost its 1973 nomination for reusing music he had written for another film. The ruling also came late. Greenwood heard by letter, and Paramount Vantage, the film's distributor, two days after him, both after the nomination ballots had closed, so members could already have voted for a score that was not allowed to win. The Academy had held the film's cue sheet since December. Two other scores, Into the Wild and Enchanted, were ruled out too, but Paramount Vantage had been warned about Into the Wild in advance and had no warning about this one.

Before Berlin, the score was named Best Composer at the Critics' Choice Awards in Santa Monica in the first week of January, and was one of five up for the BAFTA for film music. In his thanks for that nomination, Greenwood praised the BBC Concert Orchestra, who play the score, for making the most of what I wrote.⁴ The award went to Christopher Gunning for La Vie en Rose on 10 February.

When the Oscars are given out on 24 February, There Will Be Blood is up for eight, among them Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis. None of the eight is for its music.

The score's awards season