Jonny Greenwood's score for The Master is out and streaming

Nonesuch released Jonny Greenwood's soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master on 11 September, and the whole album went up to stream the same day. It holds 11 of his pieces and four songs from the film's period. The film had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 1 September and opens in American cinemas on Friday 14 September, and in Britain in November.

The Master is set in post-war America, where Joaquin Phoenix plays a troubled drifter drawn to Philip Seymour Hoffman's leader of a new movement. Ella Fitzgerald, Jo Stafford and Helen Forrest sing three of the period songs, and the young singer Madisen Beaty sings “Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree”.

It is Greenwood's second score for Anderson, after There Will Be Blood in 2007, which Nonesuch also put out. The London Contemporary Orchestra, conducted by Hugh Brunt, plays six pieces. One of them, “Application 45 Version 1”, went out as an instant download with the pre-order when Nonesuch announced the album on 15 August, the first track from the album to come out. Three of his 11 pieces are for small groups: a woodwind trio on “Time Hole” and “Atomic Healer”, both of which Greenwood mixed himself, and a quintet on “Able-Bodied Seamen” with Shabaka Hutchings and Jimmy Hastings on clarinets.

The other two, “Overtones” and “Baton Sparks”, share their titles with sections of 48 Responses to Polymorphia, the piece on his record with Krzysztof Penderecki in March. They are played by the same Polish orchestra, AUKSO under Marek Moś, and were recorded at the same studio, Alvernia near Krakow.

Tracklist