TV Composer Dominic Lewis on the Music of The Man in the High Castle [Exclusive Interview]

Dominic Lewis is no veteran to composing scores, having worked on the films such as Big Hero 6, Captain America: Winter Soldier, and Kingsman: The Secret Service.

Most recently, he was the co-composer for Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, a haunting mini-series based on a novel by Philip K Dick. Music was critical in bringing this intense, emotional drama to life.

I recently had the chance to speak to Lewis about working on the show, and how he got into composing in the first place.

“Both of my parents are musicians. Originally, I wanted to be like them and play the cello. But as I got older I realized that there isn’t much work for classical musicians.” When he sat in during one of his father’s recording sessions with film composer Craig Armstrong and heard the beautiful orchestral score, he fell in love with it. “I knew from that point on that I just had to do that.”

As far as musical influences go, Lewis was obsessed with the scores of John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and Alan Silvestri. “In particular, I fell in love with the Hook score, which is still one my favorites. Alan’s score for Back to the Future is perfect.” 

Although initially he mainly wanted to do film scores, he also loved television music from the ’60s and ’70s, such as The Man from UNCLE. When asked if there was a difference between scoring for films and television, Lewis said that the main factor was time. “There’s such a lack of time for doing things.” Sometimes, he would only have a five-day turnaround when working on a television show, scoring 45 minutes per week. “It’s always nice to let it rest a bit and reflect and then come back to it, but with a lot of TV you can’t do that,” Lewis said.

Scoring The Man in the High Castle was actually more similar to film than television for Lewis. “We did the pilot so early on before anything else, and we evolved from that point on. It felt like a really long movie, as opposed to a TV show, specifically how things were evolving with new scenes every week, new characters. It wasn’t a usual formulaic TV show.”

A lot of careful thought was put into creating musical themes for each character. The characters on the West Coast were scored with the same instrument group: woodwinds. “For example, clarinet is one of Juliana’s instrument, Frank was normally represented by bassoon, and then we have high flutes for Kido.”

“Then for the East Coast,” he continued, “Joe is represented often by the french horn. When we scored Smith, it tended to become sort of hammy and arch-evil, so we tried to stay away from scoring him. But when we did it would be brass.” The neutral zone was more obscure, and included odd sounds such as a detuned viola and a banjolin (mixture between banjo and violin).

The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history describing what the world would be like if the Axis powers won World War II. However, Lewis didn’t want the music to be overtly Japanese or German. “I tried to use Japanese instruments but not in a traditional Japanese way. We used the rim and skin of the taiko drum as more of a ticking clock kind of theme. On the German side of things, we needed something powerful. The brass was a very deliberate choice to represent the east coast. There’s also a little bit of classical piano. I wanted to kind of go a bit traditional Austro-Germanic. There’s a historical element.”

The reason he didn’t want to use traditional instrumentation too much was because he wanted the sound to reflect the show, instead of the geography. “I didn’t want to get too bogged down in this is San Francisco, this is Berlin, this is wherever. All those places needed to have a different feel, but it had more to do with the show than what we typically think of those areas. Are we going to get the sound to reflect where we are, or create a sound that reflects the show? And we decided on the latter.”

In order to create the unique sound of an alternate reality, Lewis had very long discussions with the production team about what instruments they could use, and what would exist. “We’d labor for hours. What really helped me was the decision to use “Edelweiss” for the opening credits,” Lewis explained.

“On the surface, it’s a traditional arrangement. But we used low elements and sound design elements to make it twisted and sort of creepy and weird. I extended that for the rest of the show.  I would take a major theme, and then twist it with sound design so on the surface you’ve got something normal, but underneath there is a nasty, creepy element.”

This creative choice reflected what was happening on the show, where no one knows who is on what side. “That’s what I wanted to create with the music, the ‘Everything’s fine, but actually everything’s not fine’ element.”

In terms of the most challenging scene to score, Lewis picked the sequence at the nightclub in “End of the World (Season 1 Episode 8). The scene initially was overlaid with a sourced song, but it wasn’t working for Lewis. “I had the idea of mixing in the score and relevant themes with that song, which was really, really tricky. Weaving in and out was really difficult. We sat down for three or four hours and we went through everything, making sure we hit all the right points.”

And his favorite theme? “My favorite theme would probably be the necklace theme, to do with Tagomi. There’s like a suite version of it in Episode 9. I’m told people really like it, and I really like it as well.”

Fans of The Man in the High Castle will know that the season finale ended on a huge cliffhanger, and Lewis is excited to start on Season 2. “I can’t wait. I’ve actually asked them to send me scripts on what’s going on. I have no idea on where they’re going to take it. I can’t wait to see where the characters are gonna go, and what’s going to happen.”

We can’t wait for Season 2 either, and we look forward to hearing more wonderful music from Dominic Lewis.

The Man in the High Castle is currently available for streaming on Amazon.