New Article on Scott Walker’s Film Score

One of our lecturers, Matt Selway, gave a talk in 2020 at The Visconti Studio at Kingston University on Scott Walker’s film score for the film, The Childhood of a Leader (2015) and has written an article, ‘The soundtrack of a leader: scoring a psychological portrait of megalomania’ out now in the Journal for Cultural Research here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14797585.2020.1806442?needAccess=true

This article presents an analysis of the original score for the 2015 film The Childhood of a Leader, which was composed by the enigmatic and reclusive popstar-turned-avant-garde-experimentalist Scott Walker. In particular, the analysis here considers that important function that Walker’s score plays in illuminating the central protagonist’s evolving megalomaniacal state. The film’s narration of a would-be Fascist leader’s childhood is punctuated and enhanced by Walker’s challenging and aggressive composition, which aurally complements and symbolises the growing disquiet in the youngster’s mind.