The Story Behind Bella’s Lullaby

Composer Carter Burwell has a wonderful section on his website where he tells the whole story behind “Bella’s Lullaby”, the song he wrote for Twilight back in 2008. He also talks about Rob being chosen to play the piece in the film.

I came to Oregon to meet Catherine Hardwicke and see some of the film she was shooting, Twilight. She mentioned that the producing company, Summit Entertainment, had just requested that a new scene be added to the film. The scene existed in the novel but hadn’t originally been part of the screenplay (films are not one-to-one translations of books). In this scene Edward would play piano for Bella. I wasn’t officially working on the film at that point and they didn’t know what Rob Pattinson (Edward) should play during the shoot. This is not an unusual situation - many films have an actor sitting at a keyboard, swaying back and forth, pretending to play music that was only written after the film has been shot and edited. This case was unusual in that Rob is a fine musician, and fully capable of playing the piano or probably any other instrument.

He also discusses Summit’s desire to change his composition to fit the target audience.

The suggestion that teenage girls would want a sweet tune was somewhat condescending, and that was something I tried to avoid in this score. Also I don’t believe it’s possible to know how music will affect someone else, even though film composers claim to. The unpredicability is what makes it interesting (although I understand that’s not what the investors want to hear). And can you imagine what it would be like - as it was occasionally on this project - trying to compose music to satisfy a director who’s trying to satisfy a male executive who’s trying to satisfy ten million teenage girls?

You can read the full story here. Thanks to Marya for the link!