Da Vinci’s Demons: The Enemies of Man

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In the epic penultimate episode of Da Vinci’s Demons Season 2, “The Enemies of Man,” our heroes return to a Florence overrun by the mercenaries of Duke Federico, and struggle valiantly to take back the city. The demands on the score this week were tremendous, because there was so much narrative packed into a single episode – battles, revelations, betrayals, lovers, celebrations and suicide. Before discussing the musical twists and turns, I want to dive into the scene I know you are most curious about: the musical clue hidden within the Brazen Head.

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MAJOR SPOILERS BEYOND: The most intriguing storyline in “The Enemies of Man” revolves around Da Vinci and his mentor Verrocchio decoding the mysterious message of the Brazen Head. Verrocchio plays back the recording of Leonardo’s mother from the machinery in the head and notices musical tones in the background that Da Vinci missed. Hidden within the tones are coded words that lead Da Vinci forward on his quest. For this revelation, music was more than mere background score – it was the central force communicating crucial information to the protagonists, and to the audience. The meaning coded within these musical pitches drives the entire series forward.

Longtime fans of mine probably know this isn’t the first time I’ve tackled something like this. For the finale of Battlestar Galactica, I used a series of pitches established in the score to communicate a row of numbers with crucial impact to the story. (My full blog entry about the BSG finale is here.) In hindsight, that situation was easier than what I faced here. I had already written the notes. Generating numbers from notes is a relatively easy process, even for non-musicians to understand.

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The musical code in Da Vinci’s Demons would be more complex. The leap from musical pitches to letters and words is more difficult to grasp in theory and even more complex to communicate effectively on screen. Still, I was very excited that the writers thought up this crazy idea and gave me the chance to help them crack it.

The writers reached out to me as they were scripting last summer, before I had begun scoring the season, making this challenge my first task of the season. They sketched out the scene with basic dialog, but had not worked out the musical details for how a message could be encoded into notes. As I read the scene, I knew immediately that the series’ music historian Adam Knight Gilbert would be the man who could navigate us through this. I immediately pulled him into the process and, together, we spent several weeks collaborating closely with the writers, especially Corey Reed, Marco Ramirez and David S. Goyer, as well as the art department, to craft the scene that ultimately made it to the screen.

As you can see in last season’s video blog with Adam (linked above), he is a man with limitless knowledge and passion for music history. He dove into this challenge headfirst and came back with pages and pages of documents, detailing various methods words may have been encoded into music in the fifteenth century.

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“As I said, the truth is indeed stranger than Dan Brown,” Adam said. “This was a period in which Medici protégés Marsilio Ficino and Pico Delle Mirandola (who was later murdered with arsenic, probably by Lorenzo’s son, Piero) were fascinated with the Pythagorean concept of the relations between between music, text, image, magic, astrology, and alchemy. Of special import on thinking of this time was the rediscovery of Plato and of Hermes Trismegistus.’ 

‘Pico published a dynamite book of 900 theses that rocked the intellectual world with his radical syncretism (relations of all the religions), etc. A lot of this was inspired by the arrival of Greek exiles from Constantinople (Istanbul). He also sparked the modern Christian fascination with the Kabbalah, and is responsible for linking the Pythagorean foundational numbers with the four letters of the name of the Lord, which also happen to be the perfect musical proportions of octave, fifth, and fourth. They linked the musical proportions to the planets, and alchemical signs to planetary signs, which were also musical signs in artistic imagery of the time.’ 

‘Leonardo himself made a link between the proportions of music and art, which has been seen by one scholar in ‘The Last Supper.’ Many of these issues resonate in today’s culture and conspiracy theories. Bet you didn’t know that that evil ‘eye in the triangle’ image on our dollar bill originated in this culture!’

This was a fascinating starting point, because it reinforced the notion that Da Vinci had a musical mind, and was a scholar who sought to look for meaning within music, as it applied to other art forms. This is an aspect of his intellect his mother would count on as she encoded her words into music in such a manner that only her son could decipher them.

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The story would work if we could just find a convincing way to hide words within notes. My first thought was to use a system similar to the well-known method Bach used to inscribe his name into his compositions. He assigned pitches to letters and used a system where B = Bb, A = A, C = C and H = B. The obvious problem with this method is that there is a limit of up to 12 letters that can be converted to pitches, rendering the forming of more complex words and phrases impossible. The bigger problem is that this methodology is anachronistic to the time of Da Vinci.

So, how were we to accomplish this? Adam Knight Gilbert came up with an ingenious solution, one I will let him explain in his own words.

“Around 1475-1500 it was common, as far as we know, to use the six ‘voces musicales,’ or ‘musical vowels,’ the Renaissance solfège syllables (‘ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la’) as they correspond to vowels in a name. This practice was called ‘sogetto cavato delle vocale,’ or ‘subject carved from the vowels’. Thus, we have examples of composers like Josquin Desprez setting the name ‘Maria’ to the notes ‘La Mi La.’ ‘Bear McCreary’ would either be ‘Re La Re La Mi’ (since Y was the same as I), or they would have translated the name to Latin and used the same approach.’

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‘The problem for Leonardo’s code would have been that, while one might use the ‘musical vowels’ to symbolize a name or character, one would not be able to guess at an entire text.’

‘So, I was happy to enlist the aid of Spanish music theorist Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja (ca. 1440 – 1522). A reformer, Ramos disliked the system of musical vowels. In his 1482 ‘Musica Practica,’ he proposed his own system of eight vowels to match the notes of the octave. And here is where he helped us: He created a system in which each of the letters of the alphabet correspond to the pitches of the musical gamut, the range of a human voice. Thus, the system starts with A, in the lower bass clef range, and proceeds upward from B, C, D, through the alphabet.’

‘You can see the code key here.’

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‘There are two important points to keep in mind. One, I created the alphabet key based on the Renaissance alphabet in which ‘I’ and ‘J’ are the same letter, as are ‘U’ and ‘V.’ Two, I extended Ramos’ musical alphabet range to accommodate the code text.’

‘What I love about this system is that it is contemporary to Leonardo, and, like the great man, was ahead of its time. Most importantly, the unusual leaps of the code would have tipped Leonardo off that this was not just an unusual melody. Such leaps would have been unheard of as good composition at this time, and thus would provide the real clue that there is a hidden message.”

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The series writers, Adam and I collaborated closely to come up with a short collection of words that could be efficiently encoded into notes and communicate the idea that the Book of Leaves was actually in Leonardo’s childhood home of Vinci. We ultimately settled on the words “Liber Domus Parvulus,” or “Book Home Child.” As Adam pointed out, Renaissance composers frequently set their texts in Latin. More importantly, having the words in Latin allowed us to bypass the pitfall of the audience wondering if the encoded words were supposed to be in English or Italian. In this case, historical accuracy and narrative simplicity were in harmony.

With Ramos’ system in place, and the words selected, Adam created a sketch of what the historically accurate musical notation would look like:

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The art department took his notation and created Da Vinci’s sketches that would actually be seen on camera. As you can see from the following image taken from the episode, Da Vinci’s sketch is, indeed, an accurate representation of the notes.

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I have had many remarkable opportunities scoring Da Vinci’s Demons, but this is my proudest moment. The musical code is real and historically accurate! Anyone so inclined could take these notes and apply Ramos de Pareja’s code to deduce these hidden words. The writers and producers could have easily made something up and let it whisk past the audience, but instead, they gave me and Adam the chance to dive into the problem and solve it. The music is real, and that makes the story even more vibrant and detailed.

With the notes in the code set, I now had a new theme I could incorporate into the score, The Musical Code Theme:

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Notice that I applied a rhythm, which was an aesthetic choice on my part.  I assigned the last note in the words “Liber” and “Domus” to be a whole note, four times longer than the other notes in the word. This definitely breaks up the three words into three musical phrases, giving Da Vinci another hint.

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With the notes set, my next task was to generate the actual recording that would be playing from within the Brazen Head. What sound would actually play these pitches? The producers and I were drawn to some sort of bell or glockenspiel, because they are simple and clear. However, the range of these notes is actually quite large, spanning nearly three octaves. One would need a full-sized vibraphone or gamelan ensemble in order to accurately state the pitches and that felt a little cumbersome and unrealistic. My next idea was a lute. Any guitar instrument would be able to easily make these large leaps, and when played without vibrato, the notes would still retain a bell-like quality.

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Ultimately, I combined these two ideas. The Musical Code playing beneath the recorded voice is performed on a combination of bells and lutes. The presence of Ed Trybek’s lute gives the bells a human quality, and the slight variations in tuning between the tones creates an other-worldly mood. The sound mixers applied a filter to the track to make it sound like it was coming off a small, tinny device, which makes it almost impossible to identify the actual musical instruments anyway. The end result is a truly haunting and fascinating sound.

Listen to the track “The Brazen Head” on the Season 2 Soundtrack Album and you’ll hear that Trybek took the guitars one step further and split them out into three passes, which we panned left, center and right. He recorded the sequence in passes playing only every third note. When these tracks are combined, every lute note appears in a different place in the stereo field as the previous one, rotating left, center, right. The effect is subtle, but gives the sensation that these notes are sequenced in order for a hidden reason, implying they are more than mere melodic tones.

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“The Enemies of Man” is not the first time we have heard this musical code. This same recording was featured in the previous episode, when Da Vinci first hears the message from his mother from the Brazen Head. As I teased in my last blog entry, the notes are there, but not very present in the mix. The producers and I felt that scene needed energy, tension and momentum, so we willingly buried the Musical Code in the mix behind driving score that builds towards Da Vinci’s triumphant leap from the cliff. More important, the story point in this episode is that Da Vinci missed the notes altogether, leaving it to Verrocchio to actually piece the riddle together. So, it was essential that neither Da Vinci nor the audience notice the notes in the previous episode on a first viewing. Go back for a second viewing, though, and you’ll hear that the notes are unmistakably  there.

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The musical notes carrying hidden words within the message from the Brazen Head presented a challenge that alone would have made “The Enemies of Man” a memorable episode for music, but there’s so much more. Arriving at these pitches was just the beginning of a long musical journey for me, scoring this incredibly ambitious and game-changing episode.

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EVEN MORE SPOILERS AHEAD: The episode begins with Riario and Da Vinci aboard the Sentinel, about to land back in Italy. They both calmly acknowledge this could be the last moment they look on each other as friends. The Calder Quartet offers a gentle string background against gentle lutes playing Riario’s Theme.

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An expressive viola da gamba solo builds energy before the quartet kicks into a driving, revelatory chord progression, marking the appearance of land on the horizon. They have finally arrived home! The ostinato builds energy with light percussion, while the viola da gamba picks up a heroic statement of the Da Vinci Theme, beneath a playful piccolo line. The piccolo is a contemporary instrument that is a bit out of character for this series, but I wanted an instrument to musically represent the sound of birds, underlining that our heroes have returned to land after a long journey at sea.

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We transition to Lucrezia, now a prisoner in Constantinople, undergoing interrogation from the soothsayer woman we met in the previous episode. The score introduces the signature Turkish percussion that has  always represented this storyline: a slithery ney playing melodies, against a backdrop of darbuka, frame drum and other percussion.

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Here, the percussion is ambient and flowing, avoiding establishing a steady groove. I did this to help highlight the dreamlike hypnosis of the scene, as the soothsayer asks Lucrezia the same questions over and over again, drilling into her mind. The presence of the Turkish instrumentation helps establish the location and ominous setting, but I was careful to avoid any quotation of the actual Ottoman Empire Theme, because I saved it for Bayezid’s return later in the episode. Beneath this ethnic texture, the string quartet chords become increasingly dissonant and Lucrezia’s signature Celtic harp sneaks in with a diminished variation of her theme, underlining how much trouble she’s in.

Meanwhile, Da Vinci, Zo and Nico return to Florence in the dead of night, and Leonardo returns to his workshop. Here, I wrote one of the episode’s most heartfelt variations of the Da Vinci Theme:

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Seeing Leonardo return to his workshop and reunite with Verrocchio was a perfect opportunity to allow the viola da gamba to quote his theme, along with the quartet stating his uplifting ostinato.

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This is Da Vinci returning to his roots, and I wanted the score to definitively take us back to the first episode.

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Of course, observant viewers will notice right away that something isn’t right, because an unnerved Verrocchio continually attempts to say something important to Leonardo. I used the warm emotional score to try to distract viewers from this fact as much as possible. Gradually, the score transitions into mystery, as Da Vinci shows Verrocchio the Brazen Head, and then into full tension, when mercenaries charge through the door.

The guards take Da Vinci to the Duke of Urbino at the Medici Palace, in a slow-motion sequence that visually and musically references Da Vinci’s introduction to the palace in the first episode. In that scene, his walk was underscored with a historically accurate arrangement of the Medici Theme, as composed by true-life Medici court composer Heinrich Isaac.

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In the first episode, Da Vinci was struck by the court’s opulence. Here, he is shocked by the rampant misery, debauchery and humiliation as the mercenaries have their way with the citizens of Florence and destroy the palace. Now, viola da gambas quote that same Medici Theme variation once more, but the instruments are soaked in reverb and distortion, and digitally slowed down. These manipulations represent how the Medici court has been mangled during the occupation.

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While Leonardo discovers Florence is not what is used to be, Riario returns to Rome having lost all his faith in his God, his father and his mission. He begs forgiveness from The Prisoner, as his last resort at restoring meaning to his life. As Riario falls to his knees, the orchestral celli and basses state a warm variation of his theme, answered by a reply from the Prisoner Theme performed on its signature bansuri and viola da gamba duet, as established back in Episode 103, “The Prisoner.”

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At first, this scene is all about the emotion. My goal was for the music to misdirect the audience into believing that Riario and The Prisoner may actually form a bond. Gradually, the score shifts to suspense as The Prisoner refuses to forgive him, and the orchestration ultimately becomes much darker and more dramatic as the scene progresses.

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Ultimately, the scene builds to a huge, almost Gothic variation of the Riario Theme, sweeping in grand gestures as he storms through the Vatican, facing his existential crisis. It’s a wonderful moment for music, but the crescendo leading up to it had to be handled carefully. The music could easily tip the dialog between the two men into melodrama, or foreshadow the rejection to come. Avoiding that, my goal was to tread as lightly as possible with the score, and to always let the actors’ subtle performances dictate how big the music could get.

I often feel that the actors on screen and composer are dancing, and in that metaphor, composers always let the actors lead. Once the actors reach a sufficient level of drama, then the music can follow and respond. Scoring with the music leading ahead of the actors will always spell disaster, and turn even the best drama into a cheesy soap opera.

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Riario’s despair eventually leads him to attempt suicide, but he is saved and captured by The Labyrinth, the self-proclaimed “Enemies of Man.” As he awakens in a strange new environment, the ominous, dark chords in the strings eventually give way to a solo duduk quoting The Horned God Theme:

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This theme was first established in the season premiere, and has had a few quotations throughout the season. As this episode’s title implies, The Labyrinth will factor prominently into the story, so I knew this theme would start becoming very important, especially in the episode’s climactic scene.

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From here, the majority of the episode deals with Da Vinci and his adventure with Carlo. First, they escape the Bargello together with the aid of Zo and Vespucci. Then, they make a daring plan to use a catapult to enter the Medici palace. When that plan fails, they infiltrate using dangerous furnace ducts. Da Vinci devises a bladder balloon filled with noxious gas! All this escalates to a daring sword fight between the Duke and Da Vinci. I scored all of these scenes with escalating variations of a new theme, which I will call the Adventure Theme:

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I knew I needed music that started off conspiratorial and dangerous, that could build into a full-blown adventurous fanfare. The Da Vinci Theme could have worked for this, I suppose, but after two seasons it now carries so much emotional baggage associated with Da Vinci personally that it seemed too intimate for such high adventure. Besides, even though Da Vinci is clearly the hero here, this storyline is even bigger than Da Vinci – this episode is about the liberation of Florence itself! So, I felt a new theme was in order. Watching the rough cut of this episode for the first time, I heard this new melody leap into my imagination almost immediately, so I decided to follow my instincts.

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You can clearly hear the Adventure Theme on the Season 2 Soundtrack album throughout the track “Depth Perception.” Malachai Bandy’s solo viola da gamba kicks the track off with a rousing statement of the tune, and builds intensity throughout the whole track.

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The attack on the mercenaries in the dining hall, and the subsequent sword duel between the Duke and Da Vinci, probably represent the most challenging cue I have ever faced writing for this series, perhaps short of the “Easter Mass” from 108, and subsequent “Florence Under Siege” from 201. Action scoring obviously involves a ton of notes, and the difficulty level goes up exponentially the more times the action has to start and stop. This made the swordfight in this episode insanely challenging.

Da Vinci struggles to fight with the Duke and comes up with a plan to break his sword off at the tip and use the Duke’s lack of depth perception to his advantage. He continually allows the Duke to swing at the sword while holding it further out, thus training him to think the sword exists at a certain distance from his face. This is a tricky concept to communicate to the audience, so I used music to help reinforce the idea.

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First, I used the revelatory Da Vinci ostinato and theme when Da Vinci has his initial epiphany, and comes up with his plan to trick the Duke. Then, the score goes back into full action from the orchestra, percussion and Renaissance instruments as the Duke attacks once again. He swings at Leonardo, and misses. With every miss, the action grinds to a halt while tremolo strings carry a sudden beat of suspense between flourishes. When the Duke swings again, the action comes back, modulating upward each time.

This kind of “Mickey Mouse” scoring, where the music hits every physical action in a sequence, takes ages to compose. The scene just flies by for the audience, and the score feels very natural, musically reinforcing the idea that Da Vinci is intentionally allowing the Duke to nearly hit him with each swing. Scoring this forty-second sequence took a hugely disproportionate amount of my writing time.

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The Duke is bested and Clarice decides his fate. As she walks away from his dead body, her signature English horn variation of the Medici Theme accompanies her.

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The streets of Florence erupt into celebration, with the joyous citizens dancing in the streets. Their dancing implies that they are hearing music, so obviously some source music was in order. Adam Gilbert sent me a selection of bawdy folk music from the era, and I chose a bouncy German tune called “Es Solt Ein Man Kein Mole Farn” that was popular in Italy during Da Vinci’s time.

I arranged the song with as much energy as I could, for Renaissance recorders, lutes and hide drums. The ensemble was historically accurate, and fit the scene for the characters, but fell short of capturing the epic sense of closure and celebration I wanted the audience to feel. So, I augmented the Renaissance instrumentation with contemporary orchestra.

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This moment is actually two pieces of music sitting on top of eachother. First, the Renaissance instrumentation establishes the jaunty rhythm, then the modern orchestra reinforces the harmonic changes with big, powerful chords and a soaring line in the violins. When we are down on the street with the revelers, these two pieces of music coincide. They diverge, however, when we cut up to Clarice looking in her mirror in her bedroom, high above the streets.

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On this cut, the Renaissance instrumentation that was filling the mix in all frequencies, is chopped down to a narrow bandwidth, giving it the feeling of coming from out the window. The contemporary orchestra, however, remains full and, in fact, gets louder to fill the void left as the Renaissance music fades away. The strings still follow the chord progression of “Es Solt Ein Man” but gradually fork off into new harmonic territory as she steps away from the mirror. Once Clarice begins speaking with Da Vinci, the Renaissance music is completely gone, and the strings modulate to a new key. By this point, source music has fully given way to true score.

This transition is subtle, but powerful. The effect required tremendous effort from many people, including myself, the orchestrators, scoring mixer Steve Kaplan, the various performers and the episode’s mixing engineers, who carefully placed the source elements and score elements in their own spaces. Watching this episode on the air, I was struck by how seamless the transition truly was, and amused because I knew that almost no one would ever notice how much effort went into it all.

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Clarice returns the Medici Sword to Da Vinci, and the score quotes a triumphant, ceremonial version of the Medici Theme, harking back to when Da Vinci first was given the sword in Episode 202, “The Blood of Brothers.” I wanted this scene to feel like a ceremonial conclusion to an epic adventure. Da Vinci has become the true savior of Florence.

Verrocchio charges in, aflutter with excitement. Here, an uplifting version of the Da Vinci ostinato promises new adventure. This whole scene with Clarice, and the following one, are a musical misdirect. I strove for the score to be as positive and exciting as possible. My goal was to help the audience succumb to the thrill of the adventure, so they could be completely blind-sided by the betrayal and devastating loss to come. As is so often the case in a good series, be wary when things are looking too good for our heroes. (See Battlestar Galactica, Episode 412 “Revelations,” for a stunning example of this concept in action.)

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Verrocchio brings Da Vinci back to the studio and shows him the reconstructed Brazen Head. He plays back the audio and Da Vinci now notices the notes behind the recorded voice. Here, the music makes another clever transition from source to score. The notes in the Brazen Head, that our characters are actually hearing, are gradually accompanied by the strings and harp in the score, which only the audience is hearing. Eventually, the Brazen Head stops making sound and the music is handed over entirely to score, to carry the excitement of their discovery.

(Getting score chords to harmonically co-exist in a peaceful manner with the essentially randomly generated notes in the code was a very tricky process. I will discuss it in more detail at the end of the blog.)

As Da Vinci and Verrocchio ponder the riddle of the notes, the score quotes The Musical Code in its entirety. The range of the code is so wide that it took the entire string section to be able to state it. No single string instrument would be capable of playing all these pitches on its own. (A solo viola would have been able to pull it off, except for that damn low B natural!) So, I bounced the notes across the celli, violas and violins. Thankfully, I also had an orchestral harp at my disposal, so I doubled the pitches with harp as well, providing sonic unity to the quotation.

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As the maestro and his mentor decipher the hidden words, Da Vinci decides to embark on a new adventure  while heartfelt and heroic variations of the Da Vinci ostinato swell in the score. I hoped to get the audience excited for a new quest, and leave them totally oblivious to what was about to happen.

Carlo enters the studio and the score shifts to a slight unease. Da Vinci is immediately skeptical about Carlo’s motivations, but I did not want the score to tip the reveal here. I held back as long as I could, just playing Da Vinci’s growing suspicions that something is amiss.

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At last, Carlo wields an axe and delivers Da Vinci a near-fatal blow to the midsection. The score bursts into a foreboding statement of the Horned God Theme. Up until this point, the Horned God Theme has accompanied fleeting images, whispers and nightmares of their existence.  Here, we finally see a true member of this society and learn about their motivations and plans. This scene, as Carlo delivers his speech to Da Vinci, was my first chance to write what I consider the definitive and full version of the Horned God Theme, or Labyrinth Theme. The low strings chug on an ominous ostinato, while creepy harmonics in the upper strings slither along the contours of the melody. This is classic bad guy monolog scoring and I savored every second of it.

Verrocchio runs in, unaware of the threat, and Carlo stabs him in the gut with the axe. Here, the score swells with lyrical, operatic writing for huge orchestral phrases, dramatic harmonic shifts, swirling arpeggiations and huge percussion. After Carlo flees, the episode concludes with Da Vinci’s quite despair as Verrocchio lays dying in his arms. Now, the score dies down to an intimate chord progression I will call the Verrocchio Death Theme:

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Like Giuliano’s death in Episode 107, I was confronted with the death scene of a major character before I’d written that character’s definitive theme. I found with Giuliano that his death theme could actually be developed substantially in future episodes, as various characters dealt with his loss. Similarly, I knew that a signature chorale for Verrocchio’s passing would be useful in the future (I actually wound up using it again in the beginning of the next episode).So, the Verrocchio Death Theme was very useful to write for this moment. More important, I needed to write a musical passage that would capture Da Vinci’s heartbreak in this moment, and I hope that I succeeded in that endeavor.

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The End Credits of “The Enemies of Man” are, by far, my favorite credits of the series to date. The piece is comprised of two complete statements of The Musical Code Theme, each harmonized with increasing complexity and beauty by the string orchestra playing con sord, and a viola da gamba solo weaving between phrases.

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Harmonizing this melody was treacherous. After all, the notes are essentially randomly generated. To even attempt to give them a harmonic progression was potentially a fool’s errand.  There were notes that seemed to spell out B minor, E minor and A minor, implying an E minor tonality. However, these damn F naturals sprinkled throughout the second half ruined that idea. I wanted to keep the chorale behind the code beautiful and lyrical, without sounding like a bunch of random chords behind random notes, so it took me a while to figure this out.

At last, I realized I could use those F naturals in augmented A triads and Bb major chords, pivoting from E minor to D minor. The result is a harmonic and melodic progression unlike anything I would have written without those constraints. Personally, I think the final minute of “The Enemies of Man” is one of the most enchanting and gorgeous passages I have ever written. Check out the end of the track “The Brazen Head” on the Season Two soundtrack album to hear it for yourself.

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With all these narrative and musical twists, turns, reveals and betrayals, “The Enemies of Man” could have easily functioned as the final episode of the season. And in many ways, I actually think of the episode as the true end of Season Two. This episode concludes many of the major story arcs we have witnessed unfold this season, while the actual season finale functions more like a preview of Season Three, introducing new narrative arcs. I am sorry I’ve gotten so far behind on my blog entries this season, but as you can see, there is so much to say about these episodes (and other things have been going on in my life lately!). One more blog entry remains for this season of Da Vinci, one that I will write as soon as I can. In the meantime, check out the digital Da Vinci’s Demons Season Two Soundtrack album, available now from Sparks & Shadows.

Palle! Palle! Palle!

-Bear

PS: Wait a minute! Turns out Verrocchio is alive and well after all!  He seems to have fully recovered from his axe injury.  I found him at a diner in Los Angeles.  🙂

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