So I’ve had a thought. Throughout the show, I noticed that whenever it’s talked about that Kendall would inherit, these moments are underscored with music that is often absent during the equivalent scenes with the other siblings. The most obvious example of this is in Dundee, when Rhea is trying to court each of them individually by telling them they ‘have what it takes’––with Shiv and Roman this kinda falls flat, but when she says to Kendall that “it’s you, it’s always been you”, there are these dreamy piano chords which inherently lend more weight to the idea. Initially, this seems to be a foreshadowing device meant to signal that Kendall WILL one day be the successor. Similarly, more dramatic chords are played when kendall talks to Frank about his name being on the piece of paper in Logan’s office. And later in Season 4 the new composition Allegro Bellicoso––which is initially played during Logan’s terrifying ATN speech––becomes paired with Kendall during scenes when he starts to behave more like his father (blackmailing Hugo, assembling cronies after the funeral). This again feels like the show is trying to foreshadow the whole tragic ‘kendall winning but only after he becomes the thing that he hates’ ending which we are meant to expect.
HOWEVER, knowing how the show ends, and the cruelty of the fact that kendall becomes the thing he hates (and loses all of his loved ones + what was left of his soul) but STILL doesn’t inherit.. these musical motifs start to take on a different meaning. Rather than being a meta-narrative device which we look back on and say Ah! they told us the ending all along!, these moments seem more like a reflection of Kendall’s interiority––his belief that he IS the chosen one, that he CAN become his father––than a confirmation that such things could ever be true in reality. Then I started thinking about how many of the score’s most pronounced appearances in the show come when kendall is experiencing some emotionally significant event: the press conference, the near suicide in the pool, the final walk with Colin...and I realized, is Nicholas Britell’s music basically just from Kendall’s point of view?
‘course I’ll admit I might be generalizing a bit here, because there are strong compositions with other characters (particularly Shiv). But at the very least, this has made me very curious about how they went about scoring the show, and the discussions they must have had about perspective; and who’s emotions they chose to reflect in the music.