This is the original score for Ken Burns’ new two-part documentary, Leonardo da Vinci, comprising original compositions by Caroline Shaw. The documentary premieres on PBS November 18 and 19. The album features performances by the Grammy and Pulitzer-winning composer and musician’s longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth. Shaw wrote and recorded original music for the film, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured entirely new compositions. Leonardo da Vinci is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath Leonardo da Vinci, is Burns’s first non-American subject. . Leonardo da Vinci looks at how the artist influenced and inspired future generations, and it finds in his soaring imagination and profound intellect the foundation for a conversation we are still having today: what is our relationship with nature and what does it mean to be human? McMahon says in the album’s liner note, “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern. A fully original score, we believed, would add crucial connective tissue to areas where the record of Leonardo’s life is thin and it’s possible to briefly lose his trail. The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder." |
Tracks
- Intentions of the Mind
- Ginevra de' Benci
- Machine Drawings
- Renaissance
- Atmosphere
- Lady with an Ermine
- Pleasure and Pain
- Il Paradiso
- Treatise on Painting
- Optics, Light & Shadow
- Senso Commune
- Virgin of the Rocks
- The Grandchild of Nature
- The Last Supper
- Microcosm and Macrocosm
- The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne
- Notebooks
- Blood Flow
- A Man Without Letters
- La Pittura E Mentale
- Painter-Philosopher
- Water Studies
- Body as Nature
- Guru of the Court
- Cesare Borgia
- Flying Machines
- Symbol of the Modern Idea
- The Mona Lisa