Interview: Austin Wintory, composer (The Banner Saga, Journey)

It’s hard to point to a single watershed moment, but sometime in the last five years video game scores and the composers who write them shed whatever lingering doubts there were about the musical and expressive legitimacy of the art form. Maybe it was the thousands of people who came to sold-out symphony concerts of game-related music, maybe it was the popularity of game soundtracks enjoyed as standalone products, maybe it was the crossover of “name” film composers embracing the medium. Most certainly, though, it was the music itself: scores for games in a variety of genres that were as melodic, challenging, emotionally rich, and musically complex as those written for film or the concert hall.

Los Angeles-based Austin Wintory is at the forefront of a generation of young composers that grew up intimately familiar with the music and culture of video games. Like many recent composers, Wintory moves effortlessly between the worlds of film music, game music, and standalone symphonic works.  Since 2002, he has composed scores for games such as flOw, Journey, Monaco, Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded and Horn, as well as scoring independent films and writing orchestral music. Wintory’s evocative, haunting score for Journey made history by being the first game score to be nominated for a Visual Media Grammy.

Wintory’s newest project is the score for Stoic’s The Banner Saga, a Norse-themed turn-based role playing game. Largely eschewing the lush, romantic string sections so familiar to game and film music, Wintory recorded his score with one of the nation’s top concert bands, the Dallas Wind Symphony. As a result, Banner Saga’s music sounds fresh, with warm, clear textures and an icy nobility that perfectly captures the hand-drawn visuals and Nordic setting.

VGW: Your score for Journey was one of the most evocative and memorable (and highly lauded) in recent memory. Soon after, you worked on the score for the very well-received iOS adventure game Horn. The two scores were quite dissimilar. Now, the Banner Saga has been released, and seems to be an entirely new sound as well. What were some of new directions and influences that are part of Banner’s musical language?  

The obvious major difference between Horn and Journey from The Banner Saga (is) coloristic: both the former two are pretty centered around strings and winds and the latter is pretty heavily a brass piece. The direction I got was simply an organic reaction to the game itself. The developers, Stoic Studio, never said “we’re interested in a brass-centric score” or anything like that. They really just said to follow my gut and as I got into the game, it felt right. It started initially more generically orchestral, but I found myself intuitively featuring horn solos and almost totally neglecting the strings. Something about a horn solo was both mournful and lonesome, but proud and strong.

VGW: The new score is primarily wind and percussion (with occasional solo violin). Are there musical, emotional or narrative aspects to the particular sound of winds, versus a string or mixed orchestral sound?  

It really started with the horn solos and grew to a bigger brass chorale-type sound. I love repertoire like this, like the little chorale interlude in the middle of the 2nd movement of Bartok’s “Concerto for Orchestra.” A really magical moment. Or even Stokowski’s brass treatment of Bach chorale’s, like in his orchestration of the “Passacaglia and Fugue in C-minor.” The Banner Saga just felt like it really needed to go there so I followed.

VGW: Your score to Journey had very few, if any, looping segments. There was also quite a fair amount of silence.  How does that compare with the new score?  

I take that as a great compliment because Journey is absolutely LOADED with looping segments!! Tons and tons!! And so too is The Banner Saga but hopefully in a way that also feels non-looping. One of the big reasons I suspect it doesn’t read as looping is because I rarely resort to infinite loops. Once something has repeated a certain number of times I usually assume that’s because the player is either stuck, choosing not to advance, or maybe even something more basic like they’ve walked away from their computer. So why punish them by endlessly hammering away at a musical idea which was supposed to accompany something smaller and more specific? So most every cue is implemented to account for open-ended gameplay. Silence is our best friend as composers. It’s the equivalent to mortality in the bigger picture of our lives: it is quite literally what gives the music all meaning. Silence deserves a much stronger presence in games and The Banner Saga certainly embraces it openly. Much more so than Journey  in fact.

VGW: Journey’s score had a modal, Middle Eastern sound. Banner Saga seems to reflect the sound (perhaps) of rustic Europe and European folk music. What else should we be listening for?  

In both scores there is no deliberate evocation of folk music, but in the quest for a sort of universality, I think it ends up creeping in. Plus it’s just sort of part of my vernacular anyway. I consider folk music to be the umbrella under which every genre and idiom sit, and so there is something really powerful about it to me. It’s a funny thing where I can get restless or even bored listening to a simplistic orchestral work, but a guy singing a folk tune and playing mandolin in the most bare-boned way can captivate me.  For The Banner Saga I actually did write what I referred to as “folk tunes,” which are the moments in the game when the caravan is passing the big godstones. I had this idea that the characters might suddenly erupt into song, spurred by the presence of these monuments, so I took a bunch of Norse proverbs and, combined with original texts, had them translated to Icelandic. They were then set and performed by Peter Hollens and Malukah (of YouTube fame), and the game’s main VO actor in Norway, Johann Sigurdarson.

Click here to view the embedded video.

VGW: Your score was recorded by the Dallas Wind Symphony, conducted by Jerry Junkin. How did you create that partnership?  

I attended Jerry’s Carnegie Hall premiere of Corigliano’s landmark “Circus Maximus,” which Jerry had commissioned for the University of Texas at Austin’s wind ensemble. It was an earth-shattering experience. As soon as the wind ensemble notion began to emerge, I remembered that day and so I just cold-called Jerry. He’s a pretty legendary conductor, so I didn’t expect to hear from him. To my delight he called back within the hour and seemed really keen to explore this. We set about discussing logistics, and the Dallas Winds’ Executive Director Kim Campbell joined the conversation. The three of us worked it out over a period of about 6 months and off we went. It was a VERY different recording process than if I’d used a traditional orchestra. Among many other details, we recorded in their concert hall, the Meyerson Symphony Center. It’s 180 degrees from recording in the controlled environment of a scoring stage. But it was essential for really capturing the wide, open-air feel of The Banner Saga. We were also quite lucky to work with multi-Grammy winning engineer Keith O. Johnson, who’s recorded the Dallas Winds many many times and brought it all to such interesting life.

VGW: Are there any advantages to working with an ongoing ensemble such as the DWS, as opposed to a group of studio musicians? Of course they are all incredible musicians, but what aspects of the DWS sound did you particularly want to explore?  

Really tremendous studio orchestras, like those in Los Angeles in London, are all-but a set ensemble like the Dallas Winds or some other orchestra. The roster ends up being so consistent that they learn to play together in much the same way. So I find the notion of a “pickup” group really misleading when you record players at that level. BUT, that said, a group which rehearses together on the weekends and even tours together does have a special sort of communal vibe. In the case of the Dallas Winds, it was especially true because professional wind ensembles are nowhere near as common as professional orchestras, and they’re at the top of the list. So it was really special to work with them. They could turn on a dime, giving me really nice, subtle shades of color and then just raw power. Jerry and I co-conducted the score. They’re his group, and he’s quite a legend, so I knew I wanted him on the podium, but as a conductor myself I also wanted some podium time. And he was a wonder to behold.

VGW: It feels like we are really in an early, golden era of video game music and that the genre has certainly caught up to film music in its expressiveness, creativity, and musical integrity. What are some of your recent favorite scores?  

I absolutely love Jessica Curry’s Dear Esther and Amensia: A Machine for Pigs. She is a really special person in my life and such a tremendous writer. Deeply expressive and always reaching. I also enjoyed a lot of moments in Gustaf Grefberg’s score to Brothers:  A Tale of Two Sons. But I’m also way behind in general so check back in a month or two.

VGW: Your portfolio of late has really expanded, with many films and a number of games. Are you exploring concert music as well? Any large-scale ambitions (such as Jeremy Soule’s “kickstarter symphony”)?   

I do write a lot of concert music, and I also enjoy adapting these film or game works in concert works, like the mini-concerto, or more like Fantasia-esque cello/orchestra piece “Woven Variations” I created based on Journey. I’m planning to make some standalone wind ensemble works based on The Banner Saga. Large-scale works yes absolutely, though my interest there lies mainly in the theatrical. I have started work on an opera though it’s way too early to get into it. Symphonies and big grandiose tone poems are less interesting to me these days; the only large-scale works I find myself drawn to are concerti, due to recurrent instrumental love affairs. I love zeroing in on a soloist. But a 40-minute symphony for example just doesn’t feel as culturally relevant to me as a compact, poignant 10-minute tone poem.

VGW: Lately, game and many film studios have been recording their scores outside the traditional recording venues in Los Angeles, in part due to the economics of using union musicians in LA. Comments? Is there hope that this situation will improve?  

This issue is insanely political, which is a shame because “political” often, and very much in this case, doesn’t really mean “solution-oriented.” I have been immensely lucky to record many times with LA players, but you’re right that particularly in the game industry, this has become all but unheard of. It’s tragic for me because these players are my friends, in addition to the contractors, studio crew and engineers. It feels like working with extended family and I wish I did more often.  But the bottom line there is that it has become a global marketplace for recording, with tremendous musicians all over the world. More and more it’s starting to feel sort of like casting for an actor’s role: you choose the right person for the job, based on the qualities they inherently have, versus the swiss army knife approach.

Check out our review of The Banner Saga, available now.

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