Gravity: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Development

Composer Steven Price was originally called in to help out for three weeks on the music design of Gravity. After having a creative discussion with director Alfonso Cuarón, Price began coming up with a template of sounds and noises that eventually led to him being hired as the film's composer. As work began on the film's score, Cuarón and Price set ground rules for distancing the score from conventional Hollywood-style action scores such as omitting the use of percussion. "Ordinarily in an action film you're often competing with explosions and god knows what else, whereas with this [movie] music could do things a different way," said Price. "With everything we did we would try and look beyond the normal way of doing things. [For] some of the action sequences where there are explosions, I knew that [...] those explosions had to be inherent."

The score was recorded in small groups or single instruments as opposed to a collective orchestra in order for each sound to be electronically processed and mixed individually to create a layered and surrounding effect.

Reception

Steven Price's score has been acclaimed by critics and audiences alike, in particular for its two final tracks, "Shenzou" and "Gravity." It was nominated for and won multiple awards in the Best Original Score category at several ceremonies. Indeed, it received a nomination for Best Original Score at the 71st Golden Globe Awards, and won Best Original Music at the 67th British Academy Film Awards and Best Original Score at the 86th Academy Awards. James Southall of Movie Wave awarded the album five stars out of a possible five and said that "it feels like the most intelligent and most satisfying score for a science fiction movie since Ennio Morricone's stunning, dishearteningly lambasted Mission to Mars."

Track listing

All tracks written by Steven Price.

Notes

Credits and personnel

Credits adapted from AllMusic and from the liner notes of Gravity: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.