ASmallLight composer Ariel Marx breaks down her score for the National Geographic miniseries and bringing a modern sensibility to the new take on the iconic story of Anne Frank.
A Small Light is a gripping and powerful series that brings to life the story of Miep Gies, the Dutch citizen who hid Anne Frank and her family, during the most consequential period of her life. Created by Joan Rater and Tony Phelan and directed by Susanna Fogel, the miniseries utilizes modern storytelling techniques and writing to make the dramatizations of its real-life subjects especially relatable and human.
Ariel Marx: I think I know kind of as much as your average school child: the diluted version of that story you [get] during [a] World War II curriculum. I knew that there were people who enabled them to hide, but I don't think I had ever heard, or at least retained, Miep's name. So, this was totally new in terms of who this woman was and who the other brave people were, working in the office every day, protecting [the Secret Annex residents].
As that regards to music, the idea was to not over-sterilize it with a symphonic palette. The first idea was to keep the ensemble small and playful and improvisational, and so we thought of references of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Tom Waits, in the sense that these bands are very raw, and they're very playful. You hear every finger on every fret in every string, and there's a lot of improvisation and imperfection, but beautiful imperfection.
Ariel Marx: Totally, yeah, just in terms of how jazz was permeating Europe at the time. Absolutely. The score wasn't meant to sound like source, it isn't meant to be in conversation with source, but it is meant to use the same aesthetics of improvisation and of playfulness.
That's kind of not answering your question. There's a lot of beautiful honesty and realism in the brilliant writing [and] the brilliant direction that [made it so] music never, ever, ever had to really push a scene, or fix a scene, or help us interpret a scene. Music was totally additive because the performances and writing were so strong. We all kind of knew the brilliance of what we had on our hands, and it was just a matter of where [the music] needed to go.
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