Composer Jeff Danna on Bringing Period Sounds to his ‘Julia’ Score

Composer Jeff Danna began his score for HBO Max’s Julia Child comedy Julia with a theme for its main character that would eventually repeat itself five times throughout the series. It became something of a battle cry for the iconic chef and television host (played beautifully by Sarah Lancashire). To create something that would be repeated frequently, Danna needed to carefully craft a theme that would be light, memorable, but not too simple.

One major source of inspiration for Julia’s theme would be Julia Child herself. Her radiant joy became a huge impact on Danna during the composing process.

“I took all those ingredients, which is a terrible pun, and started to look for a place in the first show where there was some film real estate. Where’s a moment where there is a really clear use and need for that theme that I’m about to write?” Danna explained. “In this case, it was when Julia sat down at the typewriter to start writing her pitch letter to WGBH in Boston. Looking at the choreography of that scene, the way she’s pounding at the keyboard, it’s almost military almost, almost martial It is insistent because she’s determined.”

After initially developing Julia’s theme to employ in that early scene, Danna sent his work to creator Dan Goldfarb and producer Chris Keyser for their feedback. Their immediate feedback was positive and asked if the theme could evolve with a little Count Basie flair. Julia’s theme then evolved into the same basic arrangement with more swing to it to reflect that early 1960s swing sound. That version appears when Julia first attends WGBH and boasts a swing in her step.

To create that early 60s sound, Danna worked with a 26-piece band consisting of a string group with winds, harp, piano, and brass players. For some French-set sequences, the band relied on light applications of the accordion and mandolin. The entire assembly allowed Danna and his band to quickly shift between the more traditional chamber music material and the more period-appropriate swing sounds.

Julia’s theme evolves further throughout the series, graduating from simplicity to a full extension by the end of season one. It’s intended to mirror her ups and downs experienced on her own journey with “The French Chef.”

Fortunately, Julia’s theme was malleable enough to balance between the comic and more dramatic moments of the series. To Danna, that’s really what composers love best: to provide underscoring that runs the gamut of the human experience rather than isolate itself within a specific genre.

“You just use your composer chops or experience to say, ‘Okay, we’ve got this much fun here, but not too much fun. There’s peril here, and there’s some irony in front of this,” Danna said. “You just balance out how much it is. Plus, I have a couple of great show runners who are in there with me on every queue, and we’re talking it out. So we find a balance in tone that way.”

Jeff Danna competes in the Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score) category at the 2022 Emmy Awards. Julia streams exclusively on HBO Max.

Excerpts from Danna’s Julia score are available on YouTube: Queen of Sheba Cake and Julia’s Letter to WGBH.