One of the best things about Apple TV+’s underrated horror series, Servant, is Trevor Gureckis’ unsettling, unpredictable score. M. Night Shyamalan’s series deals with high emotions in a constrained, elegant space, but the music quickly reminds us of the core-shattering tragedy at the center of the show. There is a dangerous clarity to how Gureckis’ work heightens every beat of this bonkers story.
Gureckis also worked on season one, but he didn’t compose directly to picture. He was on a hunt for the sound of the show and he collaborated with Shyamalan to find what was right to elevate the mood. It’s interesting to think about how Gureckis’ was on a hunt for something as the characters are on a desperate hunt for the truth.
“When I started working with M. Night [Shyamalan], just in general, we started with just pitching ideas away from the picture. We talked a lot about what the show is and what some of the themes and who the characters are. He always comes from that point of view. He doesn’t say I want a violin or a cello here–he never is prescriptive like that. It just gives me the freedom to write. It’s more just sort of the essence of what’s happening, or what the essence of what the season is going to be or whatever.”
The composer wasn’t intimidated by trying to incorporate new sounds and instruments into the score. After all, we might not know what is lurking around the corner in that huge brownstone, so why not keep the audience on its toes too?
“I was experimenting with borrowing instruments. I’d play with a glockenspiel. I picked up the violin and actually kind of learned it but in a composer way of picking it up and can hold the position and then you know, then hit pause. And then before the next chord violin was kind of interesting and tapping my instrument and making weird, interesting sounds over in terms of how the houses it’s kind of like transparent–a lot of like open sounds and clarity to it so that the characters have room to be present. And then I started like clanging hitting things like a speaker stand and all sorts of just things that I could find that was just to him. He was like, Oh, that’s like liturgical sounding or, you know, bells. And so that was a lot of what season one was piano playing inside the piano hitting the hitting the strings on the inside. We were just looking for interesting sounds. I think Night was responding to that I was kind of searching for what he was responding to and then I always have a little bit of electronics anyway.”
Gureckis’ theme is a lullaby from hell. There are gentle notes being played as if a music box is being slowed down by a malevolent force that you can’t locate. It perfectly sets the tone for what you are about to watch. Something as pure and innocent as a child being born can turn devilish and scary. It’s one of the only theme songs where I’m glad there’s no skip intro button.
“The theme music was one of the last things I wrote for the season. Jericho had kind of a theme for his character as a baby. It’s in season one and Dorothy has that moment where she’s watching the video. And that’s the theme. That’s where the theme is where she’s l looking back, and I think it’s episode three or four you realize that Leanne met Dorothy. So really who’s the servant in the show? I was playing all this like layers of clarinet and nd all this kind of like backwards stuff. i think it’s C minor. And it’s and it’s meant to be the sort of like the slowly unfolding simple line. But all around is like the swirling of this uncertainty.”
In one of the most shocking moments of the second season, Lauren Ambrose’s Dorothy reveals just how strong she really is. Up until that point, Julian and Shawn have treated her like a fragile invalid. In their eyes, she is slightly unhinged and too emotional to deal with the truth of what happened to her son. With season two primarily taking place in the house and Leanne captured upstairs, Dorothy’s fierce mother instincts kick in and her actions shock her brother and her husband. It changes the entire outlook of the second season, and Gureckis’ scores a dark undertow in the music underneath that moment.
“Everyone has been essentially gaslighting this woman to protect her right? The whole thing has been, ‘Oh, Dorothy can’t handle anything. She’s going to fall apart.’ Not to, you know, keep her safe. Suddenly she just shows her power. There’s this pulsing sent thing that’s just sort of like just build and build and it shows that she’s now a real force. I remember being an alternate name like ‘Tiger’ or something like that just because she became that person that was so unexpected. And we’ve been sheltered so often throughout the whole show until then, when you realize that she actually had it in her.”
At the end of the third season, Leann has also asserted her power with the cult that has come after her. As this year’s story comes to a close, a Pandora’s box of horror seems to have been unleashed. Gureckis’ final piece of the season lurches and hurls towards an uncertain future. What lies ahead for the Grayson Family and Leanne? There is a terrifying, propulsive quality to how Gureckis’ musically ends the season.
“I wrote that piece probably five or six times until I knew this is the one. I wanted the feeling of taking on the forces of the cult and taking out the forces of darkness. They’re coming for herm and I wanted to show that she has shown her power of killing those who transgress against the cult, and who changed her reality.”
Servant is streaming now on Apple TV+.