‘The Queen's Gambit’ Composer Carlos Rafael Rivera on Scott Frank, Classical Music, and Finding Moments in a Scene

“I think of what we do as craftsmanship. It’s almost like we build things.”

On October 23rd, 2020, Netflix dropped the highly-anticipated new drama, THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT. The show has aired to rave reviews and is expected to be a big contender at next year’s award shows. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, the show follows Beth, a pill-addicted, orphaned child chess prodigy who grows to become a world-contender.

Carlos Rafael Rivera composed the music for the show, marking his third collaboration with show creator Scott Frank. The two previously worked together on 2017’s Netflix series, GODLESS (for which Rivera won an Emmy for the main theme) and the 2014 Liam Neeson-led film, A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES.

On how he first got connected with Frank, Rivera told me: ”I started teaching at the Pasadena Conservatory because I lived in LA for a long time . . . I ended up putting fliers up around Pasadena for private guitar lessons, and I got a call from a guy called Scott. And he was like, 'Hey, I'm interested in guitar lessons.' And I showed up to his place to teach him and it was like these posters all throughout . . . I saw, you know, MINORITY REPORT and OUT OF SIGHT. And I go, 'What do you do?' He goes, 'Oh, I'm a writer.' I go, 'You wrote that?' And he goes, 'Yeah." I go, 'Okay, great. All right, let's take the guitar out.' And so it just became music lessons. And I got home and I told my wife, I was like, 'You won't believe it. I'm teaching this guy who writes these incredible screenplays.'“

Jump forward to 2007, the pair are about three years into their lessons and Frank is getting ready to direct his first film. He hires the inimitable James Newton Howard to compose his first feature, and Rivera offers to give him advice on how to work with Howard. “Okay, I'm going to prepare you to talk to the composer. I'm going to teach you how to talk to the composer so you guys can communicate better, and it's gonna be awesome,” Rivera says. “I just thought I was going to be a coach and be behind the scenes helping him get his first movie done. And, you know, he was doing the transition from writer to director and he goes away for like, a year and a half comes back and he starts making another movie.”

While in pre-production for his second film, Frank asked Rivera why, after five or six years of working together, he had never asked for any favors. “Well,” Rivera began. “Because I hate that, you know, the Hollywood thing like, ‘Hey, your cousin's a producer, give him the screenplay, hook me up.’ I just never felt like that guy.” Frank promptly asked if he would be the composer on his next film. Rivera happily agreed and began composing the music as Frank was writing the script.

The two have remained collaborators since then, and Rivera speaks to the comforts of working with someone you already have an established rapport with:

“We have a really a great relationship. It's always professional. And I like that. Because it I think if it went any further, it would kind of maybe mess things up. I think it would actually change because it gets really difficult. It gets very pressured. It gets very strained, if you will, for whatever reasons he's dealing with. I'm like this little guitar thing. And then there's the production. And there's all the post, special effects, sound design, you name it. I am just this little thing. And then it's almost like the Eye of Sauron turns to you and you ask the director and he looks at you and you're like, 'Hey, here's the guitar, looks really good. Check it out. And I hope you like it.' And he's like, 'I hate that guitar neck. Get another one.' Okay. That's the job. There is nothing more mysterious [other] than you got to make this. And so I think of what we do as craftsmanship, it's almost like we build things.”

In April of 2018, Frank calls Rivera and pitches him THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT. Rivera says that Frank was sort of cryptic in his presentation, so he bought the book that the series is based off and started writing the music immediately. “So he sends the screenplay around, you know, late in the year, like in November, and by that time, I had already started writing themes. The problem if you saw the show, is that Beth is complicated character. So Beth can have like a theme, you know, as protagonist, [but] it's almost like Beth's character traits have to be written,” Rivera says.

Given that the show is set in the 1950s and 1960s, Rivera initially tried to go with a jazz theme when composing, but Frank wasn’t sold on it. Classical music is mentioned in the book, and the final musical product in the show is heavily based in orchestrations. Rivera achieved this process partially by creating drafts in iMovie. “What I started doing was, as soon as I got the screenplay, I started doing ‘script movies.’ I basically grab a screenplay, and I make an iMovie out of it, just like right there on the computer. It's just the words. So I make it at a reading pace, and you start following it, and then I score it and what I pick are what I believe are going to be the set pieces. There are some moments that are important to talk about, like I can tell that as I'm reading. Those are the moments I set aside and start scoring and sending to him.”

When composing the music for a project, it’s important to break down the scene into individual beats. It’s necessary, Rivera says, that “every scene that you're going to score has to have an arc, I think, you know, it has to have a purpose for [the] music to be there. What I found in this project was that short bits of music were ineffective, and actually changed the experience of the user.”

He continues:

“You have to find what is the purpose of the scene, and then you have to score, and you have to really think about your entrances and exits. They have to be elegant. That that is the thing I’m always thinking about is elegance. ‘Why is this cue starting right now? How is this cue ending? How am I going into the silence or the sound design? Then you’re dealing with - how does it work to the character? What do you need to address? Is it the actual action? Is it the character story? Is it the character arc, etc?”

In its first month alone, THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT has shattered Netflix records, becoming its biggest limited series to date. Over 62 million households streamed in the first month and it ranked #1 in 63 countries. Check out the trailer for the show below if you haven’t seen it already, and leave your thoughts in the comment below if you have!