MRH: That’s quite a variety!

CM: Yeah. That was sort of the very first temp music, and that was pretty interesting. The film changed quite a bit. I started on it in October of 2010 and kind of sat with that and the temp score for a month or two. Then he threw it all out and used Tangerine Dream as temp music, and that also was interesting, because it was the first time that he indicated an interest in synthesizers. Again, it was a kind of older synth eighties style, and then he threw all that stuff out and used as a reference more contemporary sounds [that were] more varied and energetic because he was very concerned about the pacing of Contagion.

During each step of the way I had written music, and I though some of it was really good; also each style kind of had its own merit, particularly the French Connection stuff… so I kind of combined all of it, not out of laziness because I didn't want to toss out the stuff that I’d written, but I thought that combining all those approaches would lead to some interesting styles.

Steven has usually come up with ideas like that, and he directs me primarily in the form of a temp score. Usually the more radical the choices, the more interesting the score comes out. The French Connection is probably the weirdest choice, because there was nothing about the film I though was of the seventies to me. I’m sure to Steven [it referenced] a lot of older films; there didn’t seem to be anything about it that asked for a vintage score, but it was an interesting road to go down.

MRH: The French Connection is one of my favourite scores, but it’s also an odd one. I like the composer a great deal. I think Don Ellis would’ve written some fabulous stuff had he lived longer, but French Connection is just so strange because it becomes so discordant in a lot of places; it’s an odd fusion of chamber orchestra, minimalism, jazz, and odd meters, but I’m not surprised that it would be a score that would migrate into someone’s temp track because it has some abstract ideas that perhaps helped the director and composer figure out what specific style was needed.

CM: Well I don’t claim to have figured out what that score was about, really. Taken alone, Steven initially said Contagion was a horror film and the tracks that he references from French Connection sounded more like from a horror movie; it was really discordant and really kind of ugly music, so I didn’t try to emulate that perfectly or too closely.

One thing I thought was a popular device was to create dissonance in horror music [so] that was one thing that I took from that. Another part was just the fact that it was orchestral… [I liked] the scale and the weight of the group of instruments. When the Tangerine Dream thing came along, he said ‘I don’t want to hear any live musicians,’ and I thought ‘Oh, swell,’ but I kept it and combined it with the synthesizer thing… I’m not the first guy that combined orchestra with synthesizer, but I thought the contrast between the two was pretty interesting.

MRH: And my last question is whether there are any particular genres that you’d like to score, either ones that you haven’t tried yet or ones you tried maybe once, and would like to revisit?

CM: I thought the phone would ring like crazy after Solaris, that I’d get a bunch of offers to do science-fiction films, [but it didn't]. I’d love to do science-fiction, a full-blown horror film, or a full-blown action film where I’m actually scoring tonnes of action sequences, and something lighter – comedy would be fun too. All the things that would be the opposite of what I’ve been doing!