The Red Violin

The Red Violin, film score by American composer John Corigliano for the 1998 Canadian film of the same name. In 1999 Corigliano’s music for the film—which follows a particular violin from its creation in the late 1600s through the centuries of its history to the late 20th century—won him an Academy Award for best original score.

In 1997, before the film itself premiered, Corigliano—who is better known for his music for the concert hall and the opera house—crafted from his film score a one-movement concert piece, a chaconne for violin and orchestra, which was also scored for violin and piano. (A chaconne is a musical form in which a repetitive bass line underlies an array of melodies.) Later Corigliano expanded the score into a full four-movement concerto for violin and orchestra (2003), in which the earlier chaconne served as the first movement.

Corigliano—who received commissions from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and Irish flutist James Galway, among many others—was the son and namesake of a noted violinist and concertmaster, and as such he was drawn to the subject matter of the film. He crafted a theme for an early character, Anna, who comes to represent the soul of the violin. That theme returns in later scenes, where it is presented in a musical style that reflects the era depicted on-screen. It is heard in Cremona, Italy, during the Italian Baroque, in Vienna of Mozart’s time, in Oxford during the Victorian period, in communist China, and finally in the present day.