Tár
The music of this film is not a lavish melody but the very process of a person slowly losing her own sound.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The makers ⏳🌊
- ComposerHildur Guðnadóttir
Wrote an original score that draws on metronomes and drone-like low sustained tones to portray the character's inner collapse.
- DirectorTodd Field
Also wrote the screenplay, creating the fictional conductor Lydia Tár.
- LeadCate Blanchett
Learned piano, German and conducting firsthand before filming in order to play Lydia Tár.
- LeadSophie Kauer
A cellist from the real classical concert stage, for whom this film marks an acting debut.
- StarringNina Hoss
Played Tár's longtime partner, who is also the orchestra's concertmaster.
I. The conductor's staff
(Origins) Director Todd Field, as he conceived Lydia Tár, a world-renowned conductor, wanted to reveal her authority and its fracturing not through dialogue but through the music itself. So rather than lavish orchestral arrangements, he looked for someone who could create the sounds that ring in the character's own ears. (Composer) That role fell to the Icelandic cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, who had already rendered dread through the resonance of low strings and electronic sound in the series Chernobyl and the film Joker. (Principle) For this film, Guðnadóttir wrote no separate, dramatic theme. Instead, using the tick of a metronome, the noises of a room and warped reverberations as raw material, the score traces how the character slowly loses her own sound. (Craft) Cate Blanchett spent months before filming learning piano, German and conducting. Every gesture, every beat on screen was the fruit of real practice. (Device) At the film's center lies a real work, Mahler's Symphony No. 5. The orchestra Tár leads is meant to be a fictionalized Berlin Philharmonic, but the actual playing was done in collaboration with the Dresden Philharmonic.
The first movement of the complete Mahler cycle Tár is striving to finish, its very title foreshadows the mood of the entire film.
- The opening, launched by a solo trumpet, sounds like a signal announcing a funeral procession, casting in advance the shadow of death and downfall that hangs over the whole film.
- A slow march rhythm repeats, moving forward as if tracing heavy footsteps, and it echoes the weight of the career Tár carries on her shoulders.
- Even among Mahler's own symphonies, this is a movement performed often for wide audiences, so even listeners unfamiliar with classical music can quickly sense its solemn atmosphere.
II. The master class question
(Interview) Early in the film, she discusses Mahler's Symphony No. 5 onstage with a real journalist before an audience. Dwelling on the fourth movement, the Adagietto, she recounts how this slow movement has served at one time as a declaration of love and at another as music for a funeral. (Classroom) In the Juilliard lecture scene that follows, she clashes with a student over Bach. The student refuses to study Bach's music because of the way he lived, and she counters that art must be separated from the artist. (Authority) The scene unfolds in dialogue, yet it is the silence running beneath it and a few bars from the keyboard that establish her authority. She presses the piano keys herself in front of the student, revealing someone who believes music must be proven not by argument but by sound. (Foreshadowing) Already in these early scenes, music is not a backdrop but the weapon with which she fights the world. The fracture to come is also the story of this very language of authority collapsing.
The piece Tár plays herself at the keyboard during the Juilliard lecture, it sits at the heart of the debate over whether art can be separated from the artist.
- The prelude, in which harmonies pile up calmly one upon another, gives a sense of something built with restraint yet with great precision.
- Amid the taut exchange between student and teacher, this brief sound from the keyboard is often cited as the moment that persuades more powerfully than words.
- Because Bach's collection has long been regarded as the foundation of keyboard music, the scene can also be read as an argument over tradition itself.
The movement named outright in the interview scene, it becomes the emotional undertone of the whole film.
- Its unusual scoring — strings and harp alone, without winds — gives the impression of a quiet letter, almost whispered.
- This movement is known to have been written as a declaration of love to Mahler's wife, and it later became a piece of mourning as well when the conductor Leonard Bernstein led it at Robert Kennedy's funeral. Bernstein is already the subject of another installment in this series, “Maestro Bernstein.”
- Used in Luchino Visconti's film Death in Venice, it became widely known to the public, and interpretations diverge over its sense of beauty and loss standing side by side.
- The name reflects a tempo that is slow but not fully at rest (adagio). In Italian, a suffix meaning “a little” is attached to adagio (slowly), giving the sense of “somewhat slowly.”
III. The fifth symphony
(The plan) Tár has recorded all of Mahler's symphonies live save one, No. 5. Completing it is seen as the summit of her career. (The concerto) At the same time, she is preparing Elgar's Cello Concerto alongside it. As the playing of Olga, a newly arrived cellist, stirs her heart, musical judgment and personal attraction begin to blur. (Rehearsal) The rehearsal-room scenes are filled with real conducting gestures and the orchestra's precise ensemble playing. More than the dialogue, it is the hands keeping time, the rustle of turning pages and the glances among the players that reveal the tension between them. (Order) In this period, she is portrayed as someone who controls everything. Seating, tempos, even the fate of her assistant conductor all pass through her decisions. (Seeds of the fracture) Yet at the edges of the frame, messages and rumors about a former protégée are already seeping in. Still faint, like background noise, but unmistakably there.
Played by Olga, the newly arrived cellist, it becomes the catalyst for Tár's judgment and personal attraction becoming entangled.
- From the very first bar, the cello hurls out low, heavy chords with force, laying a tragic mood over the entire work.
- A brief passage appears in which the soloist plays alone without orchestral accompaniment (cadenza), and it is here that the performer's own interpretation shows most clearly.
- The cellist who played this role was in fact a performer active on the classical stage, so the hand movements and the sound on screen come straight from live playing.
- Elgar's piece is one of the most frequently performed cello concertos of the 20th century, and recordings by many celebrated cellists offer contrasting interpretations.
IV. The ticking sound
(The news) When word arrives of the death of someone who was once her protégée, the rumors surrounding her no longer stay in the background. Legal proceedings and requests for testimony enter her daily life. (Sound) From this point on, Guðnadóttir's original score surfaces clearly. In wordless scenes, a long sustained low tone — a drone — and warped, metallic resonances settle beneath, signaling that the world she hears has begun, little by little, to slip out of joint. (Phantom sounds) Night after night, she loses sleep to unexplained sounds in the house. A metronome-like ticking repeats, but its rhythm drifts slightly off, eroding any normal sense of the beat. (Contrast) These warped sounds stand in direct opposition to the meticulous order Mahler and Elgar displayed earlier. The world of harmony and meter she has guarded all her life now returns as noise that betrays her. (Isolation) As colleagues and patrons distance themselves one by one, she is gradually pushed off the very stage she built. Even so, she does not give up the approaching live recording.
V. Cracks on the stage
(The performance) At last, the night of the live recording arrives. The orchestra, the audience and the cameras have all been waiting for this moment. (Collapse) But what happens onstage shatters in an instant all the order she has kept under control. Exactly what takes place will not be revealed here. (The place of music) In that scene, the music does not explain. Instead, as the orchestra's sound swells, her own world crumbles without a sound, and the two layers run side by side, out of alignment. (Fallout) The incident spreads at once as video, and her career and reputation are shaken beyond control. The language of authority she had built up — controlled tempos and precise interpretation — can no longer protect her. (The fall) In the scenes that follow, she finds herself in an entirely different place. Where that place is will be quietly revealed in the next chapter.
VI. A different stage
(Setting) The film ends in a space utterly unlike the grand concert halls that came before. The exact location goes unnamed; suffice it to say it is a city somewhere in Southeast Asia. (Audience) The audience filling that space is entirely different from the formally dressed concertgoers of earlier chapters. This drop in itself is the final question the film poses. (Music) She remains on screen as someone who still holds a baton. Only this time, the sound she commands is neither Mahler nor Elgar but a far more popular, lighter piece. (Interpretation) Audiences and critics are divided over this final scene. Some read it as a downfall; others, as the lightness of a return to sound itself. (Afterglow) One thing is certain: music, the language that has defined her throughout the film, never leaves her side, right to the end. Though the size and stature of the stage have changed, she remains someone who makes sound.
Lesser-known stories
Because the film was drawn as realistically as a biography of a real person — and because a Wikipedia entry on the nonexistent conductor Lydia Tár, along with fan-made sites and accounts, was circulating — for a while no small number of people went searching to find out whether she actually existed. The German label Deutsche Grammophon even released promotional material in the form of a real album under the fictional conductor's name. It remains a rare case of a fictional figure borrowing wholesale the conventions of the actual classical recording industry. Many of the film's orchestral scenes were completed with the Dresden Philharmonic. On screen it is presented as the Berlin Philharmonic, but the actual playing and filming took place in another German city. The film opens by placing the crew credits, which normally roll at the end, in its very first scene. After its release, a number of reviews remarked that this ordering itself seems to mirror the arc of the story. The real-life conductor Marin Alsop shared personal reflections in press interviews on the fact that Alsop's own long experience as one of the few women conductors had been used as material for the film.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Drone (sustained bass)
(In film and musical scores) A single low note or chord that continues at length, barely changing, across an entire piece. Rather than moving like a melody, it lies underneath like a backdrop and is often used to create an uneasy or heavy atmosphere. It resembles the feeling in a classroom when a fan or ventilator keeps humming and the sound grows more and more distracting. In this film, such low sounds speak for the character's anxiety.
Adagietto
(Meaning of the word) A suffix meaning “a little” is attached to the Italian adagio (slowly), giving the sense not of fully slow but of somewhat slow. (In film and musical scores) A tempo marking attached to a movement of a symphony or concerto; slightly faster than adagio, yet still slow and lyrical in character. Think of it as the pace of a leisurely stroll in gym class rather than an all-out sprint.
Concerto
(Word origin) The Sino-Korean word hyeopjugok (協奏曲, 'piece played together') means a piece performed together. The root of its Western name, concerto, also carries the sense of 'to contend,' so the very name already holds the character of this music, in which soloist and orchestra trade phrases and vie with each other. (In film·musical-theater music) A form in which a single soloist plays together with the orchestra, yet steps prominently to the fore. Picture an interclass match in which one star player keeps in step with the rest of the team while still showing off individual skill.
Underscore (non-diegetic music)
(In film·musical-theater music) Background music that the characters in the film cannot hear and only the audience can. By contrast, music the characters actually hear, such as a piece performed in a concert hall, is called in-story music (diegetic music). Think of a fight song at a school sports day that the athletes cannot hear but that pours only from the speakers in the stands. This film moves back and forth between the two kinds of music, blurring where reality ends and the character's psyche begins.
Cadenza
(In film·musical-theater music) The passage in a concerto where the orchestra falls silent and the soloist plays freely alone. Here, with no set accompaniment, the performer's skill and interpretation stand out most clearly. It is like the moment at a choir competition when the accompaniment briefly stops and one singer shows off a phrase unaccompanied. Even in the same piece, each performer makes this passage sound entirely different.
Trauermarsch (funeral march)
(Word origin) In German, Trauer means mourning and Marsch means march; put together, the two words mean a march for mourning. (In film·musical-theater music) A piece that expresses death or loss through the rhythm of a slow, heavy tread. It is easy to grasp if you picture the slow drumbeat that sounds as a coffin is carried at a funeral.