Tibetan war horn, Armenian duduk, or Scottish bagpipes made out of guitar; flutes, throat singing, metal scraping combined with synthesizer - very unusual sounds accompanied with strong, beautiful female vocal singing in an unknown language - this is the extraordinary, one of a kind film score telling the story of the sci-fi movie “Dune” from director Denis Villeneuve. And behind these unique sounds and music is the famous German film composer Hans Zimmer. A masterpiece made in collaboration with many great artists has just won the Oscar for Best Film Score 2022.
But the journey to the birth of this original music started a long long time ago.
Hans Zimmer was 18 years old when he first read Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel “Dune”. Ever since, he has imagined the sounds of the foreign planet. The sound of sand, spice and sandworms. So it was like destiny calling when Denis Villeneuve asked Hans Zimmer in 2017, right after finishing their work together on “Blade Runner 2049”, to score his film adaptation of the novel.
He revisited his youth and wanted to write a score with the same excitement the teenage boy had when he first read the book.
In fact, Zimmer even turned down an offer to work on Christopher Nolan’s film “Tenet” so he could completely focus on “Dune”.
“I’ve been thinking about ‘Dune’ for nearly 50 years. So I took it very seriously.”