The ‘Conclave’ Score Relied on an ‘Otherworldly’ Instrument That Must Be Played with Wet Hands

When composer Volker Bertelmann started having conversations with director Edward Berger about “Conclave” (in the middle of the awards press tour for “All Quiet on the Western Front,” no less), he knew what he didn’t want. The Vatican comes with a lot of baggage, to say the least — including styles of music that seem to spring forth from its Renaissance and Baroque architecture.  

Bertelmann had to find a sound that could echo Cardinal Lawrence’s (Ralph Fiennes) spiritual and social distress without being too ecclesiastical or classical. Or, as he put it to IndieWire, “I needed something that is similar but different.” 

So Bertelman began experimenting with some lesser-known instruments and modern techniques that might allow him to come at the film’s thriller momentum in an unexpected way. The sounds from a glass harp were a little too pristine, but it led him to the Cristal Baschet, a cousin to the organ that was invented in 1952 and made out of tuned glass rods. It ended up being the sound that drives the entire score. 

“When you are in a room with that instrument, you feel like you’re in an otherworldly space,” Bertelmann said. “It’s not amplified. It’s just  played with wet hands. You have to rub glass rods.” It’s certainly fitting for “Conclave,” thematically, that the only way to achieve something that sounds strange and divine is by using your hands. Bertelmann wanted all his instrument and composition choices to give the film a musical sense of the grit behind the Vatican facade. 

“I’m working with electronic elements, and I’m using experimental sounds a lot that [appear] in a lot of modern classical music or in quite arty music because I really like the texture. I like sounds that you can touch, somehow, where you hear the viscerality,” Bertelmann said. 

But he’s also doing that with the score’s classical instruments. Bertelmann gets his strings to ricochet, the technique where the player bounces their bow on the strings so that “you hear the hair,” Bertelman said. He wanted to layer in tactical, sometimes almost animalistic, sounds to get a sense of how very human and tribal the practice of picking a new Pope is. 

‘Conclave’©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

“I felt that, in a way, we are watching a ritual that has a very, let’s say, tribal quality to it. I felt that I wanted to enhance that a little bit more, make it raw,” Bertelmann said. 

The downward notes reverberating from Cristal Baschet sound out seemingly every time Lawrence’s heart sinks or doubt surfaces about one of the candidates for the papacy. But Bertelmann carefully orchestrated the entire score so that its hard percussive hits seem to boil over with uncertainty while a certain unstoppable forward momentum from the strings maintains the Vatican’s stately facade.

That uncertainty is trickier to create than it might seem. Bertelmann’s score balances imperious classical sound and intriguing, hard-to-place mistakes. “The only way you can create uncertainty is by making mistakes, by creating music that isn’t always exact or precise,” Bertelmann said. So for “Conclave,” Bertelmann set about building some accidents — some cracks in the Sistine Chapel, if you will — into the score. 

“Some of the music has those accidents or these random, weird sounds. Sometimes, they’re in time, and you feel like it’s those big bangs or hits. Then you have music that shifts all the time. Sometimes you have triplets against, you know, 16th or eighth [notes],” Bertelmann said. “I try to work on things that aren’t the same, timing-wise, and that helps create instability in a way.” 

‘Conclave’ ©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

The clash of timing musically mirrors the combative attitudes and conflicting agendas of the various factions within the College of Cardinals. It’s fortunate that Bertelmann still feels like he’s in lockstep with Berger in their fifth collaboration. ““It feels like you are travelers and you’re exploring new countries together but you know what you have to pack. You have a clear [sense] about what you like and what you dislike,” Bertelmann said.  

On “Conclave,” that shared taste and willingness to explore led to some of the musical scaffolding changing. The musical cue that became “Seal The Room,” when the Pope’s body is taken to a morgue and his apartments are systematically sealed, was a late addition to the score. It is dark and harsh, moving between broody long notes and sharp, arrogant arpeggios. Bertelmann, Berger, and producer Tessa Ross all thought they needed something at that moment to contrast the end credits cue, which would be a deep breath of relief, light filtering back in after the end of the conclave. 

Bertelmann took three tries at the revised cue before he created a version with which he and Berger were happy. “Then we took this idea and we replaced cues later in the film just because we really, really liked [‘Seal The Room’]. We went back and changed certain cues. That’s how proper collaboration and art works, in a way. You need to reflect and talk about things,” Bertelmann said. “You have to give five, 10, maybe 20 tries. I wouldn’t say you have to bleed, but you have to somehow get as close as possible to get [music] where you want to have it.” 

The music in “Conclave,” praises be, gets us to feel exactly what Bertelmann and Berger want us to. 

“Conclave” is now streaming on Peacock.