ABSTRACT
Rachel Portman is an Oscar-winning composer whose success in her profession is derived from first, a natural affinity for the particularities of a film’s narrative, and second, her ability to forge a comprehensive articulation of a film’s emotional thesis, derived from her gift for colour and storytelling in her compositional approach. Portman has carved out a unique niche as a composer of human-size stories, and her career has flourished through her innate ability to score broad, but simultaneously nuanced, emotional arcs in her films. This chapter analyses Portman’s career ascendency as a composite of her compositional gifts and the prevailing trends in medium to large-scale trans-Atlantic dramatic features in the 1980s through the 2010s. Her ability to align with storytellers such as Anthony Minghella, John Madden, Douglas McGrath, Lone Scherfig, and Lasse Hallström suggests a canny artist, aware of her gifts and their most opportune placement. Scores analysed include The Storyteller (1987), Emma (1996), Beloved (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999), Chocolat (2000), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Belle (2013), Race (2016), and Their Finest (2016).
