{"id":491682,"date":"2019-10-28T13:08:40","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T19:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=904749"},"modified":"2019-10-28T13:08:40","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T19:08:40","slug":"the-national-discuss-their-cyrano-score-writing-in-baggage-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/the-national-discuss-their-cyrano-score-writing-in-baggage-claim\/","title":{"rendered":"The National Discuss Their \u2018Cyrano\u2019 Score, Writing in Baggage Claim"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

The National<\/a>\u2019s Matt Berninger and his wife and co-songwriter Carin Besser recently wrote a love song while lingering by baggage claim at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. That might not seem like the most romantic setting, but the impromptu writing session led to \u201cWrite Me a Love Song,\u201d a track from Cyrano<\/a><\/em>, a new off-Broadway production set to open at New York\u2019s Daryl Roth Theatre on November 7th.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe characters in this play cannot just tell each other \u2018I love you\u2019 because one of them literally says that\u2019s not good enough,\u201d Berninger told Rolling Stone<\/em> of the inspiration for \u201cWrite Me a Love Song.\u201d \u201cWe have to write stuff that stands up to that. We can\u2019t write a bunch of songs about people complaining about bad songs and bad poetry if we don\u2019t deliver really good ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National had already composed the soundtrack for Cyrano<\/em>, but because the show is currently in previews, Berninger and Besser were still able to slot in \u201cWrite Me a Love Song.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s very much like half-songwriting and half-skydiving,\u201d Besser said of the process.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Both the couple and The National have been a dervish of creativity over the last few years, writing new music and lyrics as the story of lovelorn Cyrano unfolds onstage. Peter Dinklage<\/a> stars in the titular role, while his wife, actress Erica Schmidt, adapted and directed the play. Schmidt reached out to the band to score the production, which she envisioned as not quite a musical, but a play featuring constant music \u2014 almost like a film score. The National had an archive of music stretching back almost 10 years, according to the band\u2019s Aaron Dessner, so Schmidt dug in as she worked on her adaptation of Edmond Rostand\u2019s 1897 play. The show tells the story of Cyrano, a man with a big nose who is hopelessly in love with a woman, Roxanne, who loves another man, Christian. Despite his feelings for Roxanne, Cyrano helps Christian write poems and letters to Roxanne, helping his beloved fall for another.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heartbeat of the music underscores the dialogue,\u201d Dessner told Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cIt incorporates two hours of our music.\u201d While the music is decidedly by The National, Bryce Dessner stresses that it brings in baroque elements as befitting the original play\u2019s mood and style.<\/p>\n

The actors also dictated how the music was written. Jasmine Cephas Jones, who plays Roxanne, has more of a \u201cpop star\u201d voice, according to Besser, which lent itself to more radio-friendly tracks. Peter Dinklage\u2019s vocal register is very similar to Berninger\u2019s, the Dessners said, which makes his songs the most like The National. (\u201cI don\u2019t think of myself as a great singer, but I do think I\u2019m a good deliverer of songs,\u201d Berninger said of his own skills.) Aaron Dessner also revealed that Dinklage used to be a rapper, which factors into one of his songs in which he details just how hideous he thinks he is. He spits the song like bars.<\/p>\n

For Berninger, it was important that he was able to relate to each and every character in the play in order to write music that he felt rang true. \u201cI think they are all lost in themselves,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re all lost in their own images of themselves, and they\u2019re unable to see anyone else as honestly as who they really are because they\u2019re not being honest with themselves. I think that, for me, was what I was always writing about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berninger says The National may end up releasing two albums tied to Cyrano<\/em>, a cast recording and fleshed-out version of the soundtrack that the band would perform. \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking a lot about that, but we\u2019re trying to get the play to work first because the record would be a whole different kind of thing,\u201d he said. \u201cIt would be fun if Aaron and Bryce would produce the cast recording, too. So, there might be two versions of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berninger also recently revealed that he\u2019s planning to drop a solo album, Serpentine Prison<\/em>,<\/a> produced by Booker T. Jones. No release date has been set.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National\u2019s Matt Berninger and his wife and co-songwriter Carin Besser recently wrote a love song while lingering by baggage claim at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. That might not seem like the most romantic setting, but the impromptu writing session led to \u201cWrite Me a Love Song,\u201d a track from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-music-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-22 04:29:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}