Cue of the Week: “The Final Tournament”

Continuing the music series from Touché: A Blind Fencer’s Story, this week’s cue is the first of two that accompany the film’s climactic fencing tournament sequence.

Scoring this scene took a delicate touch. The music needed to add energy and a sense of stakes without turning a real-life competition into a scene from an action movie. In other words, to heighten the moment without over-romanticizing nonfictional people and events. And given the prevalence of dialogue and narration, big overarching themes would have felt intrusive.

I chose a minimalist (capital M) approach: rhythmically driven, with gradual changes of texture and harmony. I used a chamber music palette to keep the score intimate and personal: four celli, acoustic bass, and hand percussion.