Hamnet: the sonic network of grief

Hello, hello. Good morning. Welcome back to another episode of Notas en Frame. Today we’re going to talk about the film that is sweeping the biggest awards of the season: Hamnet.

Under the direction of Chloé Zhao and with Max Richter, we have a score filled with emotion, humanity, and reflections. If I’m honest, I was a little afraid to watch this film because of everything I had heard about it. And the truth is that the reviews are faithful to the emotions this work awakens.

To me, Hamnet feels like the film of the year and perhaps of many years. It feels like it belongs to another category entirely, and the music has a lot to do with that reach.

Max Richter is an English-German composer (yes, it seems that much of the musical material comes from this country) and you may recognize him from his work on Ad Astra.

Quite a lot has been said about the relationship between the composer and the cast, and about the creative dynamics behind Hamnet, because as always, the music is intimately connected to the atmosphere of the film from several angles.

We can notice this very clearly in the pieces related to Agnes. From the very beginning of the film (even visually) we can see the articulation between Agnes’s character and nature. In the music, this appears as a chorus of female voices intertwined with low registers that make it stand out, expanding and then contracting. The composer has mentioned in several interviews that he tried to build “witchy-earthy” textures around the character, creating an intimate relationship between wisdom and the organic.

It is interesting that these associations permeate the music because we are talking about sounds that are not only notes; they carry history. In the historical period in which this film takes place, women were considered healers through forms of knowledge such as herbalism, the perception of the environment, and bodily intuition. Yet this knowledge was condemned by deeply patriarchal institutions such as the church.

This makes that wisdom (and even identity itself) somewhat mysterious, hidden behind prejudice yet very close to the intangible, such as pain, transformation, and wonder. Here, it is represented through a female chorus that expands and contracts, distant but present and penetrating, much like the wisdom and actions of women during that time. These initial motifs already position the voice and the choruses as part of the organic texture of Hamnet.

The story then unfolds through pieces with different tonal colors and shades. With Elizabethan and electronic touches that simulate what might have been permissible in that period. We can hear the harp and the piano as luminous and dark contrasts, respectively. It is interesting that this polarity is used in themes such as the confrontation with joy, pain, and transformation.

I would like to take you to the piece “In All My Philosophy” Here we can find an incredible narrative carried by the music. The strings remain in an uncomfortable register for almost the entire piece, accompanied by electronic elements that sustain a noticeable tension.

This then moves into “Of Earth and Heaven” where we hear the contrast through the harp. Moving through these contrasting sonic perceptions produces a sensory vulnerability guided by the music. The actors on screen are literally moved (internally) by these contrasts. In fact, the actors themselves have acknowledged that listening to the soundtrack on loop was an essential part of building the set.

Later there is another piece I like very much: “Of the Heart” This is a key piece when Hamnet’s death occurs. It begins by emulating the sound of a heart, expanded with electronic tools that leave an echo while the pulse moves in an agitated way. The piece ends with sustained dissonant notes in the strings, as if something from the original sounds and tempos had broken.

The music mirrors the narrative and at the same time directs the ideas and sensations that create emotion. A stopped heart. A broken heart. A grief that begins with a change, with a silence. A cycle.

From there we move toward the end of the film. The following seven pieces shift into a grey tone of confusion and mourning. Much deeper voices, slow and heavy sounds, and at the same time high frequencies that construct the agony and the irrationality that accompany loss and the search for reconstruction.

The abyss of the questions about what we are and what we might become when our world turns is built through extended voices suspended above low pedal notes, as if within us there existed a constant tension between remaining and continuing.

At the end of “Of a Ghost” strident percussion interrupts the articulation between the voices. Have you ever felt that in the middle of the chaos of loss, the idea of surrendering to the void can feel strangely promising? It is the temptation of doubt, the emergence of new inner demons we did not know existed until a part of ourselves is removed, as happens in loss.

The music confronts us with those darker voices, portrayed through the interruption of percussion, its gradual growth, and the eventual return of the human voice in a subtle and almost stealthy way. Humanity re-emerging from the shadows, and reintegrating with the new reality that comes from repositioning those new parts that, paradoxically, are born from loss.

And in response to the questions that this confrontation and reintegration leave behind, “On the Nature of Daylight” begins.

Although this piece was not originally written for this film, it was included at the request of the lead actress, Jesse Buckley, and the director, Chloé Zhao. And here I find an incredible example of something I have been reading about recently: music and its meaning are not fixed objects that exist in a vacuum, not simply the score, the musical structure, or even the performance.

While all of those elements are part of it, the power and meaning of music emerge from a network of meanings.

Why do I say this?

Because this piece was originally written at the beginning of the Iraq War. The composer wrote it almost as a manifesto for peace. In its origin, it carried meanings very different from the context of Hamnet.

However, the meaning of the piece acquired new sense through the reconfiguration given to it by the audience, in this case Jesse and Chloé, and later all of us. A representation of hope was transformed into a representation of loss.

And while there is still a certain hope in the piece, what becomes important here is recognizing that the meaning of music cannot be explained by treating it as an isolated and fixed object. Instead, it emerges from the ways it enters human practices: through those who produce it, through its historical trajectory, through the ways it circulates, and through how audiences receive it.

Becoming aware of this means recovering our power to create within this network of meanings. It means making visible the power of those who mediate these processes, and through that awareness changing the way we make decisions, relate to others, and inhabit the world around us.

In other words (and forgive me for insisting) it means recognizing ourselves as political beings and doing politics.

Max Richter constructs a system of sonic tensions that makes the transformation of human experience audible and inhabitable. From the female choruses surrounding Agnes as an organic, historical, and bodily memory, to the uncomfortable strings, fractured pulses, and percussions that appear as the temptation of the void, Hamnet draws pain as a process of disarticulation and reconfiguration of existence.

And here lies one of the greatest strengths of the music in this film: emphasizing that it actively participates in the production of meaning. Loss, memory, identity, doubt, and even the possibility of continuing appear here as sonic, historical, and human relations that are woven throughout the work.

That is why the appearance of On the Nature of Daylight becomes so significant. It reminds us that music does not carry a single, fixed, or closed meaning within itself. Its power emerges within the network: through its historical trajectory, the decisions of those who incorporate it, the audiences who listen to it, and the readings that reactivate it.

In Hamnet, that network transforms a piece originally written as a manifesto for peace into a gesture of loss, memory, and transmutation.

And perhaps that is one of the most powerful ideas that the music leaves us with here: that it is not simply another cinematic resource, but something through which we produce worlds. Something through which we organize experience, articulate pain, inherit meanings, and above all participate in the creation of shared meaning.

So, as we have always said here: Listening is also interpreting, reconfiguring, and doing politics.

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