The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is a 2013 urban fantasy film based on the first book of The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare, directed by Harald Zwart, with a script written by Jessica Postigo. The film stars Lily Collins, Jamie Campbell Bower, Robert Sheehan, Kevin Zegers, Lena Headey, Kevin Durand, Aidan Turner, Jemima West, Godfrey Gao, C. C. H. Pounder, Jared Harris, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The musical score was composed by Icelandic composer Atli Örvarsson. The film featured two soundtracks: an original soundtrack and an original score. Both the albums were released on August 20, 2013, a day before the film's release. The original soundtrack, released by Republic Records, featured songs performed by Ariana Grande, Zedd, Demi Lovato, Colbie Caillat, AFI, Nathan Sykes amongst several others. Two original songs were also recorded for the film. The score album, published by Milan Records, featured the musical cues from Örvarsson's score.
Production
Örvarsson was hired to score for City of Bones after Harald Zwart, the film's director was impressed with the musical score he created for Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. For preparing for a fantasy based score, he referred to Johann Sebastian Bach's compositions on noting the script and added "If you’re going to steal you might as well steal from the best and he is arguably the best Western composer of all time, so that was a good place to start. My job is to lend the characters and the story emotion and also importance. I felt that the most important thing I could do was to make all these events that are outlandish seem important and personal." He was given nearly 9 weeks to score the entire movie, for which he described it as "time is relative in the sense that if you have a good relationship and an understanding about the aesthetics that clicks with the director, having a limited amount of time can be a blessing because you don’t have time to second-guess every decision".
The score was composed entirely in computer, while the recording happened at Abbey Road Studios, London, featuring a 100-piece orchestra, a 40-member choir and other instrumentalists and vocalists, present for the sessions, that took place in 7 days. Since the film, is a modern-day setting with sort of "ancient background", he used some of the older instruments.
On writing an action film score that featured a female lead, he said "There’s a feminine element that wouldn’t be present if it was a guy. In Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, there’s a guy and a girl. The presence of a female character made that dynamic different. Mortal Instruments even more so because the hero is a girl. I’m not going to write the same thing for a girl hero as a guy. Men and women just function differently. There’s a different core there. As much as I’m all about equality of the sexes but we have to celebrate the differences."
Composition
For the "mortal cup theme", he used a viol (a predecessor to violin and cello), which he said "It’s a string instrument, which is bowed, and it’s actually played without any vibrato, so it’s a very kind of metallic sound to it. And it has that sort of ancient feel to it. It was very prominent during the Renaissance, during the 1400 and 1500s, that was the string instrument. It’s got this really piercing, clean ancient sound to it. It’s gives a real nice subtle color of ancient times." Another melody themes that was written for the score is the "Clary's theme". Örvarsson described the main title theme as "It’s the legend of the Shadowhunters and their history and all that, and we’re trying to depict or convey Clary’s awe, the experience of seeing this magnificent city that we don’t really see. The beginning of that piece, when they’re walking into that underground bunker, that has its own rhythmic thing, and it all has its big crescendo when the Silent Brothers are able to rekindle her memory."
For Clary and Jace's love theme, he used a simple piano version, preceded by a string arrangement and a major and minor key version. He also wrote the sparse version of the love theme in the greenhouse sequence, set through Jace's story, where he used piano and bells in the cue, and blended into Demi Lovato's song "Heart by Heart" written by Diane Warren. He wrote a "Darth Vader-like theme" for the Valentine, which is like "a bass line that keeps building and building". The sound engineer Lewis Jones rented a Minimoog synthesiser, and insisted to play the bass on the old synthesiser, which got a "old, fast bass sound". He also wrote a melodic theme for Clary and her reunion with his mother. Jace's character did not have a theme, but had an action motif.