A few weeks ago I came across a video of Professor Armand D’Angour, associate professor of classics at Oxford university. He explained how, through groundbreaking research involving fragments of melody and rhythms found on papyrus and stone and the reconstruction of ancient instruments, it is now possible to hear for the first time in 2,000 years what ancient Greek music would have sounded like.

Given Ludwig Göransson’s beautiful theme for the aulos (an ancient double-barrelled flute) in Christopher Nolan’s latest blockbuster, The Odyssey, and his reputation for dedicated research into his subject matter, it seems very likely that he too has heard these calls from the ancient past.

Over time, a successful film score becomes synonymous with its film, but before its creation, the potential for its direction is endless. “None at all is better than the wrong music,” Alfred Hitchcock famously said. In The White Ribbon Michael Haneke opts for none at all with the exception of music from diegetic sources (performances within the film itself).

But that is a fairly austere and rare standpoint. Generally music is preferred, a decision has to be made and a direction established.

According to a 2026 article in Vanity Fair, Nolan asked Ludwig Göransson not to use an orchestra. He wanted a recognisable world for the audience, but not one which they had encountered before. Göransson needed to expand his horizons and work with sounds he had not used previously.

Bronze gongs were employed, metallic objects of all shapes and sizes were struck. The sound world was to be earthy, raw, bleak and to add further to this mix, instruments of the era were used. Like Professor D’Angour, Göransson reconstructed the ancient aulos and early lyres, adding synths and vocals – not massed ranks of voices, but smaller, more intimate groupings.

I am a composer of contemporary classical music, who also writes the occasional film score. There are two reasons why I am in an interesting position to comment on Göransson’s score.

Firstly, I am writing an opera of The Odyssey, to be premiered in Athens in 2027, directed by Isabella Bywater and based on the translation by Emily Wilson which inspired Nolan. Secondly, my most recent film was Jonathan Nossiter’s Last Words, set in a post-apocalyptic world not dissimilar to the hostile landscape of The Odyssey, for which the brief was strikingly similar to Nolan’s for Göransson: “The orchestra should consist primarily of stone, wind and metal.”

So I understand. And personally, I love Göransson’s plan: the natural sounds of the earth combined with ancient instruments and a layer of synth and vocals. But the resulting score did not resound as it might have.

Many felt there was a lack of emotional heft, a lack of recognisable music. Some said they didn’t notice the music at all. This in itself need not be a bad thing. The purpose of a film score is to enhance the film, not to be memorable.

If it can serve its purpose and also be memorable, then that is good news for all concerned. Indeed sometimes the music is just so memorable that the film has no choice but gracefully and gratefully to accept the fact – I think of the main theme in Schindler’s List, or the shower scene in Psycho.

But to be memorable should never be the primary aim of a film score. And Göransson’s score for The Odyssey is certainly not memorable. But does it enhance the film?

The ingredients were all there, but I have to agree with the dissenting voices that the final soundtrack, with moments of exception, was unconvincing.

Part of the blame for this must be laid at the door of the mix. A hefty layer of sound design was added and very often the music struggled to be heard. This is clearly not the composer’s fault.

But listening to the soundtrack on its own, I found that the inspiration I had hoped for was rarely to be found. With some exceptions – in particular the Sirens and one of Calypso’s scenes where the singing was adventurous and exquisite – the vocal writing I found to be predictably Hollywood. The extensive use of large drums likewise belongs to the familiar world I thought Göransson was attempting to avoid. Indeed, a lot of the bigger moments sound like a traditional score, just with synth instead of orchestra.

There were even moments when I felt the music fighting against the film. Sometimes, of course, this is a message to the audience that all is not as it seems. But in these moments it just felt misplaced. The merging of the soundscape of the ancient world with elements of a more traditional approach was, for me, not a successful one.

Odysseus, in Wilson’s translation, is famously, and to some controversially, a “complicated man”. Nolan’s epic, in my opinion, does not focus enough on this complicated nature, the flaws, the diametrically opposed elements of his character. Yes there is loss, but mainly this relates to his men and his memory. But there is so much more. Here is a man who had power and glory, kingdom, reputation, home, wife, son – and he has lost everything. He sits alone on Calypso’s beach, a no one staring across the “fruitless sea”.

This lack of emotional complication in Odysseus himself, so integral to Homer’s story, was reflected in the music. It seems that, for all Göransson’s laudable efforts to recreate the sounds of the ancient world and to marry them with more recognisable elements, they too got lost in that fruitless sea.

Göransson is a skilful composer. He has won three Oscars and is clearly much loved by film audiences. In The Odyssey he has, in my opinion, succeeded in serving the film, but I do not think he has enhanced it.