Leonardo da Vinci (Original Score) Caroline Shaw

• 1 Intentions of the Mind 01:59
• 2 Ginevra de' Benci 03:44
• 3 Machine Drawings 01:36
• 4 Renaissance 02:32
• 5 Atmosphere 02:22
• 6 Lady with an Ermine 02:47
• 7 Pleasure and Pain 02:52
• 8 Il Paradiso 01:09
• 9 Treatise on Painting 03:11
• 10 Optics, Light & Shadow 03:56
• 11 Senso Comune 02:18
• 12 Virgin of the Rocks 02:11
• 13 The Grandchild of Nature 01:50
• 14 The Last Supper 04:16
• 15 Microcosm and Macrocosm 02:41
• 16 The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne 05:10
• 17 Notebooks 02:11
• 18 Blood Flow 02:41
• 19 A Man Without Letters 02:20
• 20 La Pittura È Mentale 02:57
• 21 Painter-Philosopher 01:40
• 22 Water Studies 03:42
• 23 Body as Nature 02:42
• 24 Guru of the Court 01:11
• 25 Cesare Borgia 03:03
• 26 Flying Machines 06:04
• 27 Symbol of the Modern Idea 01:46
• 28 The Mona Lisa 03:54
• Total Runtime 01:18:45

Info for Leonardo da Vinci (Original Score)

Nonesuch will release the original score for Ken Burns’s new two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI, with new compositions by Caroline Shaw; the documentary airs on November 18 and 19 on PBS. The album features performances by the composer’s longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score.

In celebration of LEONARDO da VINCI, New York City’s historic venue The Town Hall presents an evening of performances from Shaw’s score by Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth on October 29. The filmmakers will also preview excerpts from the four-hour film.

LEONARDO da VINCI is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath Leonardo da Vinci, is Burns’s first non-American subject. It also marks a significant change in the team’s filmmaking style, which includes using split screens with images, video, and sound from different periods to further contextualize Leonardo’s art and scientific explorations. LEONARDO da VINCI looks at how the artist influenced and inspired future generations, and it finds in his soaring imagination and profound intellect the foundation for a conversation we are still having today: what is our relationship with nature and what does it mean to be human?

“No single person can speak to our collective effort to understand the world and ourselves,” said Ken Burns. “But Leonardo had a unique genius for inquiry, aided by his extraordinary skills as an artist and scientist, that helps us better understand the natural world that we are part of and to appreciate more fully what it means to be alive and human.”

“To help give depth and dimension to Leonardo’s inner life, and to carry our viewers on his personal journey, we enlisted the composer Caroline Shaw,” McMahon says in the album’s liner note. “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern. A fully original score, we believed, would add crucial connective tissue to areas where the record of Leonardo’s life is thin and it’s possible to briefly lose his trail. The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder.

“This soundtrack is a testament to the inspired efforts of Jennifer Dunnington, who marshaled it into being, the brilliant musicians and vocalists who, with the help of Alex Venguer, Neal Shaw, Colton Dodd and Tim Marchiafava, made it soar, and most of all Caroline Shaw, who might be Leonardo’s soulmate from across time,” he continues. “With her help, the Leonardo who emerges is no wizard shrouded in mystery, but a prideful, obsessive, at times lonely or flustered, occasionally ecstatic, and, in the end, content man who is in ways both modern and thoroughly of his time.”

“As we set out to explore Leonardo’s life, we realized that while he was very much a man of his time, he was also interested in something more universal,” said Sarah Burns. “Leonardo was uniquely focused on finding connections throughout nature, something that strikes us as very modern today, but which of course has a long history.”

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has worked with a range of artists including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma, and she has contributed music to films and TV series including Fleishman Is in Trouble, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, and Beyoncé’s Homecoming. In addition to three albums with Sō Percussion, Narrow Sea, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, and Rectangles and Circumstance, Nonesuch has released her two Grammy-winning albums Orange and Evergreen, both of which feature Attacca Quartet. “Two-Step” and “Ghost,” Shaw’s songs with Ringdown, her duo with Danni Lee Parpan, are available now on Nonesuch. Caroline Shaw is Wigmore Hall’s 2024-25 Composer in Residence.

‘One of the most exciting composers alive.’ – Daily Telegraph

Attacca Quartet
Sō Percussion
Roomful of Teeth
John Patitucci, double bass

Caroline Shaw
is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Shaw is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, an honorary doctorate from Yale, four Grammys, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has written and produced for iconic artists and ensembles across the musical spectrum, including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Tiler Peck, Nas, Kanye West, the LA Phil, the NY Phil, and others. Recent tv/film/stage scoring projects include “Leonardo Da Vinci” (Ken Burns/PBS), “Julie Keeps Quiet (Leonardo Van Dijl), “Fleishman is in Trouble” (FX/Hulu), “The Sky Is Everywhere” (Josephine Decker/A24), vocal work with Rosalía (MOTOMAMI), “The Crucible” (Lyndsey Turner/National Theatre), “Partita” (Justin Peck/NYC Ballet), “Moby Dick” (Wu Tsang), and “LIFE” (Gandini Juggling/Merce Cunningham Trust). Current touring projects include shows with Sō Percussion, Ringdown, Attacca Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, Graveyards & Gardens, Gabriel Kahane, and Kamus Quartet. Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary.

This album contains no booklet.