W.E.

W.E. (Music from the Motion Picture) is the soundtrack to the 2012 film W.E. written and directed by Madonna, and starred Abbie Cornish, Andrea Riseborough, Oscar Isaac, Richard Coyle, and James D'Arcy. The original score was written and produced by Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski, with eleven of them being featured in the film's soundtrack, whilst an original song featured the film's end credits "Masterpiece", performed by Madonna, was included in the soundtrack and later on Madonna's album, MDNA. The song would subsequently win the Best Original Song category at the 69th Golden Globe Awards, before the film's release. The soundtrack was released digitally through Interscope Records on January 31, 2012. Development Madonna heard Korzeniowski's work on the soundtrack of A Single Man (2009) and remembered being "struck by the score's 'bittersweet' qualities, this melancholic, romantic, sweeping emotional kind of heartbreaking beauty." She then asked the film's director-fashion designer Tom Ford, about Korzeniowski and decided to sign him to compose W.E.s score. Madonna also temp-tracked parts of score from A Single Man into the rough cut of W.E. The score features strings, electric guitar, harp, viola and piano, and the combination of instruments was used to bridge the film's two time periods. Korzeniowski recorded a 60-piece orchestra conducted by Terry Davies at London's Abbey Road Studios in April 2011, adding that he concentrated on the characters' emotional states, and was not very concerned with differentiating the film's time periods. The composer said in a Variety interview that for the scenes featuring Simpson, he tried to make the score more modern than for those with Winthrop. Madonna wanted Korzeniowski to keep the score simple and direct, thinking that as a classically trained musician he would overcomplicate the score. He went on to say, "It is not the type of score where you go through crazy harmonic changes and modulations [...] This was one of the very precise notes I got from Madonna, that I was not supposed to over-think this music." The score was inspired by the film's irrational love, which Korzeniowski said could be "just an illusion". He wanted the music to reflect the film's powerful and conflicting emotions through the melodies, which alternated between despair and sorrow and hope and joy. Track listing