Behind the scenes at Downton Abbey: Series 3, episode 1.
Downton Abbey
Have yourself a merry little Downton Christmas by Jessica Fellowes
Much of what we know and love about the festive season today was already in place by 1912 and thanks to the American influence of Cora, a Downton Christmas would be particularly glorious. A fir-tree decked out in sparkling decorations that reached almost to the ceiling would be in the Great Hall with hundreds of toys wrapped beneath, presents for the children of the tenant farmers and local village, which would be handed out on Christmas Eve. Mistletoe is hung, pine and holly are laid on every surface, a yule log crackles in the fireplace and stockings are hung on the masterpiece.
Christmas Day at Downton is of course quite different depending on whether you are above or below stairs. The day begins with church for everyone, and afterwards the presents are exchanged. Lord and Lady Grantham are generous and kind to their servants, so will give more than the traditional bolt of cloth for the maids to make their uniforms or stiff white collars for the footmen. In the past, Carson has received a book of the history of European royal families, while Lady Mary gave Anna a locket, a token of her grateful affection.
To each other, the family are naturally indulgent. Lady Mary and Lady Edith may have gone to London to do their shopping, bringing back glass bottles of scent, fine silk stockings, small items of jewellery and leather-bound books as presents. Lord Grantham probably best appreciates a box of cigars. The Dowager Countess may have had to make do with finding her presents in the village, although I rather fancy she is the sort to ‘re-gift’ things she was given before and didn’t like.
Servants were traditionally given lunch off, to have their Christmas dinner and give their own gifts. With their small wages, these are not grand gestures but thoughtful items. Carson might find Mrs Hughes an umbrella for her rare trips outside. Anna and Bates will have spent time finding the right things for each other but will have been limited to the offerings of Ripon’s high street.
Upstairs, the family serve themselves cold cuts, while the staff have a jolly time in the Servants’ Hall with turkey and all the trimmings. After that, they have to get back to work, preparing for the family’s Christmas celebrations in the evening. The lack of festivities on the day is made up to them when the family host the Servants’ Ball a week or two later, at which the first dance is led by the Dowager Countess and Carson.
The family will dress in white tie for dinner – this means tiaras and long gowns for the women, with their finest jewellery worn. There’s a large house party, as the outer branches of the family tree have been invited to stay.
The food then, as now, is the centrepiece of the evening. Hampers will have been ordered from Fortnum & Masons and Harrods. Mrs Patmore has a larder stuffed with birds shot during the season’s shooting parties. There’s a plentiful supply of vegetables and meat from the home farm, with roast beef followed by plum pudding, flaming with brandy, as the stars of the show.
Afterwards, back in the drawing room, games are played. The favourite is The Game, a sort of ‘Give Us A Clue’, for those who can remember Lionel Blair’s version. The men will be keen to get to bed not too late, ready to be up early for next day’s shooting party.
Everyone will most certainly wish each other, as I wish you, a very merry Christmas.
Jessica Fellowes is author of The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, out now: http://amzn.to/SVpDLz
Follow Jessica on Twitter @jessicafellowes
Downton Abbey: Recording the Music by John Lunn
Music is the final ingredient required to complete an episode of Downton Abbey. By the time my work commences, I will have the read the script and possibly seen rough cuts of the episode to give me an idea of what to expect, but usually I have to wait until everyone is satisfied with the final edit before my work begins in earnest. At this point I will sit down with the producer and the executive producer of the series and we will discuss where we think we need music, why we need it and what its function should be. Is it to chart an emotional journey, enhance a comic moment, establish a change of mood or pace, or is it simply to help us get from one scene to another?
I should add that whilst the editor has been cutting and shaping the episode, he will have used extracts of my music from a previous series to help him establish the tone and pace of his edits, so by the time we commence work on the composition we will already have an idea whether music is necessary in a scene and whether it achieves the right purpose. However it is very rare in Downton Abbey that exactly the same cue will work perfectly in two different places. The musical material might be right but I will almost certainly rewrite it to choreograph the scene and fit with the dialogue. The dialogue is obviously extremely important in Downton Abbey and I never switch it off when I am writing nor even when we are recording the orchestra as the music is designed very carefully to complement it.
These days computers are an absolute necessity for music in media and Downton Abbey is no exception. I have several Apple Mac computers all synchronized together where I use a range of computerized sounds to emulate the sound of a real orchestra, Violins, Violas, Cellos, Double basses, a Piano, a French Horn, Cor Anglais, Vibraphone and in Series 3 we have started to use a Soprano Saxophone. Working in this way means that I can give the producers a pretty good impression of what the final score will sound like. However all these computerized samples will eventually be replaced by real musicians playing real instruments. In my view there really is no comparison: the samples sound stodgy and sterile while the real musicians sound fuller, more emotional, complex - and very much alive! There is also a real danger when using computers to overcomplicate the music and I have to keep reminding myself that the final outcome will sound much better. At the end of this blog I have included examples of ‘synthesized’ and ‘real’ recordings.
Once I have dealt with any notes and feedback from the producers, I send the computer files to my conductor and orchestrator, the wonderful and essential Alastair King who will produce the full score and parts for the musicians. A recording session will be booked either at Abbey Road, Air, or Angel studios, most of Series 3 this year was recorded at Angel, as Abbey Road and Air were unusually booked out during the summer due to all the music that had to be recorded for the Olympics!
Each episode has its own recording session. Most of the musicians we use for Downton Abbey will be from the major London Orchestras and many of them will have continued from Series 1, so not only do we have an incredible quality of musicianship we also have a real consistency to the sound. I use the same recording engineer, Paul Golding, who also supervises the final mixes. These take place at my own home studio in south east London where we also record the piano. I’m not a phenomenal pianist but I do know the style I am looking to achieve, and so I do it, mainly to save time!
We probably turn around an episode of Downton Abbey every 2-3 weeks from first meeting with the producers to final mix down, so there is very little room for error. Thankfully that very rarely happens.
John Lunn is the Emmy Award winning composer of the theme and soundtrack music for Downton Abbey. Downton Abbey - The Essential Collection is available here: http://bit.ly/QfS0nE
Downton Abbey Puzzle UK: http://amzn.to/SyXXBT
Downton Abbey Puzzle USA/Canada: http://amzn.to/XmlfYA
How to Throw the Perfect Downton Inspired Party by Jessica Fellowes
If you simply can’t wait for the Christmas Day episode of Downton Abbey, then throw a party that brings the Crawleys to you, in spirit at least. You can make the evening go with a swing by taking inspiration from our favourite characters.
Invite your guests with a handwritten note, letting them know that you will be ‘at home’ and ask them to arrive for 7.45pm. When getting ready, Lady Mary’s flair for fashion is what’s called for here: the men in black tie, the women in drop-waist dresses with sparkly details, T-bar shoes, long strings of pearls and a diamond clip in their hair.
Have a butler answer the door and remove your guests’ coats; their names should then be announced as they enter the drawing room. A man in a fancy waistcoat and tails can be nominated as the footman, to serve cocktails. Drinks before dinner was a racy fashion in London that began after the war. Try a Kitchener: 1/3 Bacardi, 1/3 Sherry, 1/3 French Vermouth. (For more recipes, see: http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/recipes/the-savoy-1920s-cocktails#image-rotator-1)
A Carson-like attention to detail is needed to set the table. A long table is best, and the host and hostess should sit opposite each other in the middle. You will need linen napkins, sherry (for the first course), champagne (to serve throughout) and pudding wine glasses, plus cutlery for each course (first course, entree, second course, pudding, cheese). Candles and a centrepiece of flowers would be the perfect finishing touch. Footmen serve the food wearing white gloves; a large serving plate of each dish is taken round the guests in turn, starting with whoever is sitting on the host’s right (no ‘women first’ rule here), who help themselves. Serve on the guest’s left hand side, take the plates away from their right (‘load on the left, rubbish from the right’ is how I always remember). The butler pours the wine, on the right.
Mrs Patmore’s cooking skills can inspire you but perhaps best to make like Daisy and attempt the simpler dishes. Watercress soup, fried rabbit fillets, roast beef, rhubarb tart with meringues and cream.
For a Downton atmosphere round the table either choose the Lady Edith method of awkward flirtation or a Lord Grantham-like sarcastic retort to any suggestion that life is lived more simply in future. But for the best results, memorise the Dowager’s best lines from the show, ready to drop whenever there’s a pause. (See my book, The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, for quotes.) To bring extra drama to any meaningful looks exchanged across the table, play The Music of Downton Abbey in the background (soundtrack available on Apple iTunes).
When the meal is finished, women retire to the drawing room to drink coffee. The butler brings a decanter of port and glasses for the men, who pour it out themselves and pass the bottle around clockwise. They shouldn’t remain at table for more than ten or fifteen minutes.
Now it’s time for the young to have their fun – put the gramophone on and dance the foxtrot. Whether you’re Thomas trying to take Jimmy for a turn round the Servants’ Hall or the real-life version of Matthew and Mary, hold each other tight and sway to the music. Popular hits of the time were often by Irving Berlin (download his albums from the Apples iTunes store). Or encourage a talented member of the party to play the piano, with another to sing popular tunes of the day. Cheers!
Jessica Fellowes is the author of The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, out now in the UK and US. You can follow her on Twitter @jessicafellowes
Downton Abbey - the inspirations behind the music
Music is the last element to be added to a Film or Television Show. It’s the glue, the binding that holds all the elements together, the final ingredient. At its best it should be covert, creeping up on the audience as it charts the emotional peaks and troughs, filling in for thoughts and ideas often left unsaid - and occasionally at its most effective when it stops. Sometimes music is the last chance to rescue anything that isn’t working properly, whether it’s an unclear plot line or a lackluster performance; thankfully, Downton Abbey doesn’t require either of those.
I like to think that the music in Downton is less about individual characters than about the relationships between them so there are themes for Matthew and Mary, of course, Bates and Anna, Sybil and Branson etc.; the one notable exception being the house itself. The house has its own theme, its own character, and it is the seed from which all other themes emanate. It is, of course, the title music.
In order to prepare myself for Downton Abbey, I did listen to a lot of English music of the period c.1912, mainly Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, the Serenade and the Enigma variations; Vaughan Williams’ 5th Symphony; Holst’s St Paul’s Suite, The Planets; and Delius’, A Song of Summer and The Walk to the Paradise Garden. This was music I was already familiar with as in my younger days I had performed most of it with various orchestras but I felt, useful though it was, that it was all rather overwrought and too complicated for Downton Abbey. Without having any real conception of what I was going to write I started work on the opening scene of series one episode one…
The series begins with a telegram, the front of a train crashes in to view, the telegram is passing along the wires beside the rail tracks, there is a man, alone and thoughtful, apprehensive, staring out of one of the carriages, the camera pans up to the sky, the clouds, we follow the telegram and eventually we arrive at the House, the final destination for both telegram and man, although we don’t see either till later. I started with the energy of the train - a repeated two note ostinato under a simple alternating chord change - as we see the man, Bates - a lonely single note tune on the piano is picked out - between the phrases of which an elegant, aspirational string tune weaves its way, becoming ever more dominant until finally, just as the harmony is at its most expansive, the energy is released and we arrive at a splendid view of Downton Abbey.
All of these elements became integral to the score for Downton, in fact, in the subsequent scene where the house itself is shown coming to life early in the morning, with the energy of the train becoming the industry of the servants, the aspirational tune gives them a sense of pride in their work as we wander through the magnificent rooms and the solo piano notes are reserved for our first introduction to Lady Mary.
John Lunn is the Emmy Award winning composer of the theme and soundtrack music for Downton Abbey. Downton Abbey - The Essential Collection is available now through Amazon: http://bit.ly/QfS0nE
Behind the scenes at Downton Abbey.
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