TIM GREIVING: In Moonlight, composer Nicholas Britell ties together three chapters of the protagonist’s life with a gossamer theme that gradually slows and deepens as the character ages.
Violinist Tim Fain gives voice to “Little’s Theme,” the melody in its childhood phase, with such lightness and intimate mic placement that you can hear the scratch of fibers between bow and string. Inspired by director Barry Jenkins’ love of “chopped and screwed” music — a remix style from Southern hip-hop that digitally slows down a track to reveal, in the composer’s words, “hidden sonic worlds” — Britell decelerates the theme for each progressive chapter, to the point where the adult character, “Black,” is accompanied by celli and basses, moving with a masculine, glacial weight.
Elsewhere, digital effects turn the ordinary into poetry. In the “baptism” scene where Mahershala Ali’s character teaches Little to swim in the ocean, the tails of Fain’s lightning arpeggios are manipulated by the composer to create a sense of tidal overlapping. With his spare but virtuosic score, Britell helps elevate this quiet story of a very interior (and nearly speechless) gay black youth in Miami to near-religious heights.