Composition for screen

Composition for screen is a subject where the writing of music puts itself at the service of films, documentaries, video games, advertisements or stage-based projects in all genres.

At the Haute école de musique de Genève (HEM), the relationship that is created between the writing of music and the moving image can go down some extremely varied artistic roads, and requires that the composer be open to all manner of musical aesthetics and worlds.

These multiple forms of expression have one thing in common, though: they all require an acute awareness and conceptualization of the nature of the bonds between images and music.

Composition for screen is also a collaborative practice that involves interactions with a director and a producer, but also with a film crew and other stakeholders.

Teachers

Nicolas Rabaeus

Professeur de composition à l'image - musique et cinéma

Born in Geneva on 6 May 1984, Nicolas Rabaeus is a Swiss composer specialising in music for moving images. He mainly creates his music by recording and synthesising instruments and objects in his studio in Geneva, which he then combines with other musicians and ensembles. Classically and jazz trained, he is equally comfortable with an orchestra in a concert hall as he is creating experimental textures with a modular synthesiser, or even with a guitar playing pop songs. This horizontal approach to music is his signature and helps him find a unique sound for each score. His music has won several awards, including the Swiss Film Award (2023, for Foudre), the Colombier-Dompierre Award in Montreal (2023, for Foudre), and the Kinotavr Award in Sochi (2015, for Le syndrome de Petrushka). Over the past fifteen years, he has worked on more than fifty projects with European and Swiss filmmakers.