17 September 2025, 17:37
Ten years after its release, Hans Zimmer’s score for Interstellar may be more deeply appreciated now than ever. In an exclusive interview for Classic FM, the Oscar-winning composer reflected on how one of his most personal pieces became the emotional foundation for one of the most ambitious science-fiction films of the 21st century.
Zimmer revealed that the score began with a fable. “It all started at a party,” he said, recalling how director Christopher Nolan asked him to write something based on a feeling, not a plot. “Chris said, ‘If you were to write me a letter, and not describe the film, but a fable, what would come to you?’”
What came to Zimmer was an intimate piano theme inspired by his son. Without knowing Interstellar was a film about space, time, and black holes, he composed a delicate piece about love, parenthood, and connection. “It was very small, very heartfelt,” Zimmer said. When he played it to Nolan, the director responded: “I suppose I better go make the movie.”
Zimmer and Nolan agreed early on that they wanted to do something that hadn’t already been used to score space epics. “We’d done the big drums. We’d done the brass. We’d done the ostinatos. So Chris said, ‘You know, we’ve never tried a ’”
Zimmer’s first reaction was to laugh, associating the sound of an organ with films like Dracula and Frankenstein. But the more he considered it, the more the king of instruments revealed itself as an expressive living and breathing instrument that connected naturally to the film’s themes of space and humanity.
They chose Temple Church in London as the recording location for its acoustics and quiet surroundings free from traffic noise, as well as its visual symbolism. “The other thing is, if you look at the pump, the big pipes, the 32 or the 64 footers, they look like rockets,” Zimmer noted. “They work with air pressure and they breathe. They don’t make a sound unless you let them breathe. So that sense of a human element in that machine I thought was interesting.”
Zimmer credits much of the score’s success to organist Roger Sayer, whose virtuosity brought the music to life. “Had it not been for Roger, I might have had to give up,” he admitted. “He saved my life.”
Together, they created something unique: a non-religious use of the organ that still carried spiritual weight. This instrument that is traditionally associated with the divine was instead used to explore something more personal and existential.
Despite the film’s grand scale, Zimmer kept the score harmonically simple. “It all resolves within three chords,” he said. That cycle, always returning home, only to lose it again, mirrored the emotional journey of the film’s characters. “Every 12 seconds, you felt you were home, just to be ripped away again.”
That emotional pattern, Zimmer says, was the core of the film. “The idea of scrabbling, struggling constantly to find a real home, that felt important. Interstellar was about reaching across time, across galaxies, across distance… and still feeling something.”
Looking back, Zimmer feels the project was an experiment and a labour of love. A decade on, the score that started life as a theme about a child is now a sonic marvel that reminds us of the need for communication.
“We never quite leave the idea that it is actually written for one person to another person, reaches across,” Zimmer concludes, “And sometimes that reaches across vast amounts of distance and you can still feel it.”
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