Jóhann Jóhannsson: They Being Dead Yet Speaketh (from Miners' Hymns) - EP

Jóhann Jóhannsson originally composed “They Being Dead Yet Speaketh” as part of his soundtrack to The Miners’ Hymns, a 2010 documentary film portrait of a mining community in Northeast England. The Icelandic composer’s music brings together somber orchestral chords, ambient effects, and haunting brass textures in a nod to the celebrated colliery brass bands that were such an important part of mining culture. Here, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Dalia Stasevska perform the premiere recording of the full orchestra version. “Jóhann Jóhannsson is somebody that I got to know as a composer from movies,” Stasevska tells Apple Music Classical. “Sicario was the first movie that I saw from him. I don’t remember so much about the movie, but I remember the music and I really then started listening to him. The Miners’ Hymns has become one of my favorite albums. “Jóhannsson’s music is deeply moving—it always seems to carry a very personal element. Does that also partly come from the landscape of Iceland, the secludedness and the rawness? There’s definitely some of all that in this score.”