Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score for this unusual biopic-romance about Dr. Stephen Hawking netted him his first Golden Globe award and Oscar nod. A master of acoustic-electronic synthesis, his oft-elegiac music here “uses piano as the lead instrument because it’s a film about an astrophysicist, but it’s also very much the story about the relationship between Stephen and [his wife],” Jóhannsson notes. “We needed to emphasize the emotion and humanity of the story." He adds that the piano "has this mathematical and mechanical kind of quality to it, which unites the emotions and human aspects with the cerebral, scientific parts.”