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While Black Swan looks certain to pick up a clutch of nominations when the Oscar contenders are announced next week, one person who knows he won't be up for a golden statuette is the film's composer Clint Mansell. The 47-year-old Brit's music for the ballet horror story has been disqualified from competition because of its use of "pre-existing music", ie Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.
Which is a shame, because Mansell's re-imagining of the Russian composer's original score is one of the most beautiful and haunting elements of Darren Aronofsky's film. Not that Mansell seems too disappointed.
"There was quite a bit of noise when it was disqualified, which is heartening because that means that people thought it had a chance. But I never expected anything different. I wanted to build the score out of Tchaikovsky because it made the most sense intellectually and artistically."
For the last decade, Mansell has become like a modern-day Bernard Herrmann to Aronofsky's Hitchcock, working on every film with the American director and building a reputation as one of the most original composers in Hollywood. From p (Pi), their first film together in 1998, to Black Swan, Mansell has created complex, enigmatic scores, in tune with the moods of their films and yet possessed of a life of their own.
"I have worked on films where people have asked me to do...