The director Autumn de Wilde,who previously worked as a photographer and directed music videos,felt on the importance of folk music in the film.[3] Having previously worked with musicians Beck,Jenny Lewis and the band Death Cab for Cutie,de Wilde had learned about the history of folk music in America,England,Ireland,and other countries.[4] She roped in Isobel Waller-Bridge for scoring the film,after appreciating her composition for Fleabag,as she felt that she had a "sense of humor in music".[5] She wanted the music to be like "a misbehaving orchestra,like the conductor is overwhelmed and the oboes are escaping",[4] and wanted the score to emulate Sergei Prokofiev'sPeter and the Wolf,where each character had a theme that personified them.[4][6]
Emma. marked Waller-Bridge's second stint on writing diegetic music,after previously doing the same for Fleabag,as while comparing both the films,"it was really important to be able to show a humanity behind those protagonists. And it felt like vocal music in those cases was going to really help us do that."[6] She denied comparisons of her score,with Rachel Portman's Academy Award-winning score for Emma (1996),and felt it as a unique album because of de Wilde's direction. She co-composed the score with David Schweitzer,and was conducted by Alastair King along with the Chamber Orchestra of London. Explaining the importance of the score,Waller-Bridge added "Autumn wanted it to feel live,so the conductor would be conducting to the action in real time. That’s why we wanted the music to spot even the tiniest bits of detail like an eyebrow raise. It was almost like a silent movie. If you took the dialogue off,you’d still really have a sense of what was going on."[6] She also interpreted Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra and Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition,in addition to Profokiev's piece to be versed about classical music for the film.[6][7]
In addition to the score,the film also featured a cappella recordings of folk songs with several artists such as,Maddy Prior,June Tabor and the Watersons,along with the bands The Carnival Band and The Cambridge Singers. Anya Taylor-Joy,Johnny Flynn and Amber Anderson performed the songs on-screen in the film. In the film,Jane Fairfax (Anderson) outshines Emma (Taylor-Joy) by performing the third movement from Mozart'sPiano Sonata No. 12 on the fortepiano. A trained pianist,Anderson had to relearn the piece to adapt her technique to the period instrument's short keys,and she felt that "it is very rare that a pianist gets to play on one of those and it was amazing to play music written by composers like [Wolfgang Amadeus] Mozart on that instrument,how it was meant to sound".[8]
Johnny Flynn was asked by Waller-Bridge to write a song to convey Knightley's perspective on Emma,which would later become "Queen Bee",an original song for the film featured in the end credits. He also performed the song in a style appropriate to the film's period.[9] He also performed another song,a duet with Anderson,titled "'Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes",written by Ben Jonson in the film during a ball scene.[9] Taylor-Joy performed the song "The Last Rose of Summer",who opined that she used an affective style imagining Emma Woodhouse would use to charm her audience.[10] Both the songs,despite being in the film,were not included in the soundtrack album.
The music received positive critical reception, with The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw calling the soundtrack as "frantically intrusive",[11] while Mark Kermode "Musically, Emma. juxtaposes folk tunes with operatic voices as the action traverses social boundaries, with composers Isobel Waller-Bridge and David Schweitzer linking characters to instruments (a harp for Emma, a bassoon for Mr Knightley) in their cues. Live performances play a key role, too, from the piano duelling of Emma and Jane Fairfax (the multitalented Amber Anderson) to a duet in which Knightley sings and plays violin while Emma seethes silently from a distance."[12] Luke Goodsell of ABC News called it as: "a soundtrack that mixes perky classical cues (Beethoven, Mozart) with folksy ballads".[13]
CineVue's "David Schweitzer and Isobel Waller-Bridge’s plinky-plonky score, insists a little too frequently in reminding the audience of its own light-heartedness instead of simply letting the tone speak for itself."[14] David Ehrlich of IndieWire wrote "David Schweitzer and Isobel Waller-Bridge’s minuet-like score might have felt oppressive had de Wilde not baked the music into each scene, so that every strut, smile, and touch is folded into a greater dance (rigid compositions help make de Wilde’s frames seem like stages)."[15] He further listed it as one of the "best film scores of 2020".[16]
James Southall of Movie Wave wrote "it’s gorgeous, sumptuous romantic music, starting with a piece of opera and never really letting up. It’s extremely pretty, accomplished music with a surprising amount of period flair; tuneful, classically orchestrated, almost perennially happy. there's some very elegant instrumental music as well, both the somewhat inevitable cheery pizzicato strings and some more tender material. The score makes up just under 40 minutes of the album and the only real negative is that a number of cues are very short. There’s real quality here so it’s an easy recommendation to make."[17] Jonathan Broxton wrote "Emma is certainly up there as one of the most accomplished and enjoyable comedy scores in quite some time. The music has that quintessential English period sound so beloved of the BBC, and of films based on works by Austen and the Bronte sisters. The orchestrations are beautiful, ranging from the effortlessly charming combination of strings and woodwinds, to the operatic vocals that soar. And the technical content of the score is outstanding too, with a strongly thematic approach."[18]
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