Film Music - Harmen Fraanje

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Film Music Werner Herzog

Film music has become an important part of Harmen Fraanje’s artistic practice. Over the past two decades he has contributed as a composer, pianist, keyboard player and organist to a wide range of international film productions, most notably through his long-standing collaboration with cellist and composer Ernst Reijseger.

As the principal composer, Reijseger has created the music for numerous films by acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog, with Fraanje increasingly contributing his original compositions, improvisations and musical textures to the scores. Their collaboration can be heard in:

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009), presented by David Lynch
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)
Salt and Fire (2016)
Family Romance, LLC (2019)
Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (2019)
Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (2020), with Clive Oppenheimer
The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft (2022)
Theatre of Thought (2022)
Ghost Elephants (2025)
Bucking Fastard (2026)

Herzog has also joined Reijseger, Fraanje & singer Mola Sylla for a series of unique performances across Europe. In these multidisciplinary productions, Herzog reads his own stories from a hammock, accompanied by live music from the trio, projections from his films and appearances by the Sardinian vocal ensemble Cuncordu e Tenore de Orosei.

Their collaboration with Herzog also extends beyond cinema through Hearsay of the Soul, Herzog’s first video installation, created for the Whitney Biennial in New York and later acquired by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Inspired by the enigmatic seventeenth-century Dutch artist Hercules Segers, whose dreamlike landscapes and experimental prints have long fascinated Herzog, the installation combines Herzog’s imagery with music by Reijseger and Fraanje, including excerpts filmed during a recording session featuring Reijseger on cello and Fraanje on church organ.

Film Music Other Directors

Beyond their work with Herzog, Reijseger and Fraanje have also collaborated on a range of feature films and documentaries, including:

Palingdans (Eel’s Journey) directed by Hans Dortmans
Voor Emilia by Martijn Maria Smits
De Herberg by Ingrid van der Linde
Walking Out by Alex & Andrew Smith
Transumanza by Roberto Zazzara

Separately, Fraanje co-composed the score for the Belgian feature film The Silent Treatment (2025), directed by Caroline Strubbe, together with Aino Peltomaa and Mikko Perkola. The project reflects another facet of his work as a composer, extending his musical language into contemporary cinema.