In early discussions about the musical direction of the exhibition, Christoph Scholz proposed Hans Zimmer’s Hannibal soundtrack as a key artistic reference and conceptual guideline.
Zimmer’s score draws heavily on the gravitas of late Romantic orchestral writing—slow, ceremonial strings, choral shadows, and ecclesiastical harmonies—yet deliberately withholds catharsis. Nothing resolves. The music circles, stalks, inhales. Rather than guiding emotional release, it sustains a state of suspended tension.
This approach resonates with the original function of sacred Western music, particularly pre-Romantic liturgical traditions. Such music was not intended to express individual emotion, but to contain forces larger than the human: death, sin, mystery, divinity. Its power lies in restraint, ritual, and repetition rather than narrative payoff.