KEEPING SCORE

Rachel Portman, who provided the bold, haunting score for the period drama “The Duchess,” says every project has its own character -- “a world that it lives within. I probably approach every film fresh.”

Portman, the first woman to win an original score Oscar -- for her lilting work on 1996’s “Emma” -- notes that with a period film such as “The Duchess,” she avoided “using certain harmonies that would make it sound too contemporary.”

But she still wanted to go big with it. Director Saul Dibb agreed. “He wanted the music to have its own character and to have bold strikes. He wasn’t afraid of that.”

Portman, who says composing for her is “very intuitive,” found “The Duchess” such a robust picture that “I felt I could put something strong up against it.”

-- Susan King