(November 3, 1953 – January 18, 2025)
Claire van Kampen, a composer of music for plays and television dramas, as well as a director, writer and frequent collaborator of her Oscar-winning husband Mark Rylance, died at age 71, her family has announced.
Van Kampen was an accomplished musicologist, and her compositions graced many theatrical productions in London and on Broadway. Her first credited Broadway score was for Sam Shepard’s True West in 2000, which starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Robert LuPone and Celia Weston.
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, a family friend, saw the play, about a Spanish king who couldn’t sleep until he’d been soothed by the voice of a castrato, and persuaded van Kampen to pen a screenplay. “Steven’s mentoring me on the script,” van Kampen had said.
Van Kampen was named the first female composer for both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. She served as the Tudor music arranger and historical musical adviser for the TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall series of novels. She always said that she was at her happiest when studying ancient sheet music.
At the time of her death, van Kampen and Rylance had been working on several projects, including a historical TV drama for Spielberg at Amblin Entertainment.
