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The new Paramount film, Bride of the Wind tells the extraordinary story of Alma Mahler, a remarkable woman whose fascinating and complex life crossed a rich artistic era and two world wars. A talented musician in her own right, she studied composition at the Vienna Conservatory with Alexander Zemlinsky – who was also Schoenberg's teacher. She was muse to some of the most talented artists of her time, including composer Gustav Mahler (played in the film by Jonathan Pryce) and painter Oskar Kokoschka (Vincent Perez). The rich and colorful soundtrack includes original music by Stephen Endelman, as well as performances of Alma Mahler's songs by soprano Renée Fleming with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and the music of Gustav Mahler. Here are Endelman's comments, given at a recent screening of Bride of the Wind in New York; the film opens June 8.

How much music is there by Alma Mahler?

I think she was actually quite prolific up until she met Mahler, when she was 19. She didn't write any more after that, even after Mahler died. There's a book by a Norwegian scholar that will soon be published; he's identified 140 pieces by Alma Mahler for a variety of instruments. And her great-great granddaughter, who lives in England, claims to have other material.

That scene in the café - where Mahler says to Alma, "There's only one thing, you have to give up your life for mine" - is actually a distillation of a 14-page letter he wrote to her. And it's much more brutal and would suppress anyone's creative juices. For her to have gone the distance and then have her music performed is remarkable.

Mahler's something of a hero now. Did you know a lot about him or was his music special to you before you started this?

When I was in music school, I had a wonderful teacher named Alfie Nyman, and in his class, the rule was that if it wasn't written after the death of Mahler, it wasn't to be played. My musical education wasn't in the Mahler vein; so I came to this with knowledge and education, but I wasn't a "Mahlerite," and that was actually very helpful, because otherwise I'd constantly have been looking at Mahler's ghost. He'd have been sitting on my shoulder the whole time, cursing me.

How did your role in this project evolve?

I read the script for this movie in 1997, before Bruce [Beresford] was attached to the project. At that point there was no reference to Alma Mahler's music in it at all. So I called up the friend who had sent it, and I said, "Hey – there's a problem...you're talking about a woman who's a composer. Perhaps we should include her music." So that was the first hurdle.

The process was very much a collaboration. Bruce and I talked about what music of Mahler's we should include in the film, and we collaborated in terms of how cues were structured and where they went; he really gave me free reign in terms of composing them.

You had some involvement with preparing the actors as well.

I did do some coaching with the actors – we had two non-musicians being asked to do very challenging things. We made videos of pianists and conductors performing the music I expected to use, and they used those to study. And I have to add here that we prepared lots of music – there's what you expect to have them play, and then there's what you hear in the film. And you're going to shoot things from different angles, of course.

Jonathan Pryce had never conducted, nor played the piano. For the first four weeks of shooting, whenever he wasn't on the set, we'd practice conducting exercises. I showed him basic patterns, and he learned how to switch time signatures; then we tried to introduce the left hand for expressive purposes. Jonathan's an amazing actor, and he got very involved in the music. You can see it in the scene where he's conducting the Fifth Symphony, and he turns to the violas and he's moving with them.

Sarah Wynter learned to play the music. In the scenes where you see her playing, she's using a dummy piano and working to playback; it's very difficult, because she can't hear what she's playing.

Renée Fleming performs on-camera in the film.

And what's unusual about that is that Renée's is a real live performance. She's not doing it to playback. We shot this at the Brahms Hall at the Musikverein in Vienna, which wasn't available in the afternoon – so we got in there at about 5:00, and our crew descended on it and masked all the modern things – light switches, electronics, etc. So there we were with about 350 extras and so forth, and it was sweltering – the hottest summer Austria had ever had. So we started taping at about 7 p.m. At about 3 a.m., Renée started singing to the audience - "Summertime," Puccini arias and so forth – just to keep them smiling. When she finally did "Laue Sommernacht," they'd never heard it before, so it was really incredible.

We were going to post-sync it, but there was no need. And I think the reason that scene has such impact is that Alma's music really comes to life when Renée sings it.