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Curb Your Enthusiasm soundtrack: who composed the music including iconic theme song ‘Frolic’?

30 September 2021, 09:14 | Updated: 1 October 2021, 14:15

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By Maddy Shaw Roberts

All you need to know about the music scoring HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, including the mischievous main theme...

If you’re looking for some background music to soundtrack that terrible moment of shame after you walk into a lamppost, or perhaps a tune to score that bum note in your recital last week, look no further than the delightfully impish theme to Curb Your Enthusiasm, the TV show soon to be returning for an eleventh series.

‘Frolic’, the sitcom’s main theme, is grounded by a solo tuba’s steady oompah-oompah, with a chromatic mandolin line whistling over the top.

But while the HBO comedy first lit up our small screens in the year 2000, its theme has its origins in 1970s Italy.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is returning for an eleventh series. Picture: Alamy

Who wrote the main theme to ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’?

The main theme, titled ‘Frolic’, was penned by Italian film composer Luciano Michelini and has become synonymous with the TV show Curb Your Enthusiasm.

But the comic march wasn’t an original piece for the series. It was composed for little-known Italian movie La bellissima estate (The Beautiful Summer), and was accidentally discovered years later by Curb’s creator and star Larry David, who in the TV show plays an exaggerated version of himself.

David’s ears pricked up when he heard the music used in a bank advert. He explains on James Andrew Miller’s podcast that he reckoned it had a cheerful quality. “There was something circusy about it. I like to get away with things, comedically, and sometimes music can help in that regard,” he said.

“It tells the audience: Don’t take this seriously, it’s just funny.”

Curb Your Enthusiasm Theme

Who wrote the rest of the soundtrack?

Most scenes in Curb Your Enthusiasm with background music are orchestrated by film score composer Wendell Yuponce.

Yuponce orchestrated the charmingly twee ‘Three Little Maids From School Are We’ from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, which is heard frequently in the series alongside the gypsy dance ‘Les tringles des sistres tintaient’ from Bizet’s opera Carmen.