Nonesuch releases composer Carter Burwell’s score for the Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions film True Grit on December 21, 2010. The film is directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and features Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, and Hailee Steinfeld. The Coen brothers wrote the script, which is based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Charles Portis. True Grit opens on December 22. The Coen brothers discuss the film in a feature article in the New York Times available at newyorktimes.com. The soundtrack is available now for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store, where all CDs, LPs, and DVDs are currently 33% off as part of the store's 3rd anniversary sale.

The album includes 20 short original works by Burwell, featuring excerpts from the gospel hymns “Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand” (by Franklin L. Eiland), “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” (by Charles Converse), “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” (by Elisha A. Hoffman & Anthony J. Showalter), “Talk About Suffering” (Traditional), and “The Glory-Land Way” (by J. S. Torbett). Digital versions of the album—including the free MP3s that come with  Nonesuch Store orders of the CD—contain a bonus track: Iris DeMent’s rendition of “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” which plays during the film’s closing credits.

True Grit is the story of 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), whose father has been shot in cold blood by the coward Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). Mattie is determined to bring him to justice. Enlisting the help of a trigger-happy, drunken U.S. Marshal, Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), she sets out with him—over his objections—to hunt down Chaney. Her father’s blood demands that she pursue the criminal into Indian territory and find him before a Texas Ranger named LeBoeuf (Matt Damon) catches him and brings him back to Texas for the murder of another man.

Burwell says of the film’s music: “Ethan and Joel and I had the same idea—a score rooted in 19th-century hymns. The songs Mattie would sing if she had time for such frivolity. Our model was the hymn ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,’ composed in 1888 by Anthony Showalter, an elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Dalton, Georgia, and used memorably in the film The Night of the Hunter. This, together with other hymns of the period, forms the backbone of the score, which grows from church piano to orchestra as Mattie gets farther and farther from home.”

You can watch a preview of the film here: