criterionforum.org

Minkin wrote:Last thing before I stop: Does Tangerine Dream's score for L'Inferno ever improve? I've attempted it many times, but can't get past the first five minutes - and I would rather wait for something else than see it completely silent.

It never improved for me but there is now a piano-scored edition from Cineteca di Bologna (English-friendly).

This seems appropriate for this thread - Simon Fisher Turner talks about the challenges of scoring The Great White Silence.

Which posed particular challenges given that it's a two-hour documentary without much narrative shape, especially in the middle when it devotes an inordinate amount of time to penguin footage.

A couple more examples of working composers in current filmmaking who have written new scores for silent films: David Newman writing a new score for Sunrise (clips here and here) which as far as I know was only ever performed at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival screening; and Joe Hisaishi's score for The General (clip here) which seems pretty good. For some reason going from animated films to silent films seems like a smoother transition to me than contemporary live-action films to silents, so it makes sense to me that composers like Hisaishi and David Newman (thinking of his legitimately exquisite score for The Brave Little Toaster) would be game for it. I feel like Michael Giacchino would be a good fit, too (he's practically scored a silent short already with that lovely sequence toward the beginning of Up).

But I would have to agree with others here that it certainly doesn't strike me as obvious that someone who is good at scoring contemporary films will be better at scoring silent films than someone who has only (or primarily) composed for silents. You might just as well say that an actor who is good in contemporary films would be better in a silent film than an actor who is primarily experienced in pantomime - if anything, it's counterintuitive.

That said, I would still be very interested in seeing more of them try it. I mentioned Michael Giacchino. Gabriel Yared also does seem like a really good choice, given that he definitely has an interest in "classic" styles of film scoring (judging by his unused score for Troy, rejected for being too "old-fashioned") and the fact that he is also very active in composing for ballet (and I think generally he's much more versatile than a lot of people give him credit for).

Minkin wrote:If anything should be attacked, it's every Gothic Industrial band's rite of passage: composing a score for Nosferatu.

A couple of years ago I saw a live performance with accompaniment by Misty's Big Adventure. The adventure in question seemed to entail playing a pre-recorded music track and trying very hard to drown it out (who could blame them?) with an electric guitar, a xylophone and a clarinet. There may well have been other instruments of torture involved. Probably not Gothic Industrial, but it was a long, headachey evening.

I may be alone in thinking James Bernard's score is definitive (and prefer the BFI edition to MoC in other ways too); so there's one example of a 'talkie' composer getting it right...

Agreed on Gabriel Yared, something about his music seems uncannily suited to silent films - the only reason I can think of is that he's very attentive to the emotional details of a scene. Thinking of Ripley and Lives of Others primarily.

Talking of headachey evening, I once had the (mis)fortune to go to the premiere of a new score for Eisenstein's Strike. It wasn't really music as such, but some electronic noises produced by a computer and giant speakers. The composer (from IRCAM ) made a very pompous speech to explain his score. Not only was it deafeningly loud, but it was like a series of screeching noises... If you ever want to listen to that, Carlotta released it on DVD.

MichaelB wrote: I don't know anyone who prefers Coppola to Davis when it comes to scoring Napoléon

Well, me for example. Coppola's droning marches and sentimental shtick are completely appropriate for this monstrosity. It's obviously a backhanded compliment, but still Coppola hit the right sound.

Instead of talking about great composers scoring great silents, I'd rather suggest having young composers score a silent as the start of their career. Warner had these nice silent scoring competitions for e.g. the Garbo or the Chaney films and I liked the results very much. Young people are eager and hungry and interested in their task while older legends usually do their stuff regardless what the film in question would really need.

lubitsch wrote:Well, me for example. Coppola's droning marches and sentimental shtick are completely appropriate for this monstrosity. It's obviously a backhanded compliment, but still Coppola hit the right sound.

But even if you're reading the film like that, wouldn't you agree that Davis' bombastic use of Beethoven is rather more effective?

lubitsch wrote:Instead of talking about great composers scoring great silents, I'd rather suggest having young composers score a silent as the start of their career. Warner had these nice silent scoring competitions for e.g. the Garbo or the Chaney films and I liked the results very much. Young people are eager and hungry and interested in their task while older legends usually do their stuff regardless what the film in question would really need.

As I understand it, that's pretty much what the BFI is doing with the nine Hitchcock silents currently under restoration - they're commissioning nine different composers, and going from the names announced so far (Nitin Sawhney/The Lodger, Daniel Patrick Cohen/The Pleasure Garden, Soweto Kinch/The Ring), the emphasis is clearly on the younger generation.

Don't forget the commissions for the upcoming Epstein set too. Germaine Dulac's set from a year or so back also got a choice of three scores including the 'toy orchestra' sound of Pascal Comelade which is hardly a mainstream choice. And cross referencing the upcoming Birth of a Nation howzabout DJ Spooky's remix?

At Herr Schreck's suggestion, the "Silent Masterworks without Master Scores" thread has been merged with this thread. Just so there's no confusion.

Thank you, sir!

From the Flicker Alley thread:

Drucker wrote:

HerrSchreck wrote:The shit that is accepted and passed along as Formally Appropriate in the realm of silent film music can be breathtaking; alas the Timothy Brocks of the world are few and far between. The sin so many commit is to use the scoring of a commercial dvd/BD as an opportunity to reach an audience more vast than is common for them... and to use the score as a means of seizing the moment and capturing their attention. Thus you get scores that are fitst overbearing, and second, stylistically completely inappropriate--resulting in a total disaster bearing little to no connection to the thing that happens to be unfolding on your TV screen.

Haven't seen this one, though. Good on you for bringing the world of silents to your tot. .

I know this isn't the thread for silent film scores, but what say you about stylistically, perhaps, scores trying too HARD to fit the mood? City Girl, for example (I DO like the score), but there's parts of it that strike me as a bit (for lack of a better word...jeez so many qualifiers), "obvious." It's a movie centered around a farm, and there's hillbilly-ish instrumentation. Some Kino discs like Cabinet of Caligari...I think really start to lose me when the franticness of the picture is too literally recreated with music.

Well I think the Kino CALIGARI's default track-the more modern track-pretty decent, though some of it is just too loose and noodling. The second track by Sosin is just mindbendingly bad.

CITY GIRL as a film is Murnau at his crowd-pleasing most melodramatically accessible ( for heaven's sake hour heroine actually has a hopeful geranium in her window!). For that reason I think the score (i dont have the MOC BD, but have the crown jewel of all home video releases, the MurBorzFox box) works well.

As for scores being too thematically obvious or too supportive of the onscreen action, it's certainly the lesser of 2 evils, considering the industrial norm. Silent film scoring is a unique form of music as it is meant not so much to be noticed but to be entirely supportive of, to punctuate the onscreen action. I suppose it is possible to be overly supportive, but certainly if this were the problem in the majority of cases, I would be a much happier man when it came to dvd releases.

Anyone ever see 3epkano do live accompaniments? I've only seen them do one film, Metropolis and it was excellent - I liked it even better than Alloy Orchestra's accompaniment. I don't even recall them doing any 'mickey mousing' to the music, which I liked.

I mentioned this in another thread, but the score on TCM's release of The Cameraman is so appalling that I wound up watching the movie mute- it tries desperately to change mood so as to fit every single joke or moment of pathos, and winds up having absolutely zero unity musically and underlining jokes in a way that destroys the wit of them. Blegh.

matrixschmatrix wrote:I mentioned this in another thread, but the score on TCM's release of The Cameraman is so appalling that I wound up watching the movie mute- it tries desperately to change mood so as to fit every single joke or moment of pathos, and winds up having absolutely zero unity musically and underlining jokes in a way that destroys the wit of them. Blegh.

I saw this at Film Forum during their Silent run, and the original music was fantastic. There's a scene in the movie where Buster keeps getting hurt (doing what I don't remember, I think it's trying to get the camera out of the office and walking into the door) and at that moment, the pianist would whack the piano to mime the effect of getting hurt, but besides that, the music breezed along wonderfully.

But again, that effect, repeated too often, would be maddening.

Just got back from seeing Merrill Garbus, Ava Mendoza, and the tUnE-yArDs band perform over several Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle shorts at the Castro. I thought their music for One Week was the highlight, beginning with beautiful falsetto vocal blending (all Garbus, of course, looped into a choir) over the wedding, leading to some clumsy jackhammer rhythms over the house construction (reminiscent of Raymond Scott), and ending with a great roaring mush of electric guitar and saxophone as the house spun around in the storm. They did a nice raqs sharqi mock-up during Arbuckle's Salome dance in The Cook, and although Garbus poached one of her own songs from w h o k i l l ("Gangsta") for the bank robbery in The Haunted House, the bouncy rhythm of the tune worked more or less. All in all, I think she is a kindred spirit to Arbuckle and Keaton, and like the themes of violence in her songs, there was some appropriate menace in her collaboration with Mendoza; the pratfalls had more impact as a result, even if the music was occasionally too loud. I had mixed feelings overall, but for the most part, it was a success, and it was interesting to see young pop artists (albeit on the experimental end) contribute music to 90-year-old films in the wake of reading the Nitrateville thread regarding AIR's score to Méliès.

More along the theme of music responsive to action: I am watching King Vidor's La Bohème from TCM, and as Mimi lies dying of tuberculosis, the pianist decides to play a frisky arpeggiated theme reminiscent of butterflies and maypole dances. I'm assuming this was a score intended for this film and not superimposed by a producer. I wouldn't bother picking on this particular musician (whoever he/she is), except that I think the point should be made that conventional silent-score instrumentation can just as often lead to incommensurate, insipid work as "modernized" scoring. My experience with Merrill Garbus and Buster Keaton above testifies to the potential for modern work to buttress rather than undermine the image; in some cases, it even boosts the film to greater heights. Most on this board probably already realize this and are open to innovative work in silent film scoring, but I guess I'm still reacting to the Nitrateville kerfuffle (beginning here) regarding AIR's score to Méliès; a lot of that criticism seems to sustain the myth that silent film music should have no instrumentation that is anachronistic to the period in which it was produced, although I think the majority of complaints in that particular case at least ostensibly revolve around the score's indifference to action on screen, which, in fact, is the most common complaint I have with conventional scoring. I'd much rather listen to something unique that doesn't punctuate every hammer blow, than something that lazily attempts to overcome these deficiencies by being conventional.

I recently found a Danish CD with Ole Schmidt's score for Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc at a 2nd hand outlet. For a short moment I thought I would be able to just throw the CD in the CD player and listen to it while watching the BD. But that wasn't really an option. The disc only contains 58 minutes of music so it's quite difficult to synchronize the music and the film. Silly me!

Filmmaker Henning Carlsen actually claims in his liner notes, for some odd reason, that the release of this disc is a great opportunity to watch the film with Ole Schmidts score: "One can [...] run the film on one's video and start one's CD player at the right moment. It will be a beautiful experience."

But it takes more than a little ingenuity to synchronize the music and the video, even if the tracks have recognizable names like "A Letter", "Torture", or "Fever". We can't even be sure that this particular recording has been made in tempis which follows any particular version of the film. There may even have been some alterations in the score so that what we hear here is more like a suite (but I'm not sure about that).

Ole Schmidt actually scored the full film, 82 minutes of music. Too bad we don't have a complete recording. The score was commissioned by Hollywood producer Annett Wolf for a 'Scandinavia Today' event in 1983. The premiere was held on 21st June 1983 at Wadworth Theatre, Los Angeles.

It's a wonderful score though. I really like it. It has a medeival feel to it although it's clearly by a modern classical composer (think 20th century vocal symphonies like No. 14 by Shostakovich). My first thought when listening to this disc was that this music would really suit films like The Seventh Seal or Day of Wrath with its massive hints at Dies Irae. But it also suits Joan very well. And the sound is amazing! A wonderful recording made in 1999.

It's scored for 7 winds, 3 percussions, piano, 17 strings, soprano, and classical guitar. The soprano sings without lyrics (like Nielsen's Symphony No. 2, which Ole Schidt is very familiar with).

The liner notes explains a bit more about some of the earliest music for Joan of Arc. Jonathan Rhodes Lee has provided a more extensive overview of some of the many scores for Joan.

I also recommend reading Thomas Vilhelm's interview with Richard Einhorn (presented in English at the Danish site filmmusic.dk).

Holy shit. I just finished watching the TCM broadcast of The Penalty, and they used the Michael Polher synth score. I now learn that this score is infamous - and has since been replaced on the Kino blu. Without a doubt this is the worst silent film score I've ever had to sit through. The utter lunacy of the track is unfathomable (unless the intent was to make you as insane as Lon Chaney's character). It has about 5 main themes that get endlessly repeated - and they start/stop without any rationale (mid-scene, mid-intertile). There's the desert-sounding theme; the obnoxious violin; the random piano notes; the anvil -metal clanking with female shrieks and moans; and the worst - the saxophone from hell that plays the same 3-second loop of clangs and then four notes repeatedly for like 10 minutes. Its horrible, and I had to hit mute every time the sax theme would play as it was causing everyone pain (we all ended up with headaches, and the fucking thing is still stuck in my head, so I keep reliving the nightmare). BTW they are all done in terrible MIDI. The soundtrack is constantly attempting to outdo / distract you from the movie - and perhaps successfully as I probably would have enjoyed the movie itself without the blaring awfulness. Yes, I should have just muted the damn thing after 10 seconds. I can't imagine anyone (even someone at Kino) having listened to this and thought it would be even an acceptable attempt at a silent film score (although given the Variete and Trip to the Moon scores recently, perhaps whoever approves these just hates silent film).

I have sat through some other terrible silent scores, but nothing has given me quite the headache as The Penalty. Some other choice experiences have been:

-The Headless Horseman (1922) - PD version - score switched between Toccata and Danse Macabre. When one would end, the other would immediately start.
Birth of a Nation - The entire film was scored only by Grieg's Holberg Suite. It wasn't actually too bad, but repetitive for a 3 hour film.
- l'inferno - The damn Tangerine Dream score. I could only get through about five minutes before I decided to give up and wait to find anything better (perhaps this is worse than The Penalty, but I don't feel like giving it another try anytime soon - to see if it improves)

-Nosferatu - all of the Metal scores. Ugh. This seems like it was a fad for every metal band to throw their music onto Nosferatu. They all have the same effect. That said, I really don't care for the "official" score that is on the MoC discs - as it seems to miss all of the cues and never lives up to the frightening imagery (it is supposed to be a "Symphony of Terror" after all- but the score is all too busy with happy birdsongs /tunes while Orlok enters Hutter's room, etc). I own but haven't listened to the BFI disc with the James Bernard score (which I probably should, given that I love his Hammer compositions). Despite attending a live showing of the organ score by Timothy Howard, I think I prefer Image's release with the "bells/knobs" -soundtrack, as it seems to be the only version to be quite appropriate to the onscreen actions throughout.

Minkin wrote:I own but haven't listened to the BFI disc with the James Bernard score (which I probably should, given that I love his Hammer compositions).

You're in for a treat - this is my favourite edition of the film, and for my money Bernard's score is better than Erdmann's.

It has been a while since I listened to the James Bernard score, but it is very in the vein of Bernard's Hammer compositions. I think he also does the same thing with the music that he did with his celebrated Hammer scores and musically 'sings' the name of the villain! So rather than a grand "Drac-u-la!" you get the more creepily anxious "Nos-fera-tu, Nos-fera-tu, Nos-feratu!"

colinr0380 wrote:It has been a while since I listened to the James Bernard score, but it is very in the vein of Bernard's Hammer compositions. I think he also does the same thing with the music that he did with his celebrated Hammer scores and musically 'sings' the name of the villain! So rather than a grand "Drac-u-la!"...

I've often wondered if Bernard was influenced by the three-note leitmotif from the 1948 "Su-per-man", changing the key and orchestration of course to render it sinister instead of heroic.