Music for Silent Film: Phillip Johnston questions, I answer (Part 4)

Part 4 of my interview. Phillip Johnston, leader of the Microscopic Septet and a prolific composer for silent film, emailed me a set of questions in February 2012. This is Fourth installment

IV Auteurship

1) Can you choose one or two scenes from a silent film that you’ve scored in which you engage with the film in an unexpected or unconventional way, and talk a little bit about it/them?

As mentioned earlier, my take on NOSFERATU put the vampire on center stage, his motivations, his desires. A typical movie treatment would heighten the audience identification with the victim.

Harker first meets NOSFERATU at his Transylvania castle, deep into the night. In this scene, the orchestra first centers on Harker. As they sit for dinner and Harker becomes increasingly distracted by his host's unearthly appearance, the marimba and violin pizz play an eighth-note octave pattern, suggesting an anxious passing of time. Dissonant chords recalling haunted distant train whistles emanate from the trumpet, trombone and tenor sax. Tremolo spy-guitar plays a countermelody. As Harker's terror increases, the horns drop out and a sick bass clarinet multiphonic dominates the sound. The marimba drops out and the violin switches to long tremolo glissandos.

The clock strikes midnight, as the drums move into a 12/8 shuffle. Harker accidently cuts himself and blood drips from his finger. Seeing the blood, Nosferatu exclaims "Your precious blood" and suddenly springs like a predatory insect from his chair, confronting Harker in a menacing fashion. The full band launches into a dissonant burlesque mirroring the power and swagger of Nosferatu and is consistent with the Bram Stoker novel which emphasizes the sexual nature of the vampire's lust for blood.

2) Do you think you have a recognizable style in silent film scoring, or that your work is chameleon-°©‐like (like some composers for contemporary film)? If so, how would you characterize that style?

Listeners say that they can hear me in my scores, it might be note selections, phrase shapes, chord progressions, rhythmic treatments. I do not try to maintain a certain "Marriott" style, I compose to the scene and to what needs to be expressed.

3) Do you make an attempt to see/hear the work of other contemporary composers for silent film? If so, can you mention a couple that you admire, and why?

I attend silent film performances whenever I can. I'm often amazed by the treatments! Everything from random electronic knob twisting to sheets of sound saxophone to carefully reconstructed period music to episodic melodies surrounded by free improv.

A small sample of some composers I admire:
Alloy Orchestra - Innovative use of found percussion. Best weather effects
Sheldon Brown - virtuosic, Can mimic anything, yet with his own touch.
Guenter Buchwald - Development of themes over the course of a movie. His singing during "Die Weber"
Matte Bye - Provides an excellent backdrop to witness the emotion on the screen
Beth Custer - Textures during "The Grandmother". Use of improvisation
Philip Glass - His operatic scores which accompany the Cocteau films are an important development of "Cinema Opera"
Phillip Johnston - very wide pallet of sounds, very original treatments of visuals
Flying Lotus - surrealist assemblage - see "Heaven and Earth Magic" on YouTube
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra - Meticulous reconstruction of the Jazz Age movie experience.
Nik Phelps - Memorable melodies and excellent organic development of musical thought.

4 Do you identify yourself as a practitioner of this particular art form -°©‐ ie do you consider yourself, not necessarily primarily, but importantly, as a ‘composer of original scores for silent film’?

Composing contemporary scores for silent films IS an important part of my expressive "voice". But increasingly I'm interested in projects that include silent film as part of a larger theater presence.

Music for Silent Film: Phillip Johnston questions, I answer (Part 3)

Part 3 of my interview. Phillip Johnston, leader of the Microscopic Septet and a prolific composer for silent film, emailed me a set of questions in February 2012. This is Third installment

III Philosophy

1. Is it morally acceptable to use another artist's work and change the original meaning?

As mentioned above, it is not a question of morality. Another way to look at new scores for silent films: the composer is creating a site-specific work, with perhaps as much specific concern with the site as a dance performance at a Holocaust museum, or seemingly as casual concern as Verdi in Central Park, or as transgressive as punk rock at Carnegie Hall. If I were to score a Nazi film, would it be morally acceptable to NOT to comment on the meaning?

And again, what is the director's original meaning? How do we know?

2. Would the director have appreciated my scores?

I do think of this sometimes.

Eleanor Keaton (Buster's widow) saw SHERLOCK JR and told us that Buster would have loved it. She played the video for all her friends (I heard this from Van Dyke Parks) I take pride in this.

Francis Lederer, Dr Schoen's son in PANDORA, loved our score when he saw it at the Nuart in 1995.

But it doesn't matter. Would Leonardo have enjoyed Duchamp's moustache?

Did Stravinsky appreciate Disney's dinosaurs romping to LE SACRA in FANTASIA? (he didn't)

3. How audiences have changed.

Audiences are always changing. The audience's tastes generally reflect the times, maybe with a little delayed reaction. Look at EASY RIDER a mere 40 years after it was made - a pinch of the eternal mixed in with a document of the zeitgeist.

I postulate that audiences from the 1920's were more sentimental and more earnest than contemporary ones - cinematic expressions that were accepted as sincere then are now viewed from an ironic viewpoint. But again, the earnest expressions of one generation will be interpreted with ironic insight by a later one.

I don't see how a composer could not be blind to this disconnect. But with it comes an opportunity to comment on the changing mores and styles. A composer could decide to write intentionally "old-fashioned" sentimental music (to give the audience a taste of the earnestness of the expression) or go with a more contemporary ironic outlook (which will seem to film purists as "making fun of the movie").

As for myself, this generally happens intuitively.

4. Should every piece of film music mean something?

Generally yes - just as every shot in a great film has a story to tell, every sound has a purpose. But even great films have their narrative flaws, perhaps due to studio mandated cuts, for example the Van Helsing sections of NOSFERATU or the inexplicable swordfighting in METROPOLIS (Moroder version). What's a composer to do?

5. What is unique about the silent film art form.

a. Heightened sense of fantasy - more akin to theater or dream. Sound film tends to be a depiction of reality.

6. Are contemporary scores for silent films a unique art form or a subset of the craft of film scoring?

A unique art form, joining with the silent film image to promote a fantasy. Scoring silent film also has aspects of site-specific art work, commenting on the film itself and the director's intentions. That said, I have always found the scoring of Nino Rota to be remarkably similar to the approaches I take to silent film. That is because Fellini is a director of fantasy, not realism.

I see the development of an narrative art form in which theater, music, and filmmaking contribute equally. I've been calling this genre "Cinema Opera" or in my case "Expressionist Cinema Opera".

7. Future plans for silent films

I'm most interested performing with contemporary silent films, especially in an operatic, theatrical, or live performance context. As hinted in the question above, projected video with singing and instrumental music is a feature of all of my current projects. I'm excited to unveil THE SOUL OF THE ROBOT MARIA.