(von Alexander Horwath , Direktor des Österreichischen Filmmuseum, Wien)
What is it: silent film music? And to what purpose should we run it today, 70 years after the last authentic, daily screenings of silent films? These questions are in the current cultural production numerous responses from the symphony orchestra (ie, high culture) of fun contrasting music (that irony-culture) up to the electronic score (ie contemporary interpretation). - In truth, however, most of these responses have little to do with the medium, which they claim to "reconstruct" they want to "revive". Naturally: Everything can be combined with all today, but this results in double-Everything Possible even make sense?
The music (accompaniment) to silent films today probably makes the most sense if it can resonate the fundamental openness and undecidability inherent in any rational reconstruction of a past practice. And above all: if music is the medium, at stake - the silent film - and not their own weight (or their own "importance", volume, or "brightness") buries. If they "bloom", on the contrary, those fragile dimensions of the silent film leaves that have been spilled in the course of history and the changed perception often. This ideal is never implemented in all species and all of the silent film let (in this case is allowed to be better and the music shows the best approximation: the silent movie just as silent film). And where it is - seen from the film - can be done, you need a real musical partner of the film.
The Austrian composer and (improvisation) Musician Gerhard Gruber is one of very, very few representatives of the profession that this seemingly modest, but actually meet the highest requirements. He is the partner par excellence. The special fact that in the silent music of a partial "dead" (ie old and stored on celluloid) and the other part "alive" (ie, present live and is unable to act), requires, paradoxically, for a musician trying to work with this fact (that is, with your own "advantage" is) is not satisfied that the "dead" part would have just as alive as he is.
Gruber form of modesty is also his greatness, for it takes size to give way to a creative and imaginative musician a "foreign text." This is similar to the relationship between a great director (film) and a great actor (musician). In both because such an approach is of course far beyond "servility": This does not someone from his routine services (such as the many other Silent film musician, the same old nostalgic childhood "Klimper rug" wide on every conceivable film). Here, instead, begin a productive conversation - beyond words. As the great actor in a subtle, non-verbal and very moving way the director makes ever new offers and free will, as more and more layers of the director's concept, then Gerhard Gruber relation to each film - regardless whether it is to slapstick comedy, a historical epic, melodrama, psychological chamber drama or is an adventure film.
Gruber's biographical background as a jazz musician, as an improviser in the same game, for these different Qualities most important. It needs a rich palette and also the ability to rapidly, possibly non-trivial response to a wide range of film work as diverse respond. Silent film music in the sense Gruber is neither an exaggeration of the film, nor the "Verdaulichmachung" of an "old fashioned" artifact, not a vanity or a simplification of the existing plant. It is always a partnership proposal, in a partnership that ensures you never get bored. An "open relationship" including intimate relationship of trust.
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