F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1926)

Phillip Johnston, composer.
Hilary Bell, librettist.
Length: 116 minutes.

This 1926 German Expressionist silent film, starring Emil Jannings, Gösta Ekman, and Camilla Horn, was Murnau’s last German film before emigrating to America, & considered by many to be his masterpiece. It uses fantastic special effects and painterly tableaux to tell a story that is larger than life, yet tragic in its human dimensions. The themes of Fate, human vanity, individual free will, and self-sacrifice are as relevant today as ever.

This original score for Murnau’s Faust, commissioned by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, premiered with a brilliant new print by Kino Films at the Walter Reade Theater on Oct 5th 2002 as part of the New York Film Festival.

Performers:

(US): Phillip Johnston (saxophones, piano, ukulele), Elizabeth Farnum (voice), Will Holshouser or Guy Klucevsek (accordion), Tomas Ulrich (cello).

(Australia): Phillip Johnston (saxophones, piano, ukulele), Tanya Sparke (voice), Elizabeth Jones (accordion), John Napier (cello).

Background:

In 1993, with the support of a Meet The Composer grant, sponsored by The American Museum of the Moving Image, in a consortium with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Philadelphia International Film Festival, I created my first original score for silent film, for the 1927 Tod Browning film, The Unknown. That score was subsequently recorded for John Zorn’s Avant label, and has since toured in the US, Europe, and Australia to many venues including Rome’s Teatro Verdi, Mass MoCA, the Virginia Film Festival, and the Big Day Out in Sydney, Australia.

Subsequently I did two more original scores for silent film, The Georges Méliès Project, completed in 1997, and Page of Madness, completed in 1998. In each of my silent film scores I have tried to create a contemporary score in my own style that forms a bridge across time to a work I admire from the past (as opposed to a traditional silent film score, or even a traditional film score). I have sought to approach each collaboration differently. In  The Unknown I sought to address the issues of asynchronous film scoring and untraditional musical storytelling techniques. In  The Georges Méliès Project, I used the 7 films which I had collected “studies” in each of which I addressed the relationship between film and music in a slightly different way. In  Page of Madness, I introduced the idea of a combination of written material and large sections of improvisation, but improvisation carefully scored to the film with the use of synchronized stopwatches and visual cues.

In my score for Faust, I introduce a new element, which, to my knowledge, has been used very little, if at all, in contemporary silent film scores, the element of song. My score, in addition to combining all of the elements mentioned above, includes both instrumental passages and songs and lyrical elements, which are written by the librettist, Hilary Bell. These literary elements intersect the film in non-traditional and oblique ways, similar to my instrumental approach to the film. The singer also sings both composed vocalise passages, and vocal improvisations, which are scored to the film as described above.

My collaborators:

GUY KLUCEVSEK’s music/theatre scores include "Squeezeplay" – collaborations with David Dorfman and Dan Froot, Mary Ellen Childs, Dan Hurlin, Claire Porter and Victoria Marks --which was developed, in part, at MASS MoCA, and premiered at The Kitchen in March, 2000; "Hard Coal" (1999), with the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble; and "Chinoiserie" (1995), with Ping Chong & Co. He has released 12 recordings as soloist leader, including his latest, Guy Klucevsek and Alan Bern:  Accordance, on Winter & Winter.  He is a member of Dave Douglas’ band, Charms of the Night Sky, with whom he regularly tours and records.

Klucevsek has received New York Dance and Performance Awards (BESSIES) for his scores for David Dorfman Dance’s, "Hey," and Dan Hurlin’s "Everyday Uses for Sight:  No. 7."  He was also awarded a Listen Up prize for “Best Original Score of 1996 by Publishers Weekly for his music accompanying the Audio Book version of E. Annie Proulx’s novel, Accordion Crimes..

ELIZABETH FARNUM, soprano, is a specialist in contemporary music. In addition, she is an active performer in many diverse musical styles, and her performances of modern music, early music and musical theater have taken her throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. In the opera world, she performed the role of Donna Anna in Don Giovanni with The Group Opera and Pamina in The Magic Flute with the Bronx Opera. She created the role of Alva in Anthony Braxton’s Shala Fears for the Poor, and has sung with the Metropolitan Opera Chorus. She has premiered pieces by prominent contemporary composers in many venues, including Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, Bargemusic, London’s Institute for Contemporary Art and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, collaborating with such composers as Charles Wuorinen, Ricky Ian Gordon, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Anthony Newman and Toby Twining.

She has been a guest soloist with many of New York’s modern music ensembles, including The New York New Music Ensemble, The Cygnus Ensemble, The Group for Contemporary Music, Parnassus, the S.E.M. Ensemble, the North/South Consonance and most recently gave the premiere performance and recording of Charles Wuorinen’s "The Haroun Songbook" with members of the New York City Opera, in which she sang the title role. She has recently completed the World Premiere recording of the songs of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, which has been released on the Centaur label.

Cellist-composer TOMAS ULRICH received music degrees from Boston University and the Manhattan School of Music. Mr. Ulrich has performed with such artists as Anthony Davis, Joe Lovano, Gerry Hemingway, Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, Simon Shaheen, Herb Robertson, Dominic Duval, Joe McPhee, Ben Allison, Kevin Norton, Ted Nash, Uri Caine and Dave Douglas. He is also a member of the Diller-Quaile String Quartet which premiered his Quintet for Trumpet and Strings (featuring guest soloist Herb Robertson) in May of 1996. JAZZ NOW has characterized Mr. Ulrich as "the total package...incredible chops, great imagination and superb pitch. He fulfills the roles of bassist, guitarist and additional horn player and is endlessly talented and creative." Mr. Ulrich has written music for theater, film and instrumental performance and has concertized in Europe, Japan, South America, Canada and throughout the United States. His performances can be heard on over 30 CDs in a wide range of musical settings and styles.

Librettist HILARY BELL is known internationally as a writer for stage, radio, screen and music theatre. Her radio plays Wreckage,  The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Ruysch, Is It You? and The Claimant were commissioned and produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Her stage plays have been produced in Australia, Europe and the United States, including New York’s Atlantic and Chicago’s Steppenwolf. They include Wolf Lullaby, Fortune, Shot While Dancing, The Falls, The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Ruysch, and Memmie LeBlanc. Her libretti include the musical The Wedding Song (composer Douglas Stephen Rae), song cycle Talk Show (composer Elena Katz-Chernin) ten-minute opera Crumbs from the Table of Love (composer Charles B. Griffin), and full-length opera Mrs. Satan (composer Victoria Bond), excerpts of which were presented by New York City Opera.

She is a recipient of the Philip Parsons Young Playwrights' Award, Jill Blewitt Playwrights' Award, Australian Writers Guild Award (AWGIE), the Bug’n’Bub Award and Eric Kocher Playwrights’ Award. Her children’s novel Mirror, Mirror received the Aurealis Award and has been translated into Danish. Hilary is a graduate of the Juilliard Playwrights’ Studio and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, & has taught playwriting at Wesleyan University and New York University. She was the 2003-04 Tennessee Williams Fellow in Playwriting at the University of the South, Tennessee. Hilary is currently under commission from Yale Rep, as well as writing the screenplay for Alex Miller's Journey To The Stone Country, and a musical about Cole's Funny Picture Books.

Film Synopsis:

The film begins with the forces of the prince of darkness riding across the sky. The prince of peace, a flaming-haired angel with enormous wings, wagers the world with the prince of darkness, Mephisto. The locus of the wager is Faust, an alchemist, a scholar. Mephisto covers Faust's city with a dark cloud of plague, and in his frustration over his inability to heal his fellow citizens, Faust hurls his books into the fire and calls upon the assistance of the prince of darkness. Jannings' portrayal of Mephisto, particularly his giant form looming over Faust's city, was the inspiration for the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence in Walt Disney's Fantasia .

Through Mephisto, Faust recaptures his youth and an assistant, the trickster of tricksters himself. Both Faust and Mephisto are young men as Faust wishes for a home and is transported to the village in which Margarethe lives with her mother and brother, on leave from the army. Faust falls in love with her, but with trick upon trick Mephisto turns a sun-drenched love story into tragedy that encompasses a merciless winter storm and a burning at the stake. At the center of the film is the parallel wooing of Margarethe by Faust and Mephisto by Margarethe's Aunt Marthe. Mephisto and Marthe provide broad comedy to contrast with the earnestness of Faust's pursuit of Margarethe. Later, Martha is just as merciless as Mephisto, rejecting Margarethe when the rest of her village does.

This center of the film is perfectly framed by much darker sequences involving Faust and Margarethe alone. The first third of the film follows the trials and fall of Faust, while the last third shows what happens to Margarethe after the tragedy that strikes her as a consequence of her love for Faust.

(from John Akre’s Web of Murnau site).


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