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T exas Public Radio sponsors a film series that shows in our local arty theater. Every month or so, they show something like Notorious, or Grand Illusion, or Black Orpheus.
In 2003 they commissioned me to compose and perform an original score to the 1927 silent movie Wings, the first movie to get an Academy Award. It went over quite well, and in 04 they asked me to do the same for another 1927 movie, F.W. Murnau's classic Sunrise, the other first movie to get an Academy Award.
As expected, Murnau's movie is quite a show. It was the German Expressionist's first Hollywood movie; and the result is what you might call Hollywood Expressionism: lots of sturm and drang, and the boy and girl fall in love. The story concerns a married fellow who's seeing another woman, with whom he's plotting to kill his wife. The murder attempt goes bad, and he spends the rest of the movie trying to make it up to her in various settings like a disturbing countryside, a disturbing city, and a disturbing carnival. Will she forgive him? Will he return to the hoyden? Will either he or she survive the horrific threats to life and sanity thrown in their way by life and Murnau? Well, you'll just have to see it. It's immensely satisfying.
Of course, the challenge is to write music that will go along with the movie, underlining the emotions of it, while not being too cartoon-punchy; and then to perform it as a single solo piano piece for 2 hours without a break.
The day after the show, I was interviewed on Texas Public Radio's Classical Spotlight, in a 20-minute interview with Randy Anderson, about the movie and the challenges of scoring it, including several musical samples.
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