film score
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Commissioned by Richard Bossons and first performed at The Philharmonie Luxembourg on 23rd November 2024 by Kammerata Luxembourg conducted by Leo Geyer.
Duration
67’23’’
Scoring
1.1.1.1,1.1.1.0.,1 perc., single strings
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Programme Note
Dziga Vertov's 1929 silent film masterpiece Man with a Movie Camera is widely regarded as one of the most influential films ever made. Produced by the Ukrainian VUFKU film studio and filmed mostly in Kyiv, Odesa, and Moscow, it is superficially about a cameraman’s journey around an unnamed Soviet city recording its life during one day. However, it is not a conventional documentary film on city life, a popular theme at that time. The pioneering special effects and rapid montage sequences (where short pieces of film on different subjects are joined together to create a narrative), the extensive use of different locations edited together to portray a single place, the idea of showing the process of film-making, the beautiful cinematography, and its portrayal of humanity, raise the film beyond observational documentary to the level of great art. Man with a Movie Camera presents us with a kind of philosophy of the city rather than a simple record of its daily life.
Though a silent film the visual rhythm is often akin to a musical composition, Vertov using the frames of the film and the intervals between them in a similar way to notes on a score. The film is structured so that its tempo gradually increases to reach an extraordinary climax at the end, a thrilling montage of chaotic images created by the film’s editor, Elizaveta Svilova. The Soviet film scholar Professor Yuri Tsivian wrote that 'Man with a Movie Camera invades the territory of sound cinema as far as a silent film can reach.' Silent films, though, were seldom watched in silence. From the earliest days there was a musical accompaniment, either by a live orchestra in the large glamorous cinemas, or a pianist or gramophone in the less prosperous ones. Only three weeks before the Moscow premiere VUFKU had failed to provide an accompaniment for his film and Dziga Vertov had to organise one himself with the help of three musicians, two of whom were well-known cinema orchestra conductors.
In 1995 Professor Tsivian published, in Griffithiana No. 54 (October), his translation of two documents that he discovered the previous year in the Vertov archive in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow. Document 1 consists of handwritten notes by Dziga Vertov of a ‘Music Scenario’ describing the type of music and sounds he thought appropriate for each film sequence. The second document comprises typewritten cue notes for cinema orchestras loosely based on Vertov’s notes. The state film organisation Sovkino approved this ‘Musical Conspectus’ a week before the first screening of the film in Moscow so it was clearly intended for the orchestras in the two cinemas used for the premiere on April 9th 1929, and during the week the film was shown in the city. One of the compilers of the cue notes was a conductor on the opening night.
The ‘Musical Conspectus’ consists of recommendations for excerpts from mostly late 19th and early 20th Century compositions with exact timings and 'mood' suggestions for the film sequences. These cue notes, common during the silent film period, would have been used by the cinema orchestra conductors to arrange each excerpt to suit the sequence. Despite the traditional choice of music, and the haste with which the cue notes were compiled, the suggested excerpts generally work well with this experimental film. Most of the composers of mainly ballet music and overtures are still familiar, but several are little known today and extensive research was needed to find their suggested pieces. This may be the first time in decades that music by Isaac Snoek, Giulio de Micheli, and Édouard Trémisot will be heard.
In many cases the suggested music was longer than the related film sequence so some judgement was necessary to select an appropriate excerpt. Some of the compositions were too short and additional music had to be composed in the style of the original. All the music needed arranging to suit the exact timing of the film sequences and the orchestration (based on the small orchestra seen at the beginning of the film). This interpretation of the Conspectus is therefore as close as possible to what might have been heard by the audiences at the Moscow screenings given that there is no record of the particular excerpts from the suggested music that were played or how they were orchestrated.
There have been many attempts to provide a score for Man with a Movie Camera but this is the only documented contemporary accompaniment to the film. The composer Leo Geyer and film historian Richard Bossons have collaborated on an 18-month project to turn the cue notes into a score to accompany a new print of the film by Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, based on Vertov’s own copy acquired by the Filmliga film club in the city during his 1931 tour of Europe.
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