无声银幕上的音乐剧

音乐学院 student’s original score for “The Phantom of the Opera” heads to the silver screen

一开始是一个挑战.

迪伦香槟，大四学生 作文 他在bet365亚洲官网工作, and some friends were kicking around ideas and thought it would be fun to watch a silent movie accompanied by a real-life orchestra.

It was a “hare-brained idea,” but Champagne wanted to see if it could be pulled off. So he grabbed a copy of Lon Chaney’s 1925 horror spectacle “The Phantom of the Opera” and started writing the music.

“I composed some rough sketches and it kind of snowballed from there,香槟酒说。, who will graduate this spring with a bachelor’s degree from the 文学、艺术和社会科学学院 (类).

一年多以后，香槟和 莱昂内尔·汉普顿音乐学院 Professor 艾伦Gemberling are readying the project for its second performance. Gemberling will conduct an eight-piece chamber orchestra at 7 p.m. April 13 as it performs Champagne’s score in front of an audience at the Garland Theater in Spokane.

这是这首曲子的第二次演绎, which Champagne has refined and tinkered with since an initial staging last year at the Kenworthy Performing 艺术 Centre in 莫斯科. 此后，他收到了1美元,500 undergraduate collaborative research key grant from CLASS to rent the Spokane theater, 制作乐谱副本，并宣传合资企业.

音乐家, 包括帕卢斯弦乐四重奏的成员, 执行项目是否作为一种经验努力. Many people have not seen the movies of Hollywood’s silent era, let alone alongside live music.

The score is different than any previous 作文 embedded in the film. Champagne purposely didn’t listen to any of the several scores that exist for the film until after writing his work so he could take on the project with an independent mind. 

无声的不使用声音的, silent films relied heavily on a visually rich world that was created by the film’s producers. Movie makers didn’t necessarily have a knack for cinematography, 香槟说, 于是他们架起了摄像机，开始了他们的工作.”

“这是一个巨大的世界，”他谈到无声电影时说. “我觉得我只触及了表面.”

Except for a few scenes in which the film excerpts the opera “Faust” and a melody, the score and its measures of “creepy 单簧管” and “angry cello” is entirely from Champagne’s mind. 他的八件合奏包括一支长笛, 单簧管, 小提琴, 低音与打击乐器, along with members of the Palouse String Quartet bowing on the viola, 大提琴和小提琴.

每个人都有自己的角色, and 香槟说 he doesn’t let any single musician get more than 12 measures of rest before they get a cue to let them know where they are in the score.

金伯林对他的学生给予了很高的评价. He said Champagne did a nice job of inserting visual cues in the score so he and the musicians have an idea of what is happening in the movie and where the conductor needs to be in the 作文.

“It was so much fun,” 香槟说 of writing the score and seeing it come to life for an audience. “Despite the number of hours I put into this, it rarely felt like work.”

即便如此, Champagne and Gemberling each throw around phrases like “huge undertaking” and “exhausting” when they describe the project.

他们不是在开玩笑.

这部107分钟的电影分为两幕, but the individual parts the musicians read collectively add up to about 500 pages of sheet music. 每一页都必须与屏幕上的动作相匹配.

“It’s absolutely the most challenging piece I’ve ever had to conduct,” Gemberling said. The endurance level that must be met for 45 minutes during each act of the film is almost double most pieces he’s helmed over the course of his career. “Other pieces of music to a certain extent are up to my interpretation and this, 我觉得我必须让电影来诠释音乐. 音乐必须增强影片的效果.”

And unlike a stage play or a musical performance where the conductor can speed up or slow down the show based on the speed of the actors or of certain instruments, Gemberling said everything that accompanies the movie has to be identical each time out.

“这部电影就是这样，”金伯林说. “每次都是一样的. 所以它是精确的.”

这部电影没有中场休息, but Champagne inserted one to give the musicians a short break between acts.

For Champagne, the performance is a payoff after more than a year of effort. He’s been workshopping the score ever since the first performance at the Kenworthy last year, 他说, deleting measures and fixing articulations in his 作文.

The workflow of composing for an existing production is similar to animation, work Champagne regularly performed while employed as a motion graphics artist in the San Francisco Bay area before coming to UI.

但即使在写完和重写了乐谱之后, 香槟说 he’s only seen the film in its entirety a handful of times. That doesn’t include the countless viewings he’s had of every scene to get his 作文 just right.

“我仍然喜欢它，”他说. “I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen it from beginning to end.”

虽然一开始可能只是闹着玩, silent movies have become serious business for Champagne and Gemberling. They’re already planning their next outing to accompany the silver screen in fall 2017.

“We’re doing another one at the Kenworthy in September,” 香槟说. “’Dr. 杰基尔和先生. 海德.“我喜欢默片.”

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