Charlie Chaplin’s
„MODERN TIMES“
with Live Orchestral Screening
Timothy Brock’s reconstruction of the Original Score
Modern Times, written, produced and directed by Charlie Chaplin, who also wrote the music, presents the comedian in his same old loveable tramp characterization, but in a somewhat different setting. Gigantic factory sets and huge café scenes dwarf the pathetic, bewildered little figure, but through it all he wanders hopefully, battling the vicissitudes of life with the tragi-comic fortitude that endeated him to the world.
“Modern Times is the old Chaplin at his best. The picture is fun and sound entertainment, though silent. It’s Chaplin at his best looking his best – young, pathetic and a very funny guy. He remains the world’s No I pantomimist.” (Variety, 1936)
“One happy thing about sound was that I could control the music, so I composed my own. I tried to compose elegant and romantic music to frame my comedies in contrast to the tramp character, for elegant music gave my comedies an emotional dimension. Musical arrangers rarely understood this. They wanted the music to be funny. But I would explain that I wanted no competition, I wanted the music to be a counterpoint of grace and charm, to express sentiment without which, as Hazlitt says, a work of art is incomplete.” (Charlie Chaplin in “My Autobiography”)
CHARLES CHAPLIN
(1889-1977)
Charlie Chaplin was born April 16, 1889 in London, England, to music hall performers. Chaplin's father succumbed to alcoholism and an early death. Chaplin's mother struggled to support him and his elder half-brother, Sydney, until both her health and mind broke down. At ten, Chaplin went to work in a clog dance act and later in comic roles. He joined Fred Karno's Speechless Comedians in 1908 and while on tour in America as a Karno star player, was offered a contract by the Keystone Film Company, headed by film impresario Mack Sennett. Chaplin was first seen as the Tramp in his second Keystone release, "Kid's Auto Race" (1914), and was soon writing and directing his own films. After one year at Keystone, in which he appeared in 35 films - all of which were one- or two-reel shorts with the exception of "Tillie's Punctured Romance" (1914) the first feature length comedy film - Chaplin left Keystone for the Essanay Fim Manufacturing Company. At Essanay, Chaplin made 14 short films before joining the Mutual Film Corporation, where he made 12 outstanding two-reel comedies. Chaplin built his own studio in Hollywood and released his film through First National, where he made such classics as "Shoulder Arms" (1918) and his first feature length film, "The Kid" (1921). In 1919, in partner-ship with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith, Chaplin formed United Artists. Chaplin was now his own distributor as well as his own writer, director, producer, and star. Among his classic films are "A Woman of Paris" (1923), "The Gold Rush" (1925), "The Circus" (1928), "City Lights" (1931), "Modern Times" (1936), "The Great Dictator" (1940), "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947), and "Limelight" (1952). While en route to London for the premiere of "Limelight", Chaplin's re-entry permit to the U.S. was rescinded based on allegations regarding his morals and politics. Chaplin moved to Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland in 1953 with his fourth wife, Oona, and their family. He made two last films in exile, "A King in New York" (1957) and "A Countress from Hong Kong" (1967), and published two autobiographical volumnes. He returned briefly to the U.S. in 1972 to receive an honorary Academy Award and was knighted by H. M. Queen Elizabeth II in 1975. Sir Charles Chaplin died Christmas Day, 1977 at the age of 88.
Synopsis Modern Times
Charlie is a factory worker in this hectic age - a minor cog in the grinding wheels of industry. His job - mechanically tightening bolts on a moving belt.
The monotony of the work drives him berserk. Taken to a hospital he soon recovers and is discharged, cautioned to avoid excitement. Caught in a street riot, he is mistaken for the leader and thrown into a patrol wagon.
Charlie unconsciously thwarts an attempted jail-break. As a reward, he is given a cell with all the comforts at home. But just as he is ready to settle down to a life of ease and contentment in jail, he is pardoned. Charlie then gets a job in a shipyard, but is fired for doing the wrong things at the wrong times. He resolves to return to the comfort and security of jail.
He meets the girl - a gamine of the waterfront. She and her orphaned sister are about to be taken into custody by the juvenile welfare officers, but she escapes. When she is about to be arrested for stealing food, Charlie attempts to take the blame, but without success. He wanders into a cafeteria, orders everything in sight, then informs the manager that he has no money to pay. On the way to jail, he meets the girl again. Together they escape. From then on, they are inseparable companions.
Charlie gets a job as a night watchman in a department store. His first night on duty is hectic. Burglars invade the store and Charlie is mistakenly involved once again with the police - and once more is shunted to jail.
Released, he meets the girl who has got herself a job as a cabaret dancer. She gets Charlie a job as a singing waiter. He proves a huge success. Happiness seems close now to Charlie and the girl - but the juvenile welfare officers have finally tracked the girl down.
They attempt to take her into custody, but Charlie foils them, and he escapes with the girl. Together they trudge down the lonely road, ready to face whatever the future might bring.
TIMOTHY BROCK
CONDUCTOR OF „MODERN TIMES“
Timothy Brock’s musical career began at an early age. At the time of the premiere of his Piano Concerto in G minor at age 17, his musical output already consisted of two symphonic poems, three string quartets and a handful of other chamber works. At 19, Brock became composer-in-residence for the University of Washington Chamber Orchestra, for whom he wrote a series of short works, including his popular Nine-Ball Suite. He has also served as composer-in-residence for other ensembles in the U.S. and Europe, including the Bravura String Quartet, to whom his fourth and fifth quartets are dedicated.
In 1989, at age 25, Brock became principal conductor of the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. Now in his 11th season as music director of the OCO, he has conducted over twenty world premieres of new works by various composers, and has given nearly 30 North American premieres of works by composers including Dmitri Shostakovich, Etienne-Nicolas Mehul, Darius Milhaud and Max Butting. In February of 2000, Mr. Brock will conduct a second concert in a series of Entartete Musik programs, music of composers banned by the Third Reich. In this series he has given the North American premieres to Hanns Eisler’s Niemandslied and Erwin Schulhoff’s Symphony no. 2, as well as a rare performance of Viktor Ullmann’s opera “Der Kaiser von Atlantis”.
Timothy Brock is the recipient of several awards and grants including the PUMA Composer Prize of 1989 for his Requiem for the Old St. Nicholas Church. He has won two GAP awards from the Washington State Arts Commission for his first opera Billy, and again for his second, Mudhoney, and has received a composers fellowship for 1995 from Artist Trust of Washington. His list of works include three symphonies, concertos for Piano, Viola, Clarinet and Violoncello, a requiem, a cantata, 14 silent film scores and six string quartets as well as numerous other incidental works.
A recording of his cantata McCleary Hotel, by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra and the Washington Chamber Symphony’s recording of his second opera, Mudhoney, are scheduled for release on K Records in winter of 1999-2000. Currently he is writing an orchestral song cycle, commissioned by Dr. Dustin and Irene Osbourne, set to the poema of Rupert Brooke, and will be premiered on New Year’s Eve 1999, sung by soprano Cyndia Sieden of the Orchestra of the 18th Century.
Timothy Brock’s association with silent film began in 1986 when he was commissioned by the Olympia Film Society to write a score to accompany the G.W. Pabst film, Pandora’s Bos. In 1992 he began a long musical relationship with Film Preservation Associates, headed by film historian David Shepard, and has composed and conducted ten feature-length Film scores to accompany their restores films, including F. W. Murnau’s Faust, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. He was commissioned by 20th Century Fox to write a score for the Murnau 1927 masterpiece, Sunrise, for their re-release in 1995. Faust, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Berlin, Symphony of a Great City and Storm over Asia have all been released on CD for K Records and three of Mr. Brock’s film scores are published by Boosey and Hawkes. He has conducted his film and concert hall works throughout theUnited States, as well as in Canada, Europe and Japan.
In January of 1999 he was asked by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in cooperation with the Association Chaplin in Paris to reconstruct and restore for live performance Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 score to Modern Times. The LACO, under the direction of Mr. Brock, will give the world premiere of the first live performance of Modern Times in June of 2000 in Los Angeles.
THE RESTORATION OF THE SCORE TO MODERN TIMES
by Timothy Brock
harles Chaplin's gifts seem boundless. A man who writes, directs, produces and acts seemingly could not have the time, or energy, to do more to enhance his own films. Composing film music is a time-consuming, often unrecognised art form that only a handful of people in 1935 were doing very well. Yet his music, seamlessly woven into the fabric of the film's imagery, is elemental to the film's long-running success. Chaplin had achieved a miracle in his score to Modern Times.
Although untrained in traditional western musical notation, in other words a self-taught violinist, cellist and pianist who played exclusively by ear, Chaplin was nevertheless a gifted musican with an innate sense of musical construction. To notate his music, he engaged various arrangers and orchestrators who would in turn write down his thematic material and orchestrate it to his exacting standards. The colour of the orchestration was very clear in Chaplin's mind, and it took great efforts to ensure that what was down on paper correlated with what he, as composer, had in mind. Regardless of which arranger he was working with on any given film, there is a running line throughout. This germinal voice is most identifiable in his gift for melody and harmony, and in his ability to accompany action perfectly. Like his famous character, his scores, too, employ a perfect balance of comedy, pathos and skill.
The restoration and reconstruction of Charles Chaplin's score to Modern Times was completed between January 1999 and March 2000, on a commission from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Association Chaplin. The original documents, located at the Chaplin archives in Geneva, were a set of hand-written fully orchestrated scores and pen and ink parts. Originally orchestrated for an ensemble of sixty players, the full score manuscript, only two-thirds of which made it to film, lay nearly half a metre in height.
In maintaining strict accuracy in the original colour of the music ('colour' meaning the selection of which instruments were used to best serve the music), the reduction of orchestration was kept to a minimum. No substitutions of instruments, with the exception of a small tuba part in reel nine, were employed. Only the incorporation of redundant voices was used for practical consideration for performance, i. e. Third Flute doubling Second Flute, Horns Three and Four doubling One and Two. On rare occasions, an instrument substitution was used to cover a reed change, made necessary by performing the work for the first time continuously.
There were often several versions of the same few minutes of music for each sequence, re-orchestrating re-orchestrations until Chaplin was completely satisfied with the results. The colouring of his score was so vital to Chaplin that, after the inital sketch was written and orchestrated, parts extracted and performed by the orchestra, he often rejected it after one hearing. In the full score I would often come across statements written in heavy red pencil such as 'brighter and cheerier here' or 'less flutes, more brass', always initialed 'CC'. Even the accepted final orchestrations were sometimes changed so massively at the recording session, it was a mystery to unravel what actually had been recorded.
Although mostly complete, I had to reconstruct some sections, or 'takes' as they were termed, from early sketches made by the orchestrators Edward Powell and David Raksin, or in rare instances, by my own dictation from the original 1935 recording masters made for the picture's original release in 1936. Revisions to the score were made throughout the six weeks of this recording, during which Chaplin employed the entire orchestra full-time. However, what became the most valuable tool in this project were the players' individual parts.
The most notable revisions from the score manuscript were done at the recording session when verbal directions by Chaplin and the conductor, Alfred Newman, were observed and in most instances documented by the musicians on their individual parts. It was from these pencilled changes I was able to achieve the most accurate account possible of what was performed. Newman made no record of the changes in the full score, the alterations gathered stemmed from only the player's parts or the recording itself. Within the margins of some of these parts were entirely new passages of music written in the orchestra members' hands, revisions dictated by Chaplin, and translated notationally by Newman.
In previous restorations, score length and size was never daunting. Even full-length symphonic concert hall manuscripts seldom reached past the thirty or forty minutes' mark. Modern Times, being nearly ninety minutes, proved to be a project that consumed my night and day for fourteen months, taking me on average an entire day to restore twenty seconds of music at a time. Having approximately 130.000 individual measures of a 400 page score to restore, it was my goal to provide, for the first time, a complete and performable score to a film that I have been in love with all of my life.
What we, as an audience, can hear in that wonderfully performed 1935 recording is about one third of what is actually on paper. The score is so enticingly rich in texture and colour, we find ourselves at the pathetic mercy of the limited scope of a period recording. Although quite on a par with the recording standards of 1935, the music is of such an expansive and intricate nature, we crave to hear the score performed as Chaplin heard it live, at the recording session itself. Technology today permits us to forget that what we hear coming from the screen, or from a disk, is very close to what you would have heard if you were actuelly there during the recording. In the case of Modern Times however, what you hear is merely the surface of great score.
In this early recording one can hear the obvious Chaplin melodic structures, and can see how his music-to-action sequences were meticulously planned, but one misses the depth of musical layering and colour of the orchestrations by Powell and Raksin. The diverse array of instruments employed provided a wonderful palette from which Chaplin could best conceive his music.
There are passages that extravagantly employ five clarinets at a time and three differently tuned blacksmith anvils. As another example, in most typical symphonic scores, trumpets are called upon to use one or two mutes to alter the sonority and texture of their instrument. In Modern Times, however, all three trumpet parts call for nine different mutes each. These are but a few examples of the care that was shown by a number of gifted musicians to achieve the best representation of Chaplin's wonderful musical ideas.
Like his previous film City Lights, released five years earlier, Modern Times was released as a sound picture, although very little of the soundtrack contains dialogue. Excluding the record player's sales pitch in the Mechanical Salesman scene, only ten lines of dialogue are spread out over ninety minutes. The rest is music, including a performance of the popular tune, 'Titina', sung by Chaplin himself with the original orchestra conducted by Newman. All of the dialogue and most of the original sound effects were successfully extracted from the film, and of course 'Titina' was left entirely intact. I find it a wonderful experience for an orchestra to work in concert with Modern Times's motion, light and sound, just as they would in opera or ballet, or even with a concert soloist. When Charlie sings 'Titina', which was the first time audiences around the world ever heard the Gentleman Tramp's voice, it is much like a cadenza to a great concerto. The orchestra stops, and lets the soloist perform unabated as he exhibits his miraculous talents that in no way need any restoration or reconstruction.
The score to Modern Times is the most strong, complex, and innovative score in his entire opus. It is a vast palette of musical intricacies and bold symphonic statements that mirror not only the film's content, but musically symbolise its message. His factory sequences musically represent the kinetic chaos in precision-demanded passages that reflect the impossibility of the worker's task. The societal plight of the depression is scored with a certain blend of angst and pathos, and yet he provides the youthful spirit of the Gamine in a mischievous and sprightly setting. Even the café dance numbers are full of life and so eminently well written that it is obvious to us that the musical Chaplin, above all else, knew what he was doing. So convincing are his musical portraits, we know that Chaplin is a director who knows his subjects, and we are therefore drawn to them without the barrier of language, but through music.
I am indebted to many people whose efforts made this project an unforgettable and rewarding experience. My thanks to Kate Guyonvarch and Josephine Chaplin of Association Chaplin for their endless support of the Modern Times project, and who granted me full access to the original documents; and to Hanna Kennedy of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, without whom this project would not have been realised.
Technical specifications
Modern Times instrumentation
for live Orchestral screening:
2 flutes (both double piccolo)
1 oboe (doubles cor anglais)
2 Bflat clarinets
Reed I (alto sax, soprano sax, clarinet)
Reed II (alto sax, carinet)
Reed III (tenor sax, Bass clarinet,
Bflat contrabass clarinett)
1 bassoon
2 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, 3 percussion
harp, piano (double celeste)
Ad lib Male Vocal Quartet (TTBB)
Idal strings 10 8 6 4 2
Minimum 6 4 4 2 1
Screening / Projection
· Running time / length of movie 89 Min. (No intermission)
· Stand-alone screen system. Height-width ratio 1:1,33. Proposed Size: 6 x 8m, in large auditions up to 9 x 12m.
· Insulated cabin fpr projection use. High performance, multi-frequency 35 mm to show silent movies low frequency in proposed speed.
· Monaural sound-system at 85dbA to play the rare vocalist scenes.
· Video monitor of screen for conductor and soloists of the orchestra.