FILMS for MUSIC for FILM (1990)
Six short films by Lawrence Brose
Premiered at The North American New Music Festival, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Films for Music for Film represents a reconsideration of the interactive dynamic of sound and image in film. Usually, sound elements are incorporated after the film’s completion. Here, however, the score and spoken text function as the actual film script, directing the film’s form and content. This engagement is twofold: I initially derive images through my responses to the music and text, then return to the score for the film’s structure. These films are not merely descriptive visions of score and text but synergistic fusions of sound, words, and images.
Each film in this series was created for a music score, either pre-existing or composed specifically for this project. By way of explanation, music is usually applied to films after their completion, but in this case, the filmic images and rhythms have been derived from the music, allowing the music to become a kind of script for the film. This project is envisioned as a lifelong endeavor in collaboration with contemporary composers.
Films for Music for Film premiered on April 3, 1990, at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where all the scores were performed live with the films. This event was part of the North American New Music Festival.
The films in this series have been screened at music festivals, film festivals, and independent cinemas worldwide.
Everbest Virgil (1990)
From the FILM for MUSIC for FILM series
16mm Black and White / Color
8 min
FILM DESCRIPTION (CONT.)
Piano Sonata No. 2 (1930) by Virgil Thomson
Transcribed for the film by Yvar Mikhashoff – 1990
Performed by Buffalo New Music Ensemble
Conductor: Ferruccio Germani
Flute: Rosemary Vecere
Oboe: Paul Schlossman
Clarinet: James Perone
Percussion: Robert Schulz
Piano: Michael McCandless
Violin: Kunda Magenau
Cello: Marsha Hassett
Digitization funding provided by Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music
Everbest Virgil follows in this tradition by setting a film portrait of the composer to his self-portrait composition. In his book, On Musical Portraiture, Virgil writes, “The Second Piano Sonata is curious…Not me thinking about myself, but being myself. That’s why I couldn’t identify it as a self-portrait for many years.” I filmed Virgil in his apartment at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan shortly before his passing. These are the final images abstracted from the life of a most treasured American composer.
Virgil Thomson composed musical portraits of many people as he viewed them from across a table. Just as an artist uses the various elements of a visual medium, Virgil would sketch personal images employing the palette of musical expression.
Everbest Virgil follows this tradition by setting a film portrait of the composer to his self-portrait composition. In his book, On Musical Portraiture, Virgil writes, “The Second Piano Sonata is curious…Not me thinking about myself, but being myself. That’s why I couldn’t identify it as a self-portrait for many years.” Shortly before his passing, I filmed Virgil in his apartment at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. These are the final images abstracted from the life of a most treasured American composer.
Each film in this series was created for a music score, either pre-existing or composed specifically for this project. By way of explanation, music is usually applied to films after their completion. Still, in this case, the filmic images and rhythms have been derived from the music, allowing the music to become a kind of script for the film. This project is envisioned as a lifelong endeavor in collaboration with contemporary composers.
FILM FOR MUSIC FOR FILM was premiered on April 3, 1990, at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where all the scores were performed live with the films. This event was part of the North American New Music Festival.
Ryoanji (1990)
From the FILMS for MUSIC for FILM series
16mm Color
20 min
FILM DESCRIPTION
Music by John Cage
Performed by the Buffalo New Music Ensemble
Countertenor: Scott Gray-Vickrey
Flute: Rosemary Vecere
Oboe: Paul Schlossman
Percussion: Robert Schulz
The cinematic challenge here was to create a visual image of musical glissandi. In his notes on Ryoanji, composer John Cage requested that the glissandi be “non-vibrato and as close as possible to the sound events found in nature rather than those normally occurring in music. The score is otherwise a ‘still photograph’ of mobile circumstances.”
The images are put onto this film by hand. Rather than a series of photographs one after another, the image on the screen is of lines etched along the entire length of the film, providing a sustained, continuous image. This establishes a visual continuum. Also, using images of nature, I take these moving images and stack-print them onto each other six, twelve, or even twenty-four times to create another kind of movement.
The film is treated as another soloist in the ensemble. The score is recorded three times. In performance, the live vocalist, for example, will interact with three other versions of the song. The same holds true for the other instrumentalists as well. It is quite a full garden of sound.
Chamnan (1990)
From the FILMS for MUSIC for FILM series
16mm B&W
14 min
FILM DESCRIPTION
The Original score (for piano, percussion & tape) by Douglas Cohen
Original tape sounds by Lawrence F. Brose
Model: Chamnan Thaiprakob
Piano: Michael McCandless
Percussion: Robert Schulz
In this film, all of the effects, layering of images, and editing were achieved via camera techniques employed during the shoot. However, the rhythms and tempi were all planned and projected before the filming. Chamnan was shot in a single room in Bangkok, in the Reno Hotel, over several days. This film might be the closest I have come to a self-study. It was an extremely emotional time as my brother had just been killed. I left for Thailand to remove myself from the abstractions of daily living and to spend time with my friend Chamnan. His image is present in most of the film. This film is a meditation on being and that vast space between the self and the other, where the gaze is returned in mute silence and the sense of knowing oneself is shattered.
The soundtrack includes live sounds taped during the time of filming: the television in the room, frogs outside the window, the swimming pool, riding in a taxi, the percussive sounds of coins dropping in the cast-iron pots in the temple of the Reclining Buddha, and the ritual chanting during Buddhist Lent. The sounds were then altered, layered, and edited by composer Douglas Cohen and used as the foundation for live instruments' composition.
War Songs (1990)
From the FILMS for MUSIC for FILM series
16mm B&W/Color
12 min
FILM DESCRIPTION
Poems: Paul Schmidt
Music by Mark Bennett
Performed by the Buffalo New Music Ensemble
Piano: Michael McCandless
Cello: Marsha Hassett
Clarinet: James Perone
Oboe: Paul Schlossman
Violin: Kunda Magenau
Model: Jon Stout
Narration: Paul Schmidt
Paul Schmidt sent me a set of five poems from a series titled “WAR SONGS.” Paul is brilliant and sarcastic in his treatment of the seduction of war. Mark Bennett’s score is also provocative, dreamy, and waltz-like. The composite is a set of songs cast as melodeclemation, i.e., music in tandem with a narrated text. My contribution is a superimposition of war scenes underlined with what I call a “Gabriel” image: a young and beautiful soldier, a personification of the good warrior, the protector of all. The image of his persona is felt throughout – sometimes active and aggressive, sometimes asleep, sometimes beckoning. The film employs images from the Vietnam War and the Second World War. The collected images of marching soldiers, rolling tanks, explosions, et al. reveal, in passing, our dear Gabriel.