At the Crossroads: Music for Faust
Modern Robot brings a modern score and an intense live performance to accompany the 1926 silent film, Faust.
UFA, the leading film production company of 1920’s Germany, turned to Faust as material for a world-wide blockbuster. The story would be well known to audiences both domestic and abroad. Like UFA’s subsequent and more famous film, Metropolis, it did not take the world by storm, but it did run considerably over budget. Director F W Murnau (best known for Nosferatu) spent six months filming with a gruelling attention to detail. The film is known for it’s dramatic compositions and elaborate special effects, including a fantastic flying scene.
In his score, Ben Singer translates this emotionally charged cinematography with a symphonic sensibility. After a short, reverent prelude, a demonic gallop follows Mephisto and his skeletons across the sky. A bubbling texture under the Archangel and Mephisto’s gamble will come back as Mephisto lures Doctor Faust into his trap. A breezy samba accompanies the famous flying scene. And lurking behind each of Doctor Faust’s unfortunate decisions, a memorable and lyrical theme of inner turmoil.
But once the fate of Doctor Faust’s lover, Gretchen, is sealed, all these harmonies are dispensed with. The drums begin a slow, unrelenting, measured time. Wind whistles from the guitar as snow whips across the screen. And bit by bit, the music follows Gretchen and Doctor Faust into cacophony and flames, concluding with a disturbingly major chord.
Viewers will be delighted at the quality of this projection. The domestic German version of Faust was fully reconstructed by Luciano Berriata for Filmoteca Espanola, and the show will present this in high definition.
Modern Robot has performed accompaniments to dozens of films: odd instructional and industrial films, campy B-movies, flight and space footage, and a wide range of more traditional silent films. At the Edinburgh Fringe, At the Crossroads will be performed by Ben Singer on electric guitar and Phil Hague on drum set.
Performances are going to run Aug 5-15, at 21:40 hrs daily.
