A guide to rescor­ing a silent classic

Back in 2010, Col­ston Hall com­mis­sioned Portishead’s Adri­an Utley and Goldfrapp’s Will Gre­go­ry to com­pose a new live score for Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent film, The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc. The score is now set to be per­formed again, with a 24-piece orches­tra con­duct­ed by Charles Hazel­wood, at Shakespeare’s Globe in Lon­don on 19 Sep­tem­ber and at Wells Cathe­dral in Som­er­set on 7 Octo­ber. Here the pair dis­cuss their approach and reveal the chal­lenges they faced in writ­ing orig­i­nal music for one of cinema’s true masterpieces.

Will Gre­go­ry: ​“Start­ing is always hard, so we laid down some shared objec­tives to try and pin it down. We knew we want­ed a gui­tar ensem­ble, brass quin­tet and a choir. We’d had some dis­cus­sions about min­i­mal­ist com­po­si­tion tech­niques and var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions of instru­ments that we want­ed to explore, with the hope that we could stay true to the needs of the film while cre­at­ing chances to grow as composers.”

Adri­an Utley: ​“There is always some­thing with­in me keep­ing my ideas in a spe­cif­ic place. In this case it was the palette we had cho­sen and the con­ver­sa­tions Will and I had shared about the project. The chal­lenge was keep­ing with­in our orig­i­nal plan of instru­men­ta­tion, which was very broad and expan­sive, so there were plen­ty of options and excit­ing ideas to work with. Also, it’s always a chal­lenge to come up with musi­cal ideas that you real­ly like, which is not always easy with­in a spe­cif­ic and small time frame.”

WG: ​“Hav­ing cre­at­ed music for a few silent films, I’m aware of how impor­tant it is not to crowd the act­ing by mim­ic­k­ing what the actor is already doing. Essen­tial­ly you are per­form­ing a duet with the actor. You have to respect their space and their skill. While press­ing emo­tion­al but­tons is what you have to do, ide­al­ly no one should feel your fin­ger on the but­ton or the least bit of pres­sure. With this film there is the added dimen­sion that all the dia­logue is tak­en from tran­scripts of Joan’s actu­al tri­al, which gives it an almost doc­u­men­tary aspect. The addi­tion of music could eas­i­ly become gra­tu­itous if over­ly heart-wrenching.”

AU: ​“I feel we’ve achieved a good bal­ance between play­ing to the emo­tion­al side of the film with­out mak­ing our music over­ly emo­tive. The film can play with­out music at all and still be very pow­er­ful and self-explana­to­ry. Our choir and drone gui­tars helped us to stay with the genre but also gave us good scope to explore musi­cal ter­ri­to­ry that had not been over done or force-fit­ted from anoth­er world of music.”

WG: ​“Cre­at­ing music that runs along­side pic­ture is an end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and reward­ing puz­zle. So much of my favourite music is film music. It pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for a very mon­grel and impure col­li­sion of styles, gen­res and instru­men­ta­tions that can throw up some­thing total­ly orig­i­nal that would nev­er have been arrived at through musi­cal cal­cu­la­tion alone.”

AU: ​“I’ve seen lots of live silent films and been involved in quite a few too. I’m very opin­ion­at­ed about it and def­i­nite­ly have my own view on how I see the future of this sort of pre­sen­ta­tion. This is con­tentious, but I don’t always enjoy impro­vised scores that step out of the ​‘old’ and tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of accom­pa­ni­ment and I also don’t always enjoy the ​‘old’ way either. Some peo­ple I know and have worked with are mas­ter­ful at it, and impro­vi­sa­tion can be very pow­er­ful but, in my opin­ion, there is def­i­nite­ly room and need for a fresh way to approach these beau­ti­ful old films. I’m not say­ing I have all the answers, but I haven’t changed my opin­ion since writ­ing for Joan; if any­thing I’m more com­mit­ted to my approach now.”

The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc live score, sup­port­ed by Hauser & Wirth Som­er­set, will be per­formed by Adri­an and Will on 19 Sep­tem­ber and 7 Octo­ber. For more info and to book tick­ets vis­it shake​spear​es​globe​.com (Lon­don) and wellscathe​dral​.org​.uk (Som­er­set).