Chaplin, Charlie: Modern Times (The Complete Film Music)

Brock, Timothy, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover

CPO 777 286-2

Everybody knows that Charlie Chaplin was one of film history’s greatest original geniuses. However, the fact that he was a gifted inventor of melodies and the meticulous musical dramaturge of his films is known only to a very few. When he came up with the music for City Lights in 1930, he caught the infectious virus of film music. After the completion of Modern Times, he composed the music for all his other films, including The Great Dictator, Limelight, and A King in New York. The complex, innovative music for Modern Times, composed in 1935, certainly represents the high point of his compositional career. This music has the symphonic dimensions of an orchestra consisting of almost seventy members. Although Chaplin played the violin and piano and had a highly developed understanding of music, he was unable to commit notes to paper – and was not alone here: many great popular composers such as Irving Berlin could not write their scores. For notation and orchestration Chaplin relied on his associate David Raksin and Edward Powell (Score restoration: Timothy Brock). Nevertheless, almost every measure of the score contains the unmistakable traits of its author. It is not without reason that musicologists term certain chords and melodies »Chaplinesque,« and it is hardly coincidental that each and every Chaplin film looks like and sounds like … Chaplin!

CD x 1

CPO

21.05.15

761203728626