The lost Ukrainian film score
What does a 1929 experimental silent documentary film sound like? Leo Geyer has been piecing together the score intended by director Dziga Vertov for his Man with a Movie Camera.
At the premiere screening for Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera, in Kiev in January 1929, an orchestra followed the precise musical plans laid out by the director in what is called a conspectus. This recently discovered document, together with hand-written notes by Vertov, give a sense of the musical mosaic which accompanies the images of modern city life projected in this influential experimental documentary.
Dr Leo Geyer is a composer, founder of Constella Music and a lecturer at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. His essay ends this week focused on the way the study of documents are showing us different music histories. Other composers have written their own scores for this silent film, but this essay takes us through Leo Geyer's interpretation of the conspectus, made in collaboration with film historian Richard Bossons for the Dutch film institute – the Eye Filmmuseum.
Producer: Robyn Read
The reworked film score is performed by Constella Music. We also hear short extracts from Matvey Nikolaevsky's Piano music performed by Mikhail Mordvinov with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, some Soviet singing and Cadets of the Guards school performing a song of the Nikolaevskoye Cavalry School.
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