Carl Davis' film scores

Whether performing long-forgotten live scores or writing entirely new ones, no one brings silent cinema to life like Carl Davis and his collaborators

‘It depends on very, very good collaborators,’ insists Carl Davis . Born in Brooklyn, married into Liverpool: not the credentials you associate with reticent, self-effacing modesty, but he admits he’s worked with masters. He’s talking initially of Jeremy Isaacs. Eventually the Royal Opera House’s boss, Isaacs’s good deeds as a TV supremo included commissioning the blockbuster series ‘Hollywood’ (1980), a breathtaking galaxy of first-hand memories of the silent era of the century’s art-form. ‘He happened on Kevin Brownlow’s book “The Parade’s Gone By”. He had the vision to say, “Here’s money – go and film these people. Grab them while they’re able to speak.” There were no plans, no budget.’ Survivors from the days when that respectable California landlady reluctantly rented to eastern movie folk attracted by western light filled an unforgettable series ‘before we lost them, while they were still compos mentis. Actually getting to talk to DW Griffith’s cameraman…’ It was like cleaning Leonardo’s paint-brushes.

Hollywood’ is due out on DVD next year. Meanwhile Davis, whose theme music carried you away before the opening credits were over, has consolidated his position as purveyor of music to silent film. Never mind his countless TV credits, Davis’s ‘very, very good collaborators’ have included Abel Gance (‘Napoléon ’), King Vidor (‘The Crowd ’), Douglas Fairbanks (‘The Thief of Bagdad ’) and von Stroheim (‘Greed ’). From piecing together original scores he’s moved on to composing his own. With Simon Rattle’s old City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (‘I’m crazy about that orchestra’) he’s fulfilled an ambition: a weekend of ‘three great silent comics as a kind of comparative study: Friday Keaton , Saturday Chaplin , Sunday Lloyd . I’ve done an evening of shorts before, but it’s the first time I’ve spread myself…’

On October 29, the QEH screens Chaplin’s ‘The Fireman’ and Keaton’s ‘Our Hospitality ’, complete with Davis’s music, celebrating his 70th birthday. Before then, however, the phantom comes to the real opera: on October 8, Covent Garden shivers to the 1925 masterpiece with Lon Chaney . Davis conducts his music for a screening in the Royal Opera House. ‘The film opens with an exterior of the Paris Opéra, then an interior. The conductor takes his place, I take my place. He lifts his baton, I lift mine. I give the down beat, he gives the down beat… The film keeps cutting back to various performances of “Faust”’ – Gounod’s opera coincidentally in the current ROH repertoire. ‘Music from “Faust” is intertwined with mine. ’

Among composers who arranged their music for live accompaniment to movies, Richard Strauss did a pit-band version of his opera ‘Der Rosenkavalier’. ‘The Strauss estate is very reluctant to release it. They seem embarrassed, even though Strauss himself conducted it in London.’

But there’s no shortage of silents waiting for the kiss of sonic life. C4 has commissioned a score for an unknown De Mille that Davis describes as ‘a social documentary on reform schools – the “Scum” of 1928. It’s extremely sadistic. There are echoes of “Metropolis ”, in the march of the prisoners. It has some of the most violent scenes I’ve seen, real shocks, things I couldn’t look at. Move over, Sam Peckinpah .’

The Royal Opera House screens ‘The Phantom of the Opera ’ with Carl Davis’ live score on Oct 8. ‘The Fireman’ and ‘Our Hospitality’ are screened at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Oct 28.

---