By GILLIAN B. ANDERSON
On Aug. 7, Gillian Anderson, a music specialist in the Library of Congress Music Division, conducted the National Symphony in a performance of the original accompaniment to Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus" at Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Va.
The performance was a coproduction of the Library of Congress's Music and Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound divisions, the National Symphony Orchestra and the Wolf Trap Foundation.
The Wolf Trap screening gave the audience the unique experience of being the first to see the film as it was originally presented in 1928 with its original full orchestral accompaniment and two new prints.
In 1968 Chaplin composed a new score for "The Circus," and it is this more recent music with which Chaplin's fans are familiar. It emphasizes the pathos of "The Little Tramp" while the earlier music underscores the slapstick comedy. In style "The Circus" is reminiscent of the two-reel films that Chaplin made for Essanay during 1915-16, which many critics regard as the purest expressions of his art. In comparison to the drama of "A Woman of Paris" (1922) and the poignancy of "The Gold Rush" (1925), "The Circus" is fast- paced and loaded with the ingenious visual gags that made "The Little Tramp" so enduring to worldwide audiences.
Ms. Anderson's account of the rediscovery of the music in the Chaplin family's archives and her reconstruction of this music indicate the painstaking labor that goes into the reconstruction of any work of art and also of the rewards that ultimately result from such work.
We entered the Swiss mansion through the kitchen. I was fresh off an airplane from Washington, which meant that I had not had much sleep. After making the acquaintance of several large dogs and cats and being introduced to a collection of about 12 adults and children who were congregated around a table in a room off the kitchen, I followed my guide down a narrow, dark stone stairway into the cavernous basement. We passed a room for film storage and a huge wine cellar and then entered a locked room, which contained the legendary filmmaker's archives.
Chaplin kept almost everything that had anything to do with his films -- business records, photographs, newspaper clippings, scripts, promotional material, correspondence and music. ("Silent" films, never really silent, were often accompanied by one of the more than 500 cinema orchestras that existed in the United States during the period 1914-1929).
I began to examine and inventory the music in the archives, and over the next several hours I discovered the scores and orchestral parts that had been used to accompany "The Gold Rush," "The Circus and "Woman of Paris" when they were first conceived or premiered during the 1920s. Much later, Chaplin wrote his own, new music for these films and released them as sound films. The scores and parts in the Chaplin archives included the later music, with which most people are familiar, as well as the earlier versions. Outside of the Chaplin family and members of Chaplin's business circle, no one knew of the existence of the earlier material. To put it mildly, I was pretty excited.
About 4 p.m., however, my energy began to flag. I was invited upstairs for coffee. There, in the living room of Chaplin's mansion in Vevey, Switzerland, I was introduced to four of Chaplin's eight children and many of his grandchildren. The adults were curious about what I was finding, and upon discovering that I had no lunch (and was straight off a plane from America), they rustled up some food.
After tea, Victoria Chaplin came down to the basement so that I could show her why this music was exciting me. Unlike his own (later) music for these films, the earliest accompaniments consisted entirely of preexisting music chosen by Chaplin from the operatic, orchestral, popular song and dance band repertories of the 1920s. The accompaniments were put together under the supervision of various professional musicians (Arthur Kay for "The Circus" and Carli Elinor for "The Gold Rush"). This meant in most cases that the music was not composed for the film but was taken from already existing publications and arrangements.
The process of assembling the film accompaniment had involved choosing music appropriate for a given sequence, deciding on how much of each selection was needed, cutting out just the right number of measures, putting them in order in all the orchestral parts according to a piano/conductor score and writing any musical transitions that might be necessary.
Because Chaplin kept so many things, the parts and score for the earlier version of "The Gold Rush" were in negative photostat (instead of the positive prints that must have been made from them). The parts and scores for the earliest version of "Woman of Paris" had consecutive rehearsal numbers but not a unified piano score with cues marked in it to keep the music in synch with the film. The music had been chosen to fit certain sequences but had not yet been cut and pasted into a consecutive series.
The music for "The Circus" had been numbered, cued, cut and pasted but had not been cleaned up, turned into negative photostats and printed for theatrical distribution. I explained to Vicki that the archives preserved parts of each stage of this process and to my knowledge was the only such collection that did so.
I was invited to dinner that evening with the whole family and, after another session in the archives, to lunch the next day. Their mother, Oona O'Neill Chaplin, had died only eight months before, so the family's grief was still palpable. I not only felt privileged to be allowed into the archives and the Chaplin relatives' lives at such a time but also touched that I was treated so warmly and graciously. At dinner Jane and Vicki talked about the possibility of my conducting the music for one of their father's films.
The first performance of the 1928 version of "The Circus" was set for a meeting of the Madison Council fund-raising group at the Library of Congress in October 1992. (The performance involved only 10 instruments instead of a full orchestra). Photocopies of the orchestral parts were mailed from Switzerland at the end of July. A brand new print of the film was provided by Pam Paumier of Regent Services, S. A., for the occasion.
I labored continuously through August and September to restore 10 of the original orchestral parts, but when I had the chance to look at them closely, I realized that they were going to be quite a challenge to restore. Usually, I have only to number all the measures in each part, making sure that there are the same number of measures in each. Then I check key changes, make sure the Bb and A instruments are properly marked, and correct bad page turns.
In this case, however, the preexisting printed music in each part had been pasted not over blank paper but lined music manuscript paper. This meant that occasionally when musical transitions or clefs and key signatures had to be added, the copyist had written on the music paper. However, the lines and spaces of the music paper did not ever correspond to those of the preexisting music. It was very difficult to read and had to be changed.
In addition the music had been reduced when it was photocopied. A lot of it had to be blown back up to its original size or to a larger size so that it could be read by modern orchestral musicians (who are very particular about the state of the music from which they read). Finally, the ledger lines, upon which the musical notes are printed, had become so faint in a number of cases that they had to be redrawn. It was painstaking, tedious work, and it had to be done quickly.
The most difficult job was the piano part, which has more notes than any of the others. The restoration of this part alone took 40 hours of work, and it still does not look beautiful. All the preexisting performance marks and cues had to be "whited-out" of the part. All the blank music manuscript paper lines had to be covered over, and the handwritten transitions on the music manuscript had to be copied over so that the lines and spaces of the preexisting music would fit with the manuscript music.
All this work was necessary because the extraneous marks and the blank music ledger lines are extremely distracting to any player. There is never enough time for rehearsals, and players are almost always sight-reading their parts. Thus, a minimal number of distractions for the eyes enhances the players' ability to concentrate on sight-reading.
In many cases I was able to identify the preexisting music used by Chaplin because telltale clues were left on one or another of the orchestral parts or in the piano score when they were pasted together. Sometimes the top of the preexisting music with the title and composer information was left intact by the person doing the pasting. Sometimes he or she only left the bottom of the page with a publisher's serial number or copyright information. With this kind of clue I was able to identify the piece and find better copies of it so that we did not have to reconstruct the version pasted into Chaplin's original parts.
For example, halfway through rehearsal number 10, the music is almost illegible in every single orchestral part. The copyright information had been left on the bottom edge of the parts, "Will Rossiter, Chicago, 1920." I looked through all the Library's 1920 copyright claims of Will Rossiter and guessed that the piece I was looking for might be called "Speed" because it accompanies Chaplin running away from the police.
When "Speed" arrived from the Library's Landover Storage Facility, where it was stored by copyright number, sure enough, it was the right music and was in splendid shape. We substituted this music for that found illegibly in the orchestral parts. In another case, before we had found a better original, we reconstructed the music with a computer. (This was extremely time-consuming. It is still faster to copy music by hand than with a computer.) Finally, in many cases, I had to go over bar lines with a fine-tipped pen and ruler (that's when I found out that none of the lines was really straight) and darken note stems and measure lines so that they would photocopy well.
After the first performance of "The Circus" for the Madison Council (in other words, too late to be of use in the reconstruction of 10 of the parts but essential to the reconstruction of all the rest), a computer played a major role in the identification of many of the pieces used for the accompaniment of "The Circus."
Some of the most dramatic examples were provided by Russ Girsberger of the Marine Band Library. Over the years the Marine Band has accumulated a large number of early American dance band orchestrations and incidental music for small orchestra and has made them accessible via a computer system.
Out of curiosity I asked Russ what would show up under the term "Op. 38," because all I knew about one piece of music was that it was "From Op. 38" (information found on the lower left hand side of some of the pasted parts). A lot of composers have written an Opus 38, so I really did not expect much help and was asking Russ only out of curiosity. However, we also knew that the piece was a waltz. The Marine Band's computer system did not much like the request, but among other things it produced Edvard Grieg's "Elegie from Op. 38, No. 6," which turned out to be the piece used by Chaplin and even the exact arrangement of it.
In another case we knew a publisher's order number, T1990, which appeared to the left of the first measure of music. Acquaintances in California had identified the composer, Tchaikovsky, but had given me the wrong title. We knew from the pieces that had already been identified that most of the preexisting arrangements were taken from the catalogs of the American music publishers Carl Fischer, G. Schirmer, Harms, Will Rossiter, etc. Russ logged in a request for pieces by Tchaikovsky by these publishers and limited his search to music published at the beginning of this century. He found T1990, Charles J. Roberts's arrangement of "Humoresque. Op. 10, No 2," which was the piece in question.
Using the Marine Band computer system we also were able to identify the exact arrangement used for the excerpts from I Pagliacci.
But finally the computer failed. We had only a publisher's serial number from the lower left hand corner of a page, 3160-23. Russ looked for it but could not find it. In the process, however, he observed that it looked a lot like other Carl Fischer numbers. Carl Fischer is one of the few music publishers from the beginning of the century that is still in business. I called the publisher and asked the staff if they could identify one of their pieces just by the serial number. They said that there was a good possibility they could if the number was from the era around the turn of the century. I gave them the number, and they called back with the identification, "R. Vollstedt, 'Jolly Fellows Waltz,' c NY, Carl Fischer, 1891." The Marine Band had a copy of the arrangement, and it was the correct one.
For the 10-instrument version of the accompaniment performed in October 1992, the parts took more time to reconstruct than I had expected, so I was not able to begin synchronizing the music to the film until three weeks before the performance. I finished only one week before the performance, the closest call I have ever had -- or ever care to have.
One of the problems was that after I started to synchronize the film, I discovered that the speed of such pieces as "Speed" was so fast as to be unplayable. The Chaplin estate had told us that the film was to be screened at 24 frames per second (fps). This was logical because the film was released very late in the silent era, 1928, when sound was already on its way in and a standardization of film presentations was well under way.
However, Charlie Chaplin began production of "The Circus" in 1925 and completed it toward the end of 1927. It was released in 1928 and was the 74th film of his career, which began at the Keystone Film Co. in February 1914.
It was quite clear from the musical evidence that the speed of "The Circus" must have been slower than 24 fps. For example, in the sections that were unplayable there were no cut marks in any of the parts. Clearly all of the music had been used and played. Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies," with which the accompaniment concludes, was mentioned in one of the New York reviews in 1928.
David Francis, chief of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division looked at the film. He confirmed that it should run at 20 not 24 fps, 18 percent slower than it has been run for 30 or 40 or even 60-some years. This meant making a new videotape at the new speed and resynchronizing everything I had done up to that point. The unpredictable benefit of the discovery of a new speed was that audiences had time to follow the development of Chaplin's gags in a way that significantly heightened their appreciation of his humor. Therefore, not only was the music playable at the slower speed but Chaplin's art was enhanced.
The synchronization process consists of timing each scene, counting the number of beats of music in the section to which that piece of film corresponds, using an algebraic equation provided by my physicist husband, determining thereby the metronome marking, and running the videotape over and over with a metronome running until I have added enough cues in the score to keep it in synch with the film. In the process I more or less memorize the music and the movie.
Silent film scores are marked with cues for synchronization but generally only at the beginning of major sections or over chords that require close synchronization. "The Circus" score was liberally cued but not as liberally as are my scores.
For example, at rehearsal No. 2 one finds "T. The Circus." This means that when that title appears on the screen, the music for rehearsal No. 2 begins. I added many additional cues to make sure that when the heroine breaks through the paper in a hoop 20 measures later, the action can occur on exactly the right chord.
The music for "The Circus" displays not only Chaplin's wide knowledge of music but his extraordinarily good judgment about what makes an apt marriage of music and image. In one scene, "The Little Tramp" finds himself locked in a lion's cage, but remains uneaten. The lion goes up and sniffs him but walks away bored. After the heroine, Merna Kennedy, unlocks the cage door, Chaplin, full of bravado, approaches the lion to the music of the "Toreador Song" from Carmen. When the lion roars, Chaplin tears out of the cage. He is hardly a brave toreador, the lion hardly a bull. The music enhances the humor of the scene.
When Chaplin climbs onto a high wire, supported by a belt with a wire attached, and goes through the routine of a tightrope walker, music performs a similar function. The belt comes undone without Chaplin realizing it just at the same moment that a bunch of monkeys climbs onto the tightrope with him. Full of confidence that his wire and belt are secure, he does a dance on the wire, to the accompaniment of a 1920s dance band arrangement of James P. Johnston's "Charleston." The music emphasizes his confidence, foolhardiness and the impending disaster.
In other places the music underscores the story of the sad clown. The movie opens with music from Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci. We hear Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette," Victor Herbert's "Punchinello," Arthur Kay's "A Funny Story," and Lessing and Monaco's "Oh! You Circus Days," all on the same theme.
Chaplin employed the popular music of his day as well. The accompaniment for "The Circus" uses Nacio Herb Brown's "The Sneak" (1922), Ray Henderson's "Just a Memory" (1927), Rudolf Friml's "L'amour toujours l'amour" (1922), Victor Herbert's "Some Day" from "Her Regiment" (1917) and "For I'm Falling in Love with Someone" from "Naughty Marietta" (1910), a 1926 arrangement of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag," DeSylva, Brown and Henderson's "Lucky Day" (1926), Robert Katscher's "When Day is Done" (1926) and Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" (1927).
Most people today are not familiar with these pieces, but in 1928 the audiences would have known not only the tunes but also the words. When Charlie is shown asleep in a wheelbarrow after his harrowing escape from the police, they would have recognized two measures of "Please Let Me Sleep." When the tightrope walker and Merna Kennedy first meet, they would have recognized the music as "For I'm Falling in Love with Someone." When Charlie overhears Merna telling a fortune-teller that she has just fallen in love, thinking that she is speaking of him, Charlie is overjoyed. The audiences would have recognized the music as Henderson's "Lucky Day." At the end of the show, when the circus train has departed, leaving Chaplin alone with a star on a piece of paper (Merna had jumped through it in the first scene), everyone would have known the first line, "Blue skies, smiling at me, nothing but blue skies do I see." Many of us still know this line well enough to feel the music underlining the pathos of the finale.
"The Sneak," described as "the greatest novelty foxtrot song in a decade," accompanies the scene in which a thief is nabbed by a policeman. Nacio Herb Brown, its composer, was the bandleader at a club in Hollywood that Chaplin frequented. (I am indebted to Lance Bowling of Cambria Records for this information.) Chaplin probably knew all the songs from such places, but his and Kay's choices enhance both the slapstick comedy in "The Circus" and the pathos of "The Little Tramp."
The ultimate test of the success of the wedding between image and sound is the actual screening. In 1928 the reviews were raves:
" 'CIRCUS' HOWLING AT THE MARK STRAND. CHARLIE ONCE AGAIN PROVES A REVELATION. Charles Spencer Chaplin's "Circus" is a screaming delight from fadein to fadeout. It is a howling, hearty, happy, slightly slapstick production wherein the inimitable Charlie gets you more often by a laugh than by a tear. One is kept so constantly in a state of grin, giggle and guffaw at this glorious picturization of the ... tramp who attains tent show fame, but not love, that even in the moments of pathos -- which don't number nearly as many as did several previous Chaplin vehicles -- one doesn't weep freely. Behind each tear there are at least a dozen laughs" (Irene Thierer, New York Daily News June 9, 1928).
"The hardest-boiled crowd in town went to the midnight opening on Friday and laughed off all its mascara" (Bland Johanson, New York Daily Mirror).
Sixty-five years later, modern audiences have responded the same way. There have been four performances of "The Circus" with its original accompaniment. One review of a performance at Chaplin's own studio in Hollywood in March of this year stated:
"The unblemished images of Chaplin's masterful gags and astonishing physical prowess had the audience whooping with delight. When, at the film's climax, the tramp performs a high- wire act as a horde of monkeys runs down the wire and attacks him, the audience gasped as loudly as I've ever heard in a theater. ... The musicians and the conductor performed with admirable fortitude for the film's 90 minutes, ceaselessly synchronizing the film without the use of click tracks. ... When, at last the lights went on, the viewers lingered in their seats, reluctant to leave behind the sound stage, the tramp, and the timeless comedy he created there seventy-five years ago."
The Washington Post said of the Aug. 7 Wolf Trap performance:
The juxtaposition of the music with the action of the film is brilliant. For example, early in "The Circus," as Chaplin is seen sprinting from a pursuing policeman, the music keeps a pulse matching the movement exquisitely. Various percussive accents highlight abrupt maneuvers, and touching musical satire is implied at choice moments.
Anderson must be commended, not only on a solid performance but also for obtaining this valuable music. The feat was matched only by the stamina of the orchestra, which was required to play continuously for 90 minutes."
One of the greatest pleasures for me has been to hear the response of young children to this picture. Their giggles and laughter, an octave above that of the adults, were frequent, and when "The Little Tramp" ran into the lion's cage, one child yelled out, "Oh, no!" at the top of his lungs, obviously completely engrossed in the film. This is simply a hilarious movie for people of all ages.
Finally, as a favor to the Library of Congress, Regent Services, S.A. (the Chaplin Estate) struck off two new 35 mm prints of the movie. Rarely has a general audience had the treat of seeing a gorgeous new print with a wonderful accompaniment played superbly by the National Symphony. Their response was unanimous. After laughing hysterically for 90 minutes, they applauded the genius of "The Little Tramp," which had been released for their rediscovery and entertainment by the slower speed, the new prints and the glorious musical performance.
Gillian Anderson is a conductor, musicologist and music librarian at the Library of Congress. She specializes in American music and film music, and has conducted orchestras in Europe, South America, Canada and the United States. She has participated in the restoration and reconstruction of the original orchestral scores written to accompany 11 of the great silent films and has conducted them in synchronization with their projection at many important film festivals and universities and with many symphony orchestras. Within the past year she has conducted the Garde Republicaine at the Fete de la Musique in Paris in a concert of opera transcriptions for band by John Phillip Sousa, "Carmen" (DeMille, 1915) and "Wings" (Wellman, 1927) with the RAI Orchestra in Rome, "Carmen" with the Puerto Rican Symphony, "The Thief of Baghdad" (Fairbanks, 1924) with the Michigan Sinfonietta, "Parsifal" (Edison, 1904) at the Bologna Film Festival, "Intolerance" (Griffith, 1916) at the University of Chicago and "Old Ironsides" (Paramount, 1926) with members of the National Symphony at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Ms. Anderson has written three books, among them Music for Silent Films (1898-1929): A Guide, which is available for $27 from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402, stock number 030-000-00199-1.
Charlie Chaplin: A Short List of References
Compiled by Edward P. Cambio, Bibliographic Specialist, Humanities and Social Sciences Division.
Asplund, Uno. Chaplin's films : a filmography / translated from the Swedish by Paul Britten Austin. -- Newton Abbot [Eng.] : David & Charles, [1973] -- 204 p. : ill. PN2287.C5A7613 1973 Bibliography: p. 197-198. Includes detailed plot synopses.
Chaplin, Charles, 1925- My father, Charlie Chaplin / by Charles Chaplin, Jr., with N. and M. Rau. -- New York : Random House, [1960]. -- 369 p. : ill. PN2287.C5C5
Chaplin, Charlie, 1889-1977. My autobiography. -- New York : Simon and Schuster [1964] -- 512 p. : ill., ports. PN2287.C5A32
Chaplin, Lita Grey, 1908- My life with Chaplin : an intimate memoir / by Lita Grey Chaplin with Morton Cooper. -- [New York] : B. Geis Associates, [1966]. -- 325 p. : ill., ports. PN2287.C5C52
Gehring, Wes D. Charlie Chaplin, a bio-bibliography. -- Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1983. -- xv, 227 p. : ill., ports. -- (Popular culture bio-bibliographies ; 0193-6891) PN2287.C5G38 1983 Filmography: p. [196]-211. Discography: p. [216]-217.
Gifford, Denis. Chaplin. -- Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1974. -- 128 p. : ill. (some col.) PN2287.C5G5 1974 Bibliography: p. 126-127.
Huff, Theodore. Charlie Chaplin. -- New York : Schuman, 1951. -- 354 p. : ill., ports. PN2287.C5H8
Lyons, Timothy J. (Timothy James) Charles Chaplin : a guide to references and resources. -- Boston : G.K. Hall, c1979. -- xvii, 232 p. : port. -- (A Reference publication in film) PN2287.C5L95 McCabe, John, 1920-
Charlie Chaplin. -- Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1978. -- xii, 297 p., [8] leaves of plates : ill. PN2287.C5M2 Bibliography: p. [245]-257. Filmography: p. [261]-279.
McCaffrey, Donald W. Focus on Chaplin / edited by Donald W. McCaffrey. -- Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, [1971]. -- xiii, 174 p. : ill.
PN2287.C5M22 Bibliography: p. 166-169. Partial contents: Acting-directing apprenticeship with Mack Sennett / by Charlie Chaplin -- What people laugh at / by Charlie Chaplin -- The art of Charles Chaplin / by Minnie Maddern Fiske - - Everybody's language / by Winston Churchill -- An evaluation of Chaplin's silent comedy films, 1916-36 / by Donald W. McCaffrey - - The Kid (1921) / [review by] Francis Hackett -- The idea in The Gold Rush: a study of Chaplin's use of the comic technique of pathos-humor / [review by] Timothy J. Lyons -- The Circus (1928) / [review by] Alexander Bakshy -- The Great Dictator (1940) / [review by] Herman G. Weinberg.
McDonald, Gerald Doan, 1905- The picture history of Charlie Chaplin / by Gerald McDonald. Designed by Woody Gelman. -- [Franklin Square, N.Y.] : Nostalgia Press, [1965]. -- 1 v. (unpaged) : ill., facsims., ports. PN2287.C5M25
Minney, Rubeigh James, 1895- Chaplin, the immortal tramp : the life and work of Charles Chaplin. -- London : G. Newnes, [1954]. -- 170 p. : ill. PN2287.C5M5
Robinson, David, 1930- Chaplin, his life and art. -- New York : McGraw-Hill, 1985. - - xix, 792 p., [80] p. of plates : ill. PN2287.C5R56 1985 Filmography: p. 699-745. Bibliography: p. 778-782.
Sobel, Raoul. Chaplin : genesis of a clown / Raoul Sobel and David Francis. -- London ; New York : Quartet Books, 1977. -- 253 p. : ill., facsims., ports. PN2287.C5S6
Bibliography: p. 223-227. Filmography: p. 229-242.
Von Ulm, Gerith, 1905- Charlie Chaplin, king of tragedy. -- Caldwell, Idaho : The Caxton printers, ltd., 1940. -- 403 p. : ill., facsim., plates, ports. PN2287.C5V6 Based chiefly on information and documents belonging to Toraichi Kono, Chaplin's secretary.