Théâtre organists, pianists and orchestras have accompanied silent films, so why not high-tech rock bands? Gérard Hourbette and Thierry Zaboitzeff, members of the French band ART ZOYD, have composed a vivid sound track for Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's silent horror classic "Nosferatu", and when they appeared at the Alice Tully Hall, the group accompanied a clean print of the 1922 film as part of the Serious Fun festival.
Art
Zoyd are a quartet, but their instrumental arsenal yields a sound with an orchestral
heft. The group's main components are electronic, and include synthesizers,
samplers, tape machines, keyboards, percussion and bass. But there are also
parts for amplified violin, viola, two cellos and saxophone interspersed throughout
the score.
Like any good silent-film soundtrack, the Hourbette-Zaboitzeff score moves with the screen action. There was not much subtlety in it; the scene that introduces Dracula's eventual victims, the Harkers, has a gentle music-box quality; morning scenes draw on either the tintinabulations of church bells or layers of bird calls; country scenes are set to a bagpipe timbre, and of course, scenes that show or even allude to Count Dracula have music that is hazy, bass-heavy and ominous. The sounds of wind and distant howling figure prominently in the blend.
Beneath
the obvious colouration, the music brings together a standard Minimalist vocabulary
of repeated melodic figures and a strong rhythmic pulse, and the crunching,
mildly dissonant textures of industrial rock. It suited the film as well as,
and often better than, a conventionally melodramatic organ score might, and
in its best moments it gave an extra sense of eerie dimension to Max Schreck's
marvellously decrepit, zombie-like portrayal of the vampire.
The band's members were:
Patricia Dallio - Keyboards
André Mergenthaler - Cello, Saxophonist
Gerard. Hourbette and Thierry. Zaboitzeff - who divide the rest of the instruments
between them.