Charlie Chaplin is known as perhaps the greatest film star in the era of silent films. What he is not known for is his work as a composer. The New York Philharmonic played a tribute to the latter this weekend.
Chaplin was not a trained musician but could play several instruments by ear, according to The New York Times, not able to read music. Still, despite the latter fact. he was instrumental in composing many of the soundtracks for his own films by playing his ideas out loud and having assistants translate them to written form. Chaplin was one of several individuals listed as the winner for Best Original Score for his film Limelight.
Considering the considerable impact that the score has on a silent film, and the way that the characters and soundtracks in such films seem to interact, it was an especially useful skill for Chaplin to have, literally choreographing his own performances to some degree.
The New York Philharmonic performed the score for his 1936 film Modern Times over the weekend at Avery Fisher Hall, all while the film itself was projected onto the stage behind them. Timothy Brock, the composer and conductor who led the Philharmonic during the show, restored the original score during 2000. He was invited to Paris by Chaplin's descendants, to work with boxes of Chaplin's pieces that were in no discernible order. He patched together what he could find and filled some gaps so that the work could be played a whole again.
"They wanted the music to be funny," Chaplin once wrote. "But I would explain that I wanted no competition, I wanted the music to be a counterpoint of grace and charm, to express sentiment, without which, as Hazlitt says, a work of art is incomplete."
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