PHOTOPLAY MUSIC

Pianist and composer Donald Sosin has been composing original scores for silent films since the 1970s. With over 300 compositions under his belt, it will be a treat for Houston to see him perform live with singer Joanna Seaton (Sosin’s wife) and Kid Pan Alley students from MacGregor Elementary School at Miller Outdoor Theater for the 1924 silent classic Peter Pan. Film Monitor had the privilege to ask Mr. Sosin a few questions about his work and career before this upcoming show on November 13 (7:00 pm).

With over thirty years of experience, how is it like to be a silent film accompanist in the 21st century?
There are more opportunities now to write and perform silent film music than there were when I first started out in the early seventies, more audience interest, more films to choose from as a result of discoveries and restorations. More places are showing silent films on their schedules, and the proliferation of recorded material has made it necessary to have new scores written for DVD release and for the web.

You have composed scores for the DVD releases of a few silent films by Yasujiro Ozu, including I Was Born But… and Passing Fancy. Like Peter Pan, the two aforementioned films are heavily focused on children. Your music has a youthful spring and captivating childlike wonder in it.
Well, that’s very kind of you, I have always related to children’s stories and have spent a lot of time working with kids, writing songs and musicals for them, and teaching them to write their own. I don’t think of Passing Fancy as a children’s film, particularly, it’s got a boy in it, but it’s really a family drama. I Was Born But... is much more puckish, I love those two brothers, and the gang that seems like a Japanese version of Little Rascals. I wanted to create music that would have some whimsy where appropriate, such as in the wonderful home movie scene where the film gets sped up, but also give a sense of the tensions that accompany the boys’ relationship with their father and their schoolmates.

How is your Peter Pan score similar to (or different from) your score for I Was Born But… ?
Peter Pan is a fantasy, of course, but has some of these same tensions inherent in the story, boys living in a neighborhood filled with bullies (pirates in this case), and fathers (Mr. Darling as well as Peter) who are more absorbed in their work than they are with family responsibilities. But the main thing for me in the music for this film is the wonder of kids learning to fly and traveling to an adventure-filled land where all kinds of exciting things crop up: mermaids, crocodiles, etc. The musical score by John Crook for Barrie’s original stage play has some great tunes in it, and I have appropriated some of those for the score we’ll play. My wife Joanna Seaton will sing an old English lullaby, “Golden Slumbers,” same lyrics as the Beatles song, but with a new tune of mine.
Two years ago in Charlottesville VA the kids in the Kid Pan Alley songwriting workshop wrote three songs that they sang during the film itself, and I incorporated some of those themes into the score. In Houston, the kids will be singing before the actual film, but there is a good chance that those tunes will find their way into the accompaniment. This is one of those cases where I leave a lot to the moment, and it will be great fun to see what the end results are, and how the outdoor venue affects things. We will also invite the audience to make sound effects from time to time; I started doing that a couple of years ago and kids and adults alike really have fun doing animal sounds and cannons and whatnot.

Speaking of Ozu, what is your favorite film by the Japanese master?
I Was Born But... is in fact my favorite film of his, but I also really like Tokyo Story, both versions of Floating Weeds and pretty much everything else I’ve seen of his. The framing of the shots is always so exquisite, and the repeated motifs of telephone poles or laundry flapping in the wind or other cinematic breaks between scenes are remarkable.

What are some music-accompanied silent films that have influenced you as a composer?
I learned a great deal about silent film music from composer/pianist William Perry, who did a lot of scoring for two PBS series, The Silent Years, almost forty years ago. His themes are very memorable and his whole dramatic approach to silent film scoring was a huge influence on me. I have also heard great scores by my friends and colleagues who play at the festivals in Pordenone and Bologna each year; Timothy Brock’s score for Lady Windermere’s Fan, Gabriel Thibaudeau’s Broken Blossoms, Antonio Coppola (no relation) Visage des Enfants, and most recently Maud Nellissen’s adaptation of Lehár’s The Merry Widow are some that come to mind. The late British conductor John Lanchbery also did a tremendous The Birth of a Nation score that used the original Griffith/Breil music as a point of departure but wove it together in a much more organic way than had been done earlier. All of this music, by the way, is written either for orchestra or chamber ensembles. The piano scores we do tend to be improvised, but I have also written instrumental scores for films like Richard III, Foolish Wives, East Side/West Side and Manhatta which have been performed live but not released commercially. I’m very eclectic in my choice of style and try to find the right angle for each different project. There’s a vast difference between films like Ghosts Before Breakfast and The Kid Brother, and I enjoy changing styles as a way of helping the audience interpret the film.

What would you like to say to audiences who are not familiar with silent films accompanied by live music?
Come see Peter Pan , you’ll love it. Seeing silent films with an audience on a big screen and live music is the only way to really get a sense of what this art form is about. People have forgotten how to see films, and these are often much more visually interesting than contemporary films which depend so much on talking heads and sound effects. We have found that once people see one silent film, they want to see more. There’s a wonderful new adventure waiting for them, so think lovely wonderful thoughts and join us on Friday in Neverland.

As part of the Cinema Arts Festival Houston, Peter Pan will be showing at the Miller Outdoor Theater on 11/13 (7:00 pm).