by Paul Klemperer

The relationship between music and visual media: an interview with Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski, leaders of the groups Golden Arm Trio and Brown Whornet.

ADA: You provided soundtrack music for several silent movie screenings.

Peter Stopschinski: My group, Brown Whorenet, did the music for Nosferatu, and we joined with Golden Arm Trio on The Lost World.

Graham Reynolds: I've done some others like Battleship Potemkin, Pandora's Box, Bed and Sofa, and The Wind.

ADA: How did you go about putting the music together?

PS: We did a whole lot of watching the movie. You've got to get really familiar with it to improvise and play along. We brought the VCR into the practice space. When we discovered something that worked, we would set down the chords and melodies. We did this scene by scene; that resulted in about 20 different sections.

ADA: Was that hard?

PS: Well, it's pretty easy to follow old silent movies because early filmmaking techniques use simpler scene switching, like cutting back and forth from one scene to another (the vampire sneaking up on the sleeping victim), or the typical fade to black at the end of a scene.

ADA: What about with The Lost World?

PS: Graham had some pre-composed melodic ideas, which were developed while watching the movie and taking notes. We assigned the melodies more in a Wagnerian treatment. So we had a love theme, a villain theme, like that.

GR: As I watch the movie with no sound, I improvise to it, lay out general themes. Then I outline it, come up with 6 to 10 themes, which can be transformed for the different movie scenes.

ADA: How did that affect the music?

PS: Watching the movie without any music was difficult. Music makes the plot more comprehensible. Also the movie controls the pacing of the music. So our music became more of a slow, subtle progression moving in long ideas, which is very different than Brown Whorenet's stage shows. They're usually more frenetic.

GR: You come up with your own ideas of how the story functions. You guide the story with the music. On the other hand, when I worked on James Crowley's Journey Man, I had access to the director since it was a new release. I didn't have to wonder how the music should fit.

ADA: What kind of visual reference points did you have when you wrote your symphonies?

PS: I'm very visual when I listen to music. I have all kinds of pictures and scenes in my head, but I don't want to tell people what to see when they listen to my music, because that's part of the pleasure. My first symphony was very traditional, but the second had more cutting between scenes, like Carl Stalling's music for cartoons. If you just listen to his music, it's amazing how much it jumps around. It's totally visual.

GR: People often say my music has a soundtrack or narrative feel, but I don't write with any particular image in mind. But there's a close connection to the visual arts. Almost any creative theory from one art form applies across the board; the creative issues involved are similar. If you get beyond the boring stuff, the scales and technique, the creative language is the same.

ADA: What about the visual aspect of the symphonies, the physical relationship of audience and orchestra?

PS: The visual aspect of the concert was very important. Our symphonies use a lot of percussion, which I think is especially fun to watch. A problem with the venue for the first symphony was that the audience could only see the back of the conductor and the front row of the orchestra. For the second symphony, which was performed at Austin Lyric Opera, we brought in risers to give the audience a fuller angle, plus couches, table lamps and nightstands to give a real living room feel. These things definitely bring the audience into the performance more. We're also thinking about doing an orchestra in the round.

GR: With the proscenium, the old-fashioned stage, the sound is struggling to get out to the audience. With the second symphony, we had the audience right on top of the orchestra. You can hear the details. There's an energy that comes across, an energy exchange between the audience and performers, and it drives the music to a higher level.

ADA: What other visual art forms have you provided music for?

PS: Well, I haven't done much with stage plays. I've done a couple puppet shows, which were fun to do. About 10 years ago, me and Brian Wolf from Drums & Tuba did one. They gave us the song lyrics and we wrote the songs, which we then used in the overture and finale as well.

GR: I've done a lot of theater stuff. You can talk to a theater person the same way as a painter. You can get to the bottom-line issues since the language translates easily. The hard thing is choosing the reference points for the audience. Any art requires a certain amount of context, and what level of context you assume makes a huge difference in what kind of audience you will have.

ADA: What about upcoming projects?

PS: Eric Grostik, Graham and I will play as a trio for another silent movie, possibly Faust. That would be fun, with lots of devil music. I'm also working on some noise music with surround sound speakers, maybe for the Mercury. Visuals would be good with that. The more abstract the music, the easier it is to take in with visuals. You're able to relate it to something visual.

GR: We're doing the string quartet with Tosca at the Mercury on December 11th. As far as visuals, we've done stuff with projections before, but I'm not sure how it will be set up at the Mercury. We have worked particularly with Luke Savisky, who does film collages with as many as 10 projectors. Sometimes the film loops are set to music; sometimes the music is done to the visuals.