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DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI
Film by Robert Wiene (1919)
Live Computer Soundtrack by Edison Studio (2003)

 


video - Courtesy of Cineteca di Bologna



Das Cabinet des Dr.Caligari
(1919)
Film by Robert Wiene
Decla Film - Berlin

Live computer soundtrack di Edison Studio - Rome (2003)
Mauro Cardi, Luigi Ceccarelli, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, Alessandro Cipriani
percussions, samplers and live electronics
Edison Studio live electronics


produced by Edison Studio
with the contribute of 'Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Singapore', 'Goethe Institut - Rom'
'Cineteca Nazionale di Bologna'

World Premiere - ICMC 2003, Singapore Oct 2nd 2003

One of the true musical highlights of the conference was the world premiere performance by the Edison Studio of a soundtrack to the German horror film "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari" directed by Robert Wiene. A visually stunning film with powerful expressionist imagery, the music composed and performed by Luigi Ceccarelli, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, Alessandro Cipriani and Mauro Cardi provided a compelling accompaniment to this silent classic.
Richly layered and aggressively beautiful, this is truly a marvelous and masterly piece of work.

David Kim-Boyle - Computer Music Journal
volume 28 number 2 Summer 2004 - MIT Press USA

other performances:
Rome, Goethe-Institut Rom, dec 15, 2003
Malmoe, Sweden, "Eletrisk 04", may 8, 2004
Catania, oct 1st, 2004

DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI
In the little village of Holstenwall on the Dutch border, fairground hypnotist Dr.Caligari (Werner Krauss) puts on show a somnambulist called Cesare (Conrad Veidt) who has been asleep for twenty-three years. At night, dressed in a black body-stocking and with a ghostly white face, he slithers through the town murdering people on the doctor's orders. A student (Friedrich Feher) has his suspicions about Caligari after a friend is found dead and it transpires that the doctor is the director of a lunatic asylum. But the story also has a sting in the tail...
A masterpiece of the expressionist cinema, and the first cult movie in the history of the cinema, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari made use of the most advanced artistic and literary experiences of the past century.
It denounces the suffering of the deceptively free human condition, always on the edge between reality and fiction.
Wiene's film also appears to be filled with surprisingly historical premonitions.
After more than eighty years, the composition of the electronic soundtrack by Edison Studio deeply re-designs the expressivity of the movie. A long period of work was involved in analyzing the film and to redraw its interpretation. During this phase, the composition's expressive elements were determined as well as the formal path and the sound materials which make up the timbral palette of the score. These include the vocal and instrumental samples, the pre-existing musical fragments, and the concrete and synthetic sounds.
The instrumentation includes computers, MIDI keyboards connected to samplers, percussion instruments and resonant sounding objects. The intervention in real time, as in and beyond the tradition of silent films, helps recreate the emotion. Through a live invention, not only musical but also one involving the surrounding sounds and verbal language, these elements can then themselves dissolve into the music. This makes it possible to develop connections between the sound material and the expressive and symbolic world of the characters and places of the movie, in a flexible and dynamic way.
The composition of this soundtrack was commisioned by International Computer Music Conference (Singapore 2003).



 

 

THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII

Film by Eleuterio Ridolfi (1913)
Live Computer Soundtrack by Edison Studio (2002)


video - Courtesy of Cineteca del Friuli


Previous performances:
Milano, 16-11-2001, Palazzina Liberty, Festival "Senza parole" (world première)
Roma, 9-12-2001, Goethe Institut, Edison Studio Incontri, Festival "Progetto Musica"
Gothenburg, 18-09-2002, ICMC 2002 - selected in section "Videos for Cinema Screening"

THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII
"The Last Days Of Pompeii" (1913) is among the last of the great tableaux films. In this rendition of Bulwer's classic novel, set in 79 A.D., the lives of a prominent statesman, a beautiful woman, a pagan priest, a spiteful witch and a blind beggar are carefully interwoven and brought to a climax at the moment the sleeping volcano unleashes its fury.
Edison Studio (Mauro Cardi, Luigi Ceccarelli, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi and Alessandro Cipriani) has composed a computer soundtrack on several layers: symbolic sonic backgrounds and foregrounds, dialogs in "improbable" languages,
(un)naturalistic references. In the spirit of silent movie tradition soundtrack is performed live. The work has been selected for performance at ICMC2002 (Gothenburg, Sweden).

For information on the American Tour 2003 a.cipriani@edisonstudio.it

>>> HAVE A CLIP! <<<


Taverna.mov
(5.4MB)

Arbace.mov

(8.2MB)
   


EDISON STUDIO

Edison Studio was founded in 1993 in Rome. In 1997 it was re-founded by Luigi Ceccarelli, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, Alessandro Cipriani and Mauro Cardi.
Edison Studio tries to create sonic spaces together with visual artists, light designers, musicians, software engineers. For the realization of these projects the composers of Edison Studio work in three interconnected
areas: Production of electroacoustic and intermedia objects and events. Research on instruments for human-machine-space interaction. Education related to synthesis and sound processing. The composers of Edison Studio have worked with IRCAM, EMS (Stockholm), Roma and Catania Universities, Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), Institut fuer Neue Medien (Frankfurt), ICMC, IMEB (Bourges), CEMAT (Rome). Edison Studio's soundtrack of "The Last Days of Pompeii" was selected at ICMC2002. Edison Studio has recently produced a video/electroacoustic music concert (with video works by Gulio Latini, Fanny & Alexander and A. Zapruder film makers group, Silvia Di Domenico) performed at "Synthese" Bourges and at CEMI North Texas Univ.
Other events include a concert with four pieces for string quartet and tape and an entire electroacoustic concert with persian percussionist Mahamad Gavhi-helm.

Edison Studio
via Voghera, 7
00182 Roma
fax 06-70304799
e-mail: info@edisonstudio.it