The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Story of a New Film Score, Round II

In a previous post, I told the story of how I came to write a new score for the 1910 version of Frankenstein, done by Thomas Edison's company. Needing to come up with at least three ten to fifteen minute films to score for an upcoming screening, I eventually found my number two: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, from 1912, directed by Louis J. Henderson of The Tanhauser Company.

As with Frankenstein, the film is another early horror delight. I feel as if James Cruze, who plays both Jekyll and Hyde, might be the earliest screen presence with "star quality" in the history of cinema. His charisma and good looks are the earliest movie-star presence I have seen. But I am no film historian...

The plot of the film is, of course, simple, based on Stevenson's novella and also upon a play version written by Thomas Russel Sullivan in 1887. In this short film, Dr. Jekyll, seeking a pharmacological way to separate evil from good within the human animal (ostensibly as a start to purging evil from mankind) designs a concoction that he is willing to test upon himself. But, as Sting so succinctly puts it in his song "If I Ever Lose My Faith," it's hard to find miracles of science that don't go "from a blessing to a curse," and, after repeated use of the drug, the evil Hyde begins to have his way with Dr. Jekyll and pop out whenever he wants.

The classic 19th, early 20th century mix of fear of the overreach of science and a bit of a pessimistic view of the nature of good and evil then ensues. But, I don't want to give you every detail. I'll let you see the murderous, little-girl-knocking-over fun for yourself. (You'll see what I mean...I can't imagine Hyde was meant to have done anything else to the poor girl in such an early film...but...knocking down little girls is evil!)

My approach to scoring the film was, again, traditional, with thematic motifs for Jekyll and Hyde as well as a theme for Jekyll's love, who is simply billed as "Jekyll's sweetheart," played by the ironically named Florence La Badie. The love theme was a result of some research. I found that the biggest hit song in America at the time of the film was "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," and, although I could have simply used it, since it is public domain, I decided to create a thinly-veiled variation on its main melody.

I writing the Frankenstein score, I had realized that the approach had to be carefully done. I had no desire to write tongue-in-cheek scores that, in any way would mock the films, nor did I want to do what I had seen countless other silent film re-scorers do: go all...bizarre and noisy and synth-ey. I wanted to to capture the films' innocence and a mix of the tone of the early silent film music approach and that of the post Bernard Hermann era.

The "horror" of these films must have seemed more intense to audiences of the day, but, the films -- and live accompaniment scores of the day -- had a certain melodrama to them which meant completely dark and humorless score would not have captured the spirit. Somehow, I remembered -- probably imperfectly -- Carl Stalling's brilliant introduction music to the Bugs Bunny short, "Hair Raising Hare," which I always had loved, and I fashioned the opening chords with their echo in my mind. The rest took shape from there.

By this time, I had upgraded my sound samples a little bit [I had mentioned in the post about Frankenstein that my samples on that one were "stock" with my new program and not top quality]  and I had gotten some orchestral "effects" -- some quirky and spooky articulations of the strings and winds, which I put to use not the J&K score; you can hear plenty in Jekyll's first transformation. I also did some simple -- even predictable -- but effective things, like using a downward-running sweep of the wind chimes for Jekyll turning into Hyde and an upward-running version for his turning back into Jekyll.

In the end, I hope I did the movie justice by writing a sincere score. It was hard not to, because while working on this film, as with Frankenstein, I had come to care about both the creators and the characters. Two weeks of scoring is a long time to spend with them all. I think I got to know them pretty well. I hope you enjoy it:

Frankenstein, 1910: The Story of a New Film Score

In October of 2017, I had an opportunity to screen three silent films to which I composed new orchestral scores, at the excellent music venue, The Vault, in Berlin, New Jersey. No, I could not afford to hire the Philadelphia Orchestra, or any orchestra, for that matter. But I had recently discovered that, during my stodgy and deliberate evasion of computer recording over the years, I had missed a revolution in home production and, in particular, instrument "sampling." Put simply, "sampling" meant that I could use pre-recorded orchestral instrument sounds, which allowed me to play, through use of a controlling piano-type keyboard, literally every instrument in the orchestra, each with its varied articulations, as a real sound -- not synthesized. (There is still dent on my forehead where I slapped it, lamenting having missed out on this in my Scrooge-like evasion of changing times. Alas.)

[It might also be worth mentioning that this discovery is a big reason for my spottiness on the blog up till now. I was hooked.]

Having finally stepped aboard the new-fangled steamship of computer recording, I found myself able to compose, orchestrate, mix and master orchestral music, which (and I say this with no irony at all) was nothing less than a dream-come-true, as it allowed me to finally hear my music "played by an orchestra." I still am not the least blasé about this. It's a miracle to me.

With these tools at my fingertips, I decided to seek out short silent films (which are both public domain and just plain cool) and write new scores to them. (I will present the first one here and do separate posts for each of the remaining.) The three films were Edison's Frankenstein, 1910; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Lucius J. Henderson and A Trip to the Moon, 1902, directed by the great Georges Mellier. The spooky/quirky titles were chosen because the target date for the screening was Halloween of 2018.  I created this trailer for the event, complete with appropriate original "trailer" music:

People with discerning ears will be able to see that the quality of the samples and production improves from film to film, with the highest quality being the last-made: the trailer you just watched. While I had been composing since the age of about ten, the sample biz was new to me, so I was (and still am) acquiring skills and better-quality samples along the way. This first score, Frankenstein, was done entirely with the stock samples I had in my computer program and they are good, but far from great.

Enough of the technical. This process was a blast. I grew to love each of these early silent films as I worked: about two weeks of composition for each.

Amusingly, Thomas Edison thought to call his adaptation (the first ever on film) of Mary Shelley's book "a liberal adaptation." Boy, was it ever. In it, our young friend, Victor Frankenstein, literally stirs up his Creature in a cauldron in the seclusion of his requisite skull-and-beaker-cluttered garret laboratory. (We can let Edison have this one. Shelley was pretty non-specific as to the means Victor used in order to breathe life into the Creature -- though, Galvani was, I think, mentioned; hence, the interpretation of the electrical force we have come to know.)

So, the Creature is simmered to perfection -- accompanied by a dramatic bit of music in 5/4 time, complete with some fun "mickey-mousing" to the chemical puffs and poofs -- and, emerging from his copper womb, with a spooky reach of his long-fingered claws -- scares the cheese out of Victor, who flees to his bedroom. Again this is the basic idea of the book; Victor really does hide in bed when he sees the ugly thing he has made.

Victor is more a neglectful parent than anything. Had he nurtured his intelligent creation, things might have turned out differently. But the film -- perhaps to "dumb things down" for this new thing called the "film audience" -- attributes the Creature's behavior to Victor's evil parts having been, somehow, poured into him. Maybe being created and abandoned and without anyone to love was not enough reason for the Creature to have behaved badly... but there it is.

But the loneliness of the Creature is not avoided completely. In fact, one of my favorite moments of acting in the film is by the Creature, played by Charles Ogle, who, without sound or words, manages with very clear motions of his arms, to bellow "WHAT ABOUT ME?" after he sees Frankenstein's sweet love with his lovely fiancé. (Look for it -- it's heartwarming.)

Things go downhill from there, as you might guess.

I'll let you experience the rest in all its beautiful theatrical newness. I find some of the early special effects wonderful, just as I find it wonderful that the film makers of this time saw, immediately, that this new celluloid thing could yield much different magics than those of a play.

I took pretty traditional approach to the score; all acoustic instruments. I also use consistent themes -- leitmotifs -- here, down to a literal reversal of Frankenstein's theme for the Creature, inspired by the often-puzzling mirror-work that the director, Searle, does throughout the film.

Please enjoy it. This film -- and the others -- became very dear to me as I worked. I hope you love them as much as I do.

Joseph, 2018; Guiseppe, 1618

So many little things are so profound but we spend so much time fixated on the wrong aspects of those things.

My sixteen-year-old son got into the car yesterday, having been sent into the school office to take care of a little piece of business. He got it wrong.

I found myself lecturing him: "You need to stay focused on the thing you're doing and not on the thing you are looking forward to doing. I know you want to get done and leave, but..."

Within seconds, I saw myself sitting in the passenger seat, in 1984, being told the same thing by my own agitated father. Immediately, I smiled to myself and told my son that I had been in his seat, both quite literally and quite metaphorically, many times. My dad had told me the same, exact thing (over and over).

In that moment, I felt deeply connected to my dad again. I also felt overwhelmed by the profundity of the truth -- what I really think Keats meant by "Beauty" (not aesthetics but the profound) in his famous "Beauty is truth, truth, beauty" line.

This particular truth is that life is a continual rewrite of our past and of the past before our past. We look at the work our parents did and we separate the good from the bad and try to improve on the bad and to capture the good in what they did for us. We try to evolve into better parents -- and people -- than they were, no matter how good they were. (I know I want my boys to be ten-times the man I am.) We go one and on, generation after generation, era after era, doing this.

It is also true that what we so often comically write off as "I sound like my mother/father" is really the echo of an epic story that goes back to the beginning of every family line, back to the first sea-fleeing slime the was to evolve into our ancestors. (In my case, probably slime with glasses and too much affinity for bread.)

So, yeah, I sound like my dad sometimes because my sons often sound, act, succeed and fail,  just like I did. And that is powerful.

It is so powerful, that it makes me realize how unimportant it is to dwell on sentiments like "Oy, kids today..." when their sometimes annoying traits are really profoundly beautiful and really proof to me that the spirit of the Matarazzo roots going back to the very beginning of it all. Somewhere perhaps, in Renaissance Italy, a Matarazzo and his son were in the cart, the boy -- with dark eyes, mysteriously like my own son's -- looking sheepish and the father looked at him and said, "Devi rimanere concentrato sulla cosa che stai facendo..."

Powerful.

But here's the rub: The kid still needs to learn to take care of business. Not dwelling on the mundane in the face of the profound is wise, but letting your kids become irresponsible is profoundly wrong. It just ain't the end of the world, though, when your kid leaves his socks on the floor. So many things in life are like this. Problem is, the more one realizes this, the more people look at him (we'll call him "Chris") like he's crazy.

The Slow (Horrifying) Death of Innocence

Note the evolution of Pennywise, from the old film...

I was awakened, late in the night, by my son, who is thirteen. As his shadowed form stood over me, he was actually wringing his hands. He has had that habit since he was a baby, whenever he was nervous about something.

When I asked what was wrong, he told me he had just had an awful ("like, a really awful") nightmare. When I asked him what happened in the dream, he said it was "just random scary stuff." I gave him the usual unhelpful adult advice -- read a book; think pleasant thoughts, etc. A pat on the shoulder and a hug and he went back to bed.

A few minutes later, he was back, wringing his hands again, and he told me the contents of the dream. I won't recount them, for the sake of his privacy, but it was truly an awful dream. It gave me chills when he was telling me.

I thought about the dream for a while. It took me until he next day to realize what bothered me so much about it: it was the kind of nightmare I never would have had as a thirteen-year-old, because I had never been exposed to the level of intensity that was necessary to generate it. Because, back then I was a child, we still protected (in fact, could protect) our kids from things for which they may not have been ready.

I know what generated the dream: It was a YouTube clip my son showed me (earlier that night) from the movie It. In the clip, the clown guy, Pennywise (I haven't see the movie nor read the book), is talking to a boy by the sewer and he pulls in the boy's arm in and sinks his flayed and super-animalistic teeth into it, biting the arm off at the elbow. The boy crawls away as blood runs into the rainwater that is rushing by in the street and, then, the clown pulls the boy into the sewer to his doom.

My son found this on YouTube. If someone is naked in a YouTube clip, the warning about being eighteen pops up or the video is removed. No warning for this one. "God forbid," says the lingering ghost of out Puritan continental roots, "a kid see a pair of breasts or a rear-end, but, intense scenes of bloody violence? No biggie..."

That said, my kid can find anything anytime: videos of any kind of deviant, violent, sexist or angry sexuality are just waiting to be discovered as are images, videos and texts filled with hate and prejudice and general stupidity. No protection; no walls; no oversight.

...to the new film.  And available to any six-year-old
who searches Google for "clowns."

Like every parent, my only recourse is to teach philosophies about morality and appropriateness and to monitor use the best I can. But, before this easy access to things both wonderful and horrifying existed, things were much easier for parents. To see a film that was rated R, before VCRs and "pay TV," a kid needed to sneak into a theater, which was decidedly harder than clicking a link. Porn? Maybe an uncle had Playboy hidden in the bathroom; maybe your friend found a tape and you watched it at a sleepover. But you didn't have sleepovers every night, twenty-four hours a day, filled with wall-to wall porn. And, maybe, you never saw porn...either ever or until you were a young adult.

This is not meant to be a "golden-age" piece. Some things "back then" were handled better. Some things were not. Some things were better more as a result of accidental circumstance than because of a "more caring" general society. I just know that, in the circumstance of growing up in the late seventies and eighties, I was allowed to be innocent a lot longer. (However, I will not leave this paragraph without noting that, in the interest of making things easy and profitable, virtually no consideration is being made, today, about what is "out there" and at our children's fingertips. Maybe something negligent about our society that was always there is just oozing out more readily now.)

The fodder for the kind of dream my son had the other night was not in my proverbial wheelhouse. I was chased by mysterious shadows and taunted by pale faces of Disneyesque witches. I wound up in school in my underwear and I woke up palpitating and sweating, having dreamed the death of a loved-one...but images of intense gore and sentiments of sadism and naked evil were not an ingredients in my mental stew.

Let's not be too happy about the availability of information and the freedom of unfettered expression the present age gives us. In so many ways, it is the slow (horrifying) death of youthful innocence.

On Phones and Bruising One's Self

I have been known to rail against technology, yet I use it on quite a high level, with music production and even as a teacher. It's good and it's bad. Trent Reznor points out, in the film Sound City, that the current tech tools have enabled musicians to do things we could never do before but that it has not increased the number of great albums being made. In short, no amount of tech is going to make the mediocre, brilliant or the bad, good, in any discipline.

I am in a constant state of evaluating tech and its effects on me. When it affects me negatively, I eliminate or control its influence. My Facebook use is reduced, at present, by about 80%. I feel like a new man, for more reasons than I have time to explain right now.  Social media is no longer on my phone and...my phone is not always at my side.

I'll wait for the cacophony or world-wide gasps to die down before I continue.

Whether literally or figuratively, people do gasp at that idea, even as they panic and give themselves bruises during the self-pat-down-of-doom when they realize they have left home without their Precious. Because, here's the thing: The people around me expect me to have my phone on me at all times, whether they are friends, family, or professional colleagues. They all need to stop.

We each need to draw the line, for ourselves.

The other day, I was essentially given the cold shoulder  (no pun intended) for not having had my phone on my while I was shoveling snow.

Why do people think that they have a right to my attention whenever they want it? If they want to carry their phones at all times, they sure can do so. But I choose not to. Right now for instance, I am not sure where in the house it is. This morning, I drank two cups of coffee in silence -- without my phone; no Words with Friends; no Doodle Jump; no weather updates.

When I was a kid -- and into my adult years -- if I was not in the house, you would not get me on the phone. Way back in the dark past, you couldn't even leave a message for me, so, if you missed me, you missed me. (You might have been able to leave a message with my Dad, but, chances are he was working out voicing for the sax section on a big band arrangement and probably never really realized who he was talking to, let along remember a message for his kid.)

I get it. Paradigms shift. But, at some point, each of us needs to "dig in" and hold to the ideas that help life make sense to us. It just does not make sense to me that I need to be immediately at everyone's beck. I get to be left alone when I want to be, even as a professional. In my profession, people don't die if I don't get a call.

Are we all really so deluded as to our own "special" self-importance by all of this tech celebrity that is available to us for only a short "sign-up" for a social media program? (Heck -- what sign-up process? Just click the blue box to sign on with Facebook and weave yourself more claustrophobically into the heavy damp tapestry of the Interweb...) Is it all ego? -- "he needs to be available for me and I need to be available to others because I am so important"?  Well, I just ain't that important, and that feels good. And neither are you.

I'll tell you though...tech does have, as I said, its advantages. These days, if I don't want to talk to you I can look at my phone and ignore you. I can even -- oh, so therapeutically -- press a button that flat-out says: "IGNORE." In the old days, I just had to pick up the phone and wince when I realized it was you. That's progress.