The Fall of the House of Usher (2013/2014)
Music for the film of the same name by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber from 1928
for solo trumpet and large ensemble
Duration: 13 min.
Jörg Schneider / Collegium Novum, Jonathan Stockhammer
Performance material available from Boosey & Hawkes
exact instrumentation:
1(=picc).1(=corA).1(=bcl).1(=dbn)-1.1(solo trp).1.0-perc(2)-pft(2)-jazz gtr-sampler-strings
Reviews
Frankfurter Rundschau, 17.11.19, Bernhard Uske on the German premiere with the Ensemble Modern (soloist: Sava Stoianov) under Stefan Asbury, at the Alte Oper, Frankfurt a.M.
In contrast, Iris ter Schiphorst, born in 1956, has taken a constructive approach to film music by underpainting or overpainting "The Fall of the House of Usher", a surrealist silent film by Melville Webber and J.S. Watson Jr. from 1928, in a classical manner. The different gestures and aggregate states of her music were an attractor that gave the traumatically stylised setting of the picture a multi-dimensionality. The Ensemble Modern performed excellently under Stefan Asbury, a conductor who was as in control as he was relaxed. The special feature of ter Schiphorst's score is a solo part, brilliantly performed by EM trumpeter Sava Stoianov. Something like the galvanised voice of the nightmarish plot ...
Neue Züricher Zeitung, 2014
Music composed retrospectively for films from the interwar period marked the beginning of the evening in the Lichtspielmusik series, which was able to attract a considerable number of audiophiles and cinephiles to the Museum für Gestaltung. ...Iris ter Schiphorst's music for the enigmatic and gloomy "The Fall of the House of Usher", based on the story by Edgar Allen Poe, is more advanced and complex. The composition commissioned by Collegium Novum, in which Jörg Schneider proved himself as solo trumpeter, works with clichés and dramatic effects and captivated the audience at its premiere with its exquisite sound.
ZUGER NEWSPAPER, 13. 05. 2014
...The project arose from Jörg Schneider's idea to set a film to music... "After the Poe story was chosen, we asked ourselves who could write suitable music for this silent film."
The choice fell on Berlin-based composer Iris ter Schiphorst. "She has experience in scoring film material," says the Zug native. Her style appealed to him because "she has no fear of contact when it comes to choosing musical styles for the medium of film." The result convinced Jörg Schneider. "She has worked intensively with the film and managed to aptly emphasise the mood of the images with her music.... It fits the film story perfectly and enhances the effect of the images." The 18-piece ensemble plays exactly according to the score. "Only I, as the trumpet soloist, have a certain amount of room for improvisation," explains the Zug native, for whom the performance at Lincoln Center is a unique opportunity.