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Charles Koechlin and the Early Sound Film 1933–38

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert Orledge
Robert Orledge*
Affiliation:
Liverpool University
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Extract

Charles Koechlin showed little interest in silent films, and saw the film industry both at the beginning and end of his musical career as the worst aspect of the debased world of commercial art he so detested. According to his diaries, Koechlin first visited the cinema on i December 1912, and between this and his important visit to see Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel on 29 June 1933 he apparently went only eighteen times. Charlie Chaplin was the only silent film star that Koechlin really respected, for he represented eternal hope in misfortune, an escape from everyday problems into a world of fantasy, the ‘chimérique’ as Koechlin called it; all of this was relevant to his own existence as a composer. From the series of essays entitled Stars which he wrote in 1934 as a commentary to his Seven Stars' Symphony it is evident that Koechlin found silent film subtitles pretentiously banal, their stories conventional and superficial, often mutilating his favourite authors such as Jules Verne and Hans Andersen. With the arrival of the first sound films in the early 1930s, however, Koechlin suddenly found himself drawn to the cinema, and a curious, fascinating period of his life began, which brought to a head his inner conflict between the necessity to exist as a composer in real life despite serious financial difficulties, and his desire to escape into a private fantasy world in which he could compose. A passage from Tristan Klingsor's Scheherazade poem Le Voyage, which Koechlin set in 1922–23 and to which he often referred, summarizes his philosophy. The first phrase is the crucial one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 98 , 1971 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Stars—En marge de ‘The Seven Stars’ Symphony' (9–16 August 1934), unpublished. The manuscript (and all other unpublished sources referred to in this paper unless otherwise noted) is now in the possession of M. Yves Koechlin. I am deeply grateful to M. Koechlin, to Messrs. Max Eschig & Cie. of Paris, and to the Bibliothèque Nationale, for allowing me to consult their Koechlin material.Google Scholar

2 Op. 84 No. 2.Google Scholar

3 Stars, VI: ‘Les Rôles masculins’, p. 4.Google Scholar

4 As Koechlin points out in the piano reduction (Max Eschig & Cie., MS 1192).Google Scholar

5 Op. 46 No. 5, composed 1908–16.Google Scholar

6 Voyages, Op. 222, was a ballet based on the Seven Stars' Symphony and the Interludes de style atonal-sériel (Op. 214) which Koechlin made for Charles Malherbe of the Opéra-Comique in June 1947. He thought it could equally well be used as a ‘film dansé’, and also compiled cinematographic scenarios for several of his early ballet and orchestral works, notably Nuit de Walpurgis classique, Op. 38, and La Forêt paienne, Op. 45. In the end Voyages was replaced by another ballet, L'Ame heureuse, based on the Preludes, Op. 209, Calme sur la mer, Op. 205 No. 4, and the introduction to Op. 214, which received its premiere at the Opéra-Comique on 20 February 1948.Google Scholar

7 Stars, VI: ‘Les Rôles masculins’, p. 6.Google Scholar

8 Op. 95, composed 1925–7.Google Scholar

9 Most of the Lilian Harvey films were made in Germany under the auspices of U.F.A. (Alliance Cinématographique Européene), and were generally produced by Erich Pommer, with lyrics by Jean Boyer (or Bernard Zimmer) and music by Werner R. Heymann which proved such a trial to Koechlin. Lilian Harvey only appeared in the French cover-version of Princesse à vos ordres; the original German ‘Princess’ was Kate de Nagy.Google Scholar

10 En marge de l'Album de Lilian, 2nd version, p. 2 (see note 11).Google Scholar

11 First version 30 August 1934–1935, 94pp.; second version (revision for possible publication) September-December 1934, rev. 3–10 June 1935, 77pp. Neither version was published.Google Scholar

12 By Werner R. Heymann.Google Scholar

13 En marge de l'Album de Lilian, 1st version, pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

14 ‘Charles Koechlin and the Movies’ (interview with Michael Chanan), The Listener, lxxxii (1969), 644.Google Scholar

15 ‘Petit roman pour un film de Lilian Harvey’ (1–3 September 1934), and ‘Scenario pour un film’, both unpublished.Google Scholar

16 By kind permission of M. Yves Koechlin.Google Scholar

17 The film was to be Let's Live Tonight, directed by Victor Schertzinger, 1935.Google Scholar

18 En marge de l'Album de Lilian, 1st version, p. 41.Google Scholar

19 From notes in Koechlin's list of his own compositions.Google Scholar

20 In the original manuscript (Max Eschig & Cie.), p. 12.Google Scholar

21 No. 89, ‘Retour de l'insouciance’, was harmonised on 20–21 November 1938, though its melody was composed on 9 February 1936.Google Scholar

22 Letter to his wife Suzanne, ‘partie pour Menton et devant d'aller de voir Lilian au Cap d'Antibes’, 3 April 1936.Google Scholar

23 Letter from M. Neuberger, 5 February 1935.Google Scholar

24 Koechlin's reply to Neuberger, 9 February 1935.Google Scholar

25 Humanité, 16 July 1938.Google Scholar

26 The Charlie Chaplin finale of the Seven Stars' Symphony presents a different case. Pictorialism is necessary in this idealised film music, because the music takes on the role of the film itself, the orchestra assumes the function of the screen. Both works, however, are self-sufficient and musically balanced throughout.Google Scholar

27 Part of the Picabia/Satie/Berlin spectacle Relâche of 1924.Google Scholar

28 ‘Le Film sonore: l'écran et la musique en 1935’, La Revue musicale, xv (1934), 321–432.Google Scholar

29 Music Ho!, London, 1934, p. 226.Google Scholar

30 Étude sur Charles Kocchlin [par lui-même], pour M. Jean Forger (unpublished), p. 28.Google Scholar