Erich von Stroheim The Wedding March Carl Davis (arranger, conductor)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sadlers Wells, 17 November 1998


Philip Glass Koyaanisqatsi Live!
Michael Riesman (conductor)
Philip Glass Ensemble and Guests
Barbican, 23 November 1997

The past week in London has seen two contrasting, but equally outstanding,
performances of films with full-scale live music. The Wedding March with
Carl Davies' Viennese-based score reveals the operatic grandeur and irony of
the film in its awful glory. Koyaanisqatsi, a club zone-out with hippy
associations in the cinema fifteen years ago, has an edge and freshness when
peformed live, even though it has been ripped off ubiquitously.

Stroheim's The Wedding March is set in 1914, three years after Rosenkavelier
was written, and was made in 1928, the same year as Arabella, and also Der
Dreisgroschenoper. It presents a view of the lost operetta world of Vienna,
from the point of view of a cynical but ambitious hatter's son. Stroheim
casts himself as Nicki, an aristocrat who falls for working-class Fay Wray,
apparently seeing himself as an operetta hero. But he looks like Ochs all
along, and ends up walking down the aisle with saintly, limping Zasu Pitts,
daughter of a social-climbing merchant of corn-plasters. (Pitts is very
moving, in spite of cliched decor and her reputation in comedy.) Nicki's
gargoyle parents are apparently the result of a previous similar match.

Carl Davies' score is arranged from Viennese music of all kinds, a handful
of familiar walzes, Wienerblut and The Blue Danube, but also Schubert's
Aufenthalt for the sinister Iron Man (the figure on top of St Stephen's
cathedral, who plays a symbolic role in the action as the embodiment of male
aggression). Davis uses Mozart's Ave Verum and a traditional Catholic hymn
for the elaborate Corpus Christi procession which, with superb nastiness and
elaborate presentation, forms the climax and centre of the film. The wedding
march from Lohegrin gets only a few allusive notes, over the titles, and at
the end. Stroheim didn't get to complete the film, but it seems possible
that he intended the glorious theme of its title not to appear, and to be
overshadowed by the hypocritical pageant of Viennese tradition.

Whereas Davis and the London Philharmonic brilliantly bring out the meaning
of the film as it was originally intended, and must have been understood by
its audience, Philip Glass composed Koyaanisqatsi as an integral part of
Godfrey Reggio's film. Glass' music stands alone as an archetypical, and
typically architectural, big composition in eleven movements of increasing
intensity and anxiety, all based on a single rhythmic shape and a limited
range of melodic techniques, but building up textures and contrasts
dramatically. Pre-recorded, the music is a part of the mechanism implicit in
the movement of the image (though more stable than anything on the screen).
Heard live with the film, it adds a slight element of sympathy to the
beautiful but brutal images, of the desert, cities and people seen as moving
geometric patterns going out of control.

The Philip Glass Ensemble (with Glass himself playing the trademark opening
organ notes and pedal notes on the keyboard) gave an electrifying
performance, although the musicians' need for lights on the stage in front
of the screen meant that picture quality of the film was less than ideal.
Sadler's Wells, in contrast, has a proper orchestra pit and impeccable
projection.

The movie Koyaanisqatsi has aged surprisingly well, incidentally. What
looked like Castaneda-esque guff in 1983 turns out to be a surprisingly
coherent study of the relationship between humanity and the planet, with
minerals coming from the desert to fuel planes, trains and bombs, and to
create the machinery that makes the fast food that fuels the frantic crowds
in the cities. There's even a good visual pun -- hot-dog sausages coming
off a factory machine are cut to crowds of people pouring off elevators in
a similar pattern.

Paul Griffith, probably incidentally, in a programme note on the
relationship between the "American Pioneers" and the European musical
tradition describes the Hot Dog phenomenon: "...those who seek to maintain
or take over traditions will find that sooner or later the copyings and
transfers will produce something unexpected. A sausage leaves Germany,
crosses the Atlantic and becomes a hot dog."