Mortimer WILSON (1876–1932)
The Thief of Baghdad, Op. 74 (complete score reconstructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald) (1924)
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra/Mark Fitz-Gerald
rec. 11 April 2019, Sendesaal, Hessischer Rundfunk, Frankfurt, Germany
FIRST HAND RECORDS FHR126 [74:45]
My brother and I recently watched Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi, a film that was at least as much a critique of internet addiction, pandemic-fueled paranoia, and the corrosive doublespeak of today’s elite classes, as it was an elegiacally virtuosic summation of cinema itself; an effect augmented by Cliff Martinez’s masterly score, with its sardonic allusions to the ghosts of film music past (Bernard Herrmann especially). It was tempting to read in all this a tacit recognition of the late Peter Bogdanovich’s existential fear that cinema today was a sick man of the arts; in decline, perhaps terminally.
By one of those cosmic coincidences, this disc arrived for me the following morning after the screening: a recording of Mortimer Wilson’s soundtrack to the romping 1924 action-adventure epic The Thief of Baghdad. The film and its concomitant score were both products of a time when the silver screen’s best years lay ahead and its grammar was still being forged. Yet they also codified, even anticipated aspects of the future yet to come. Douglas Fairbanks—the film’s star, then at the zenith of his career—personally commissioned Wilson to compose the music. Nevertheless, his score was nearly discarded at the last moment for not being populist enough (over the protestations of Fairbanks); a foreshadowing of the unhappy destinies that much later befell Herrmann (Torn Curtain), Alex North (2001: A Space Odyssey), and Elmer Bernstein (Gangs of New York).
Listening to Wilson’s music nearly a century after it was composed, one struggles to understand what had been so objectionable. Conductor Mark Fitz-Gerald’s enthusiastic liner essay compares the score favorably to Dmitri Shostakovich and Alban Berg, among others. The music itself, however, instead confirms that already by late 1923 the schism between the related genres of classical and film music was mostly complete. Unlike in the former, where a creation by an autocrat like Gustav Mahler can gather dust for however long it needs until its time finally comes, film is ultimately and by necessity a collaborative art, beholden to social expectations and financial obligations. A classical composer can choose to ignore these if they wish; a film composer cannot. A completed film, even when led by a directorial auteur, is the result of countless cumulative efforts and compromises, on and off-camera. What ultimately appears on celluloid (or a digital file) may have little similarity to its creators’ original vision (consider Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons for a notorious and extreme case in point). Fairbanks’ choice of the genial Wilson and the ensuing dispute with the film’s promoter augured what would become part of the standard procedures of film-making.
So when Fitz-Gerald writes about the “structural and harmonic complexity,” the “great musical unity” of The Thief of Baghdad score, this is not quite borne out by the music itself, which is firmly diatonic and mostly homophonic, eschewing the comparatively sophisticated harmonies and textures commonplace among established classical composers (let alone the avant-gardists) of the time. One would never guess that among Wilson’s teachers was Max Reger, whose vertiginously polyphonic and chromatic music was some of the most complex composed pre-Versailles. Wilson’s achievement here is more subtle. He was one of the first to understand that a composer was only one of many components in a film’s production. To be effective, a film composer needed to be a different and new kind of composer; one who could compose on demand if needed, who was ready to surrender his autonomy for the sake of a greater whole. (Which explains why Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky later failed to make headway in Hollywood.) The music that Wilson composed for The Thief of Baghdad, therefore, is simple and direct; crafted so as to complement, not distract from the on-screen action; solicitous of his audience’s disinclination from musical progressivism, and the limitations of what theatre orchestras could reasonably play. The score strongly recalls Ethelbert Nevin, Rudolf Friml, and especially Albert Ketèlbey (listen to the love theme’s near quotation of In a Monastery Garden on track 1 starting at :55, track 13 at :49, and track 39 at :51).
Some of the most fascinating moments (to the modern ear) in The Thief of Baghdad score are those that evince how remarkably enduring certain aural filmic tropes are. Tracks 4 and 23, for example, with their “oriental” scale and instrumentation, effortlessly conjure a Middle Eastern setting before the listener’s eyes (aided in the former cue by a flock of Straussian sheep that wandered off from Don Quixote); similar to how a balaban and/or a dolefully melismatic husky female vocalise can betoken the same region to today’s film audiences.
Fitz-Gerald, better known for his completions and recordings of Shostakovich’s incidental music for stage and screen, conducts the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra here with vigor and swing. If he does not necessarily convince that Wilson merits luxurious comparisons with his contemporaries in the field of concert music, he nonetheless manages to convey his whimsical, tuneful charm. Fitz-Gerald’s liner essay, which imparts many fascinating historical and biographical details about Wilson, is excellent; his love for this music is clearly evident. Patrick Stanbury’s synopsis of the film, with a track by track breakdown, is very helpful. The recording, produced by Philipp Knop and engineered by Lisa Harnest, ought to be a textbook example of how to capture a live performance. Sound is a little close, but not excessively so; tilted slightly to the mid-range, with discreetly delineated bass. If the liner booklet had not said so, I would have never guessed that this was recorded live.
For lovers of film music and silent cinema, this First Hand disc is well worth listening to, but even general classical music listeners may find much to enjoy in Wilson’s intrinsically cinematic music.
Néstor Castiglione
