Articles:
Lady Windermere’s Fan – The Score

I enjoy the absence of category Lady Windermere falls under, and rarely do I get asked to walk that middle ground between intense drama and comedy. With Ernst Lubitsch and Oscar Wilde, however, the composer is expected to run this thin line between the two all night long, and it is more than difficult to musically convey the relationship between them without it sounded terribly over-wrought and tired. As usual I am compelled to adhere to the screen quite closely, yet this emotionally expansive film has provided me the opportunity to perhaps expose my first love and deepest roots, from the concert-hall.

This Lady Windermere is obviously dutiful, but thanks to Lubitsch’s highly stylized approach, I was able to take a number of chances I would not have if it were another director. Therefore, the path I took is purely symphonic, yet remains purely programmatic. The score does play out the emotional breadth of the story and its rhythm, yet many of the film’s musical challenges were solved by long-established orchestral thinking. How often does a film composer get the chance to write a three-voiced orchestral fugue for three gossiping ladies? It is rare when opportunities such as these present themselves in silent-film, and with this modest contribution I hope to have at least captured perhaps a little more than the simple movement on the screen.

The score calls for approximately 55 elements, consisting of: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass-clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, timpani, harp, celesta and strings. I offer my thanks to the Cineteca di Bologna from whom the score was commissioned, and to the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna for whom the score was written.

Timothy Brock
June, 2006