Timothy Brock - Biography

Since the premiere of his Piano Concerto in G minor (1980) at the age of 17, Timothy Brock has been an active composer and conductor who has specialized in concert works of the early 20th-century and silent film.

In 1995 he had been granted a composer fellowship from the Washington State Arts Commission, during which he composed his first opera Billy (1995, libretto by Bryan Willis), the Divertimento: Five Picture-Postcards for Orchestra, and his second opera, Mudhoney (1998, adaptation of the original screenplay by the composer and Bryan Willis).

By age 35 he had composed three symphonies, six string quartets, four concertos (Piano, Clarinet, Viola and Violoncello), a cantata, and numerous chamber and orchestral works. In his final year with the OCO he had been commissioned to write an orchestral song cycle for the noted soprano Cyndia Sieden (Orchestra of the 18th Century).

It was at his farewell concert, in June, 2000, that he and Ms. Sieden gave the premiere of The Funeral of Youth, four orchestral settings to four poems of the English poet Rupert Brook. Mr. Brock resigned from his post as conductor of the OCO in 2000 to work for the Charles Chaplin estate as restorer, and is continuing to the present day.

In the course of his career, he has conducted over 200 programs including 30 world premieres of new or lost works by a wide diversity of composers.

Mr. Brock’s continuing focus in the promotion of lost or re-discovered works began in 1991 with the first US-concert performance of Darius Milhaud’s 1927 score, Le Petite Lilly. In 1993 he premiered a rarely heard an original hand-written transcription (discovered in Philadelphia) of the 18th century French composer Etienne-Nicolas Mehul; his First Symphony.

Mr. Brock’s restoration of the 1929 Max Butting score Lichtspiel von Walter Ruttmann had it’s premiere in 1995, and in 1997 he gave the North American premiere to the previously lost 1930 Russian-vaudeville masterpiece Declared Dead, by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Working from the original manuscript, Brock had also restored Aaron Copland’s original version of Music for Radio, and gave both the second-only American performance (the first given by conductor Howard Barlow in 1937), and the European premiere on January 18th, 2003 with a live concert simulcast on DRS 2, in Zürich.

Other notable programs included the first US performance of the complete Pelleas and Melisande by Jean Sibelius and the world premiere of David Raksin’s Nocturne written in 1946. Overall he has given 8 world premieres of orchestral works written for the Olympia Chamber Orchestra, and was also the founder of the OCO’s annual Beethoven Birthday concerts, now in their 13th year.

Most notably however, it is his concert series of Entartete Musik programs, music of composers banned by the Third Reich, which receives the widest acclaim. The works of Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942), Franz Schreker (1878-1934), Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942), Hans Krása (1899-1944), Gideon Klein (1919-1944) and Pavel Haas (1899-1944) features prominently in this series.

Mr. Brock gave the American premieres of Hanns Eisler’s Kleine Sinfonie, Niemandslied, Kuhle Wampe and Erwin Schulhoff’s Symphony no. 2, as well one of the first-ever performances of Viktor Ullmann’s poignant opera, Der Kaiser von Atlantis, written from within the Terezin ghetto in 1944. Brock had also included his own string orchestral transcriptions of the string quartets of Pavel Haas.

Since these series had been initiated 12 years ago, it has been Brock’s aim to include these works in their rightful places, among standard orchestral repertoire, and to expose audiences to the work of great composers whose work, and sometimes very life, had been cut short by the brutality of oppression.

Timothy Brock’s association with silent film began in 1986 when he was commissioned to write a score to accompany the G.W. Pabst film, Pandora’s Box, starring Louise Brooks. Subsequently he has written new or restored original orchestral scores to 26 silent films.

After completing Pandora’s Box (1928/1986), he was subsequently commissioned to compose a score for the other Pabst/Brooks collaboration, Diary of a Lost Girl (1929/1987). He was then commissioned to compose a new score for Sunrise (1927/1989) by film-historian David Shepard and Twentieth-Century Fox, for their upcoming re-release of their famous film by master filmmaker F.W. Murnau.

In 2001 he composed the score for Kevin Brownlow and Micheal Kloft's documentary The Tramp and The Dictator (2002). His collaboration with Photoplay Productions also includes in 2004 the recording session of the The Cat and the Canary score by friend and collegue Neil Brand whose other score Piccadilly he conducted at both New York Lincoln Center and The Barbican Centre in London.

In 2003, the Berner Symphonie-orchester (Bern, Switzerland) commissioned Brock’s first of three Buster Keaton film scores, Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928/2003). Since then he has been commissioned to write a score to Keaton’s One Week, and in late December, 2005, he gave the premiere of his score to Keaton’s masterpiece The General (1926/2005) with the Orchestre National de Lyon.

Silent-film score restorations: The scores of Charles Chaplin

In January of 1999, he was asked by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, in cooperation with the Chaplin Estate headquartered in Paris, to restore and reconstruct for live performance Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 score to Modern Times.

Mr. Brock gave the dual premieres of the first live performances of Modern Times in June of 2000 in Los Angeles with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and at the World Exposition with the Radio-Philharmonie Hannover des NDR.

And for the past 6 years Mr. Brock has been serving as music director/conductor in nearly 200 performances for the Charles Chaplin family, and has since then been engaged by the Chaplins to restore their father’s scores to City Lights (1931), The Circus (1928), A Dog’s Life (1918), Shoulder Arms (1918), The Pilgrim (1923) and Pay Day (1922).

In 2003 he created a symphonic concert suite of Modern Times, as well as chamber ensemble versions to A Dog’s Life, Shoulder Arms and The Pilgrim. All Chaplin scores are published by Bourne Music, Inc. New York.

Most recently he had been commissioned to restore his now 8th score for the Chaplin family, his only silent dramatic feature, A Woman of Paris (1923).

A unique and unconventional restoration process, Mr. Brock utilized recently discovered recordings of Chaplin at the piano, playing never-before-heard dramatic compositions. After transcribing some twenty hours of Chaplin’s playing, Brock had used this new material, along with some of the film’s original cues, to create a new Chaplin score.

With Timothy Brock’s orchestration (based on the model of City Lights), Woman of Paris received its world premiere on July 9th, 2005, at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, under the direction of Mr. Brock.

The Chaplin film-concerts have taken Mr. Brock to Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Greece, Italy, Holland, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Spain, and the United States. In April of 2005 he conducted an open-air performance of The Circus in Ansan, marking the first live performance of a Chaplin film in Korea.

In January of 2001, on a commission from the New Zealand Film Festival, in cooperation with Boosey and Hawkes, London, Timothy Brock restored the 1929 manuscript of Dmitri Shostakovich’s only silent film work New Babylon. He gave that restored score’s live cinematic premiere the following July in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand. Subsequently he has conducted this work in multiple performances throughout Europe, most recently at the Cité de la Musique in Paris.

Working from the available materials from the US Library of Congress, Brock restored in 1995 the Hugo Riesenfeld’s original compilation score to the Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 color-tinted production of Carmen, starring Met Opera star Geraldine Farrar.

In 1994 Brock restored and gave the premiere to German composer Max Butting’s 1929 film score to Lichtspiel von Walter Ruttman’s Opus One. A beautiful and complex score for string orchestra that accompanies one of three animated essays by the director of Berlin, Symphony of a Great City.

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, in cooperation with the Lloyd Estate, has asked Mr. Brock to compose music for Harold Lloyd’s Ask Father (1919). This score will receive its premiere June 3rd, 2006 in Los Angeles.

The Cineteca di Bologna has commissioned a new score for Ernst Lubitsch’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925) and will receive its first performance in July, 2006 with the Teatro di Comunale Bologna Orchestra in Bologna, Italy

Also from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra comes a commission for Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. (1924) which will receive its premiere June 2nd, 2007 in Los Angeles.

In March, 2006, Brock will be conducting from the original 1931 score a performance of the early Italian epic, Cabiria (1914) for the Cultural Olympics during the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy.

Recent appearances have included the Royal Festival Hall, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Accademia St. Cecilia in Rome, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Barbican Center, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the KKL in Luzern, the Auditorio de Barcelona and the Cité de la Musique in Paris.