THE PAWNSHOP
Year of composition: 2012
Commissioned and dedicated to 'Curtocircuito' International Short Film Festival 2012 (Santiago de Compostela, Spain).
Length: 25 minutes
Scored for: wind orchestra with short-movie
Opus 7 - AA072016
Movements:
i. Main credits
ii. Charles Chaplin theme
iii. Bit the dust
iv. Game with the ladder I
v. Confrontation I
vi. Game with the ladder II
vii. Balancing
viii. Confrontation II
ix. You're fired!
x. Confrontation III
xi. Love?
xii. Fight in the kitchen
xiii. A tale of Woe
xiv. The thief
xv. The clock scene
xvi. Conclusion
xvii. End credits
Premiere:
First performance was given by Santiago de Compostela Municipal Wind Orchestra, conducted by Xosé Carlos Seráns in the 'Curtocircuito' International Short Film Festival, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, May 2, 2012.
Please note:
Full set and study scores are purchased, fulfilled in hard copy, and yours to keep. Full sets are licensed per two years of performance, and it can be renewed with an additional cost of 100€. Additional parts are delivered in PDF, and the fixed electronics (when necessary) is free downloaded through a QR code printed on the full score.
For more information or request additional parts, please, contact us through: sales@aalcaldemusic.com.
Study score (8.3 x 11.7)
Price:
50.00€
Full set (8.3 x 11.7)
Price:
350.00€
Brief notes:
Commissioned and dedicated to 'Curtocircuito' International Short Film Festival. First performance was given by Santiago de Compostela Municipal Wind Orchestra, conducted by Xosé Carlos Seráns in the 'Curtocircuito' International Short Film Festival, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, May 2, 2012.
Chaplin plays a pawnbroker's assistant role in the pawn shop run by Bergman. He engages in slapstick battles with his fellow worker, while deals with eccentric customers and flirts with the pawnbroker’s daughter. One of the customers, posing as a jewelry buyer, pulls a gun and tries to rob the place. Chaplin disarms him. The Pawnshop was Charlie Chaplin’s sixth film for Mutual Film Corporation. Released on October 2, 1916 it stars Chaplin in the role of an assistant to the pawnshop owner, played by Henry Bergman. Edna Purviance plays the owner’s daughter, while Albert Austin appears as an alarm clock owner who watches Chaplin in dismay as he dismantles it completely, and the massive Eric Campbell’s character attempts to rob the shop. This was one of Chaplin’s more popular movies for Mutual, mainly for the slapstick comedy he was famous for at the time.
Although this work for wind orchestra is originally composed for be performed – and integrated – altogether with the projection of the homonymous short film by Chaplin, it is not a soundtrack. That is why also could be performed in a live concert without the projection, and still will keeping its unity and coherence in the way of a symphonic poem. The reason of have written above that 'it is not a soundtrack' is not a trivial thing, due to I would want to stablish – what should be pretty obvious – and is that by the simple fact of superimposing a music to an image, dramaturgy and/or functionality is not being generated, in the way that the musical script does.
When I received the commission of write music for an original silent film by Chaplin, I was asked to write it in an entirely anachronistic way. The idea was soon discarded - although not in its entirety - due that the music always ended up imposing itself over the film, relieving it to a secondary level, and in last stance, taking out the audience from the film itself in the same way had done with me. For that reason, I expended the whole time I had for complete this project (one single week!), taking as cornerstone the same aesthetic that Chaplin himself, as composer, had elaborated in one of his best films: Modern Times, 1936.
download it in PDF: Español - English.
