Maceachan Fall 2013

Dark Matters

Lightning

Time The Revelator

"The Birds" Dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Musical score by Nathan Kamal (2016)
Recorded December 2016 at the New School

Kana Miyamoto, flute
Peter Scuderi, clarinet
Jasper Dutz, bass clarinet
Ann Yuan, basoon
Jennifer Hemken, horn
Connor Parks, timpani
Leerone Hakami, Rose Kow, violins
Jay Julio, viola
Camille Dietrich, cello
Nicholas Dunston, bass

Recorded, mixed by Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan

nathankamal.com
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In 2016, composer Nathan Kamal was commissioned by the New School to compose a new musical score to the classic Alfred Hitchcock film "The Birds," which has no music in its original form. Nathan's score premiered on Friday May 13th, 2016 as an installment in the New School's (Un)Silent Film project. These six selections from the first part of the film comprise approximately one half of the score.
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Program notes from the composer:

The Birds had no musical score when it was released in 1963, at the pinnacle of Alfred Hitchcock’s career. The three Hitchcock films that precede it are Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho. The music in these three films, all composed by Bernard Herrmann, is some of the best in the history of film. 

Rather than commissioning music for The Birds, Hitchcock called upon electronic composer Remi Gassmann to generate bird sounds for the film using a trautonium. These sounds, dialed into the film’s sonic foreground, are feral and primordial, yet distinctly man-made. For a film that interrogates the relationship of man and nature, these electronically-rendered bird calls were the perfect soundtrack.

So why change a film that is already perfect? I revisited The Birds last year for the first time since childhood, and tried to imagine what I would do had Hitchcock asked me to score it. I would have to use a chamber ensemble, I thought, since an orchestral score would be too overpowering. Maybe I would record music, and then edit a version of the film with my score overlaid. This approach seemed too inflexible, too concrete, and violating. 

How could I write a score for the film that would feel like a dialogue with the original rather than a violation? To perform the score live, for only one night, was the logical solution. The ongoing College of Performing Arts (Un)Silent Film Night project gave me the support and creative freedom to conduct such an experiment. 

In the film, the physical choreographies of several scenes were improvised by the director and his actors with little preparation. Keeping in this creative vein, the players tonight will improvise whole sections of the score. Co-creating this score with these players, and with Maestro Gary Fagin, has been the collaboration every jazz composer dreams of. 

When Bernard Herrmann scored Hitchcock, his focus was not just on suspense and human drama, but also the colors and textures of the photography. The grayscale photography of Psycho is mirrored in Hermann’s monochrome strings-only score. The rich, earthy tones of Vertigo are accompanied by dense brass harmonies. I picked an instrumentation to match the blues and grays of Bodega Bay, and the cool mint of the heroine’s dress. 

When I started composing, I wrote a list of all of the things that The Birds is about. First of all, The Birds is a critique of heroism. More specifically, it is a critique of Hollywood male heroism. Second, like Hamlet, the tragedy in The Birds follows a trajectory of procrastination. More specifically though, it is a procrastination in the face of a churning natural landscape. Let us consider this tonight as we watch it in the warmest time in recorded history. Finally, this is a film about the cleansing of the earth. Other horror films do this with a beast, or aliens, or some other invading force. The true horror of The Birds is that Hitchcock chooses the everyday as the operative force. We forget that what we see every day is miraculous and unstable. In The Birds, what humanity takes for granted as mundane eventually purges it of its sin.

-Nathan Kamal, May 2016

Cue 2 — "Lovebirds"

Cue 1 — "Opening Credits"

Solo Violin Improvisation, July 2017
Nathan Kamal, violin
nathankamal.com
nathanakamal@gmail.com

Nathan Kamal

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