July 20, 1994
Press Contact: Jeff Pines (202) 707-2916
Public Contact: Wolf Trap (703) 255-1860
Library of Congress Specialist Conducts Premiere at Wolf Trap
Gillian Anderson, a Library of Congress music specialist, will
conduct the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap Farm Park in
Vienna, Va., in her reconstruction of Hans Erdmann's original
musical accompaniment for the 1922 German film classic "Nosferatu."
The film will be shown on two screens as part of the synchronized
live performance.
The original score to the first film to be based on Bram
Stoker's Dracula was probably lost during World War II.
Fortunately, within its vast collections the Library of Congress
has other works by and about Erdmann.
Anderson reconstructed the score from four sources: a set of
suites for full orchestra derived from the original score by
Erdmann, published and deposited for copyright by the German
publisher; a two-volume handbook about film music written by
Erdmann; a full-score of the overture to "Nosferatu" taken from
Heinrich Marschner's opera "The Vampire," along with many other
operatic scores, which were hand-copied in Europe by Library of
Congress employees at the beginning of the century; and German
press reviews of "Nosferatu's" 1922 premiere in Berlin.
Silent film-era movies are not considered to be fully restored
until they are performed with their original musical accompaniments
and projected at their original speeds for modern audiences.
Anderson's work is part of a larger effort at the Library of
Congress to preserve this country's film and music heritage. The
8,000,000 items in the Music Division range from original
manuscripts to holograph full scores of operas and multivolume
encyclopedias. The Library's unsurpassed holdings of original
manuscripts by 20th century composers have been acquired partly
through the commissioning activities of the Coolidge and
Koussevitzky foundations and the McKim Fund and partly through
donations by composers, their estates and other benefactors of the
Library.
Anderson has participated in the restoration and
reconstruction of the original scores to 17 silent films, including
Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus," which was presented at Wolf Trap
last year.
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PR 94-117
7/15/94
ISSN 0731-3527