The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Electronic pioneer Karl Bartos sets silent film classics to music
Karl Bartos has set “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” to music. His music draws from many sources. photo
© Add On Music/dpa
The silent film “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” from 1920 is a classic of expressionist film. Long-time Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos was inspired.
Techno pioneer Karl Bartos has set a silent film classic to music. The music for the expressionist psychological thriller “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” will premiere on February 17, 2024 at the Alte Oper Frankfurt. The complete soundtrack will be released on CD, vinyl and digitally for streaming or downloading on February 9th.
Even though Bartos became known as a former member of the group Kraftwerk – an album with electronic The record is not music. The originally classically trained musician was initially inspired by the images. Footsteps, doors, a babble of voices and similar noises can really be heard – but not speech: the silent film remains a silent film and there are no lyrics on the album either.
In addition to this sound design, Bartos has composed music that draws from various sources. On the one hand, there are echoes of baroque, romantic or classical music. An important source of inspiration was obviously music from the time in which the film was made, for example by Arnold Schönberg or Igor Stravinsky. Minimal music with its repetitions was also included in the soundtrack.
A groping
At the beginning he tried to work with electronic instruments, Bartos said at the preview in November in Frankfurt am Main. “But somehow that didn’t work. That wasn’t what I saw.” So he tried not to make the music “too much from today’s perspective.”
“The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” from 1920 by Robert Wiene tells about the said Dr. Caligari, who rules over a sleepwalker named Cesare. The film is a surreal game with madness and dreams, with fantasies and sleepwalking, with visions and the surreal.
The film, which was revolutionary at the time, still inspires the musician today: “No matter how often you watch it, it keeps its secret. Who is crazy here and who isn’t is and remains a question of interpretation,” the record label Bureau B quotes the musician as saying. Bartos also had a lot of room for interpretation when it came to the music: the original music for the approximately 70-minute work has not been preserved.