AEMAET - A new soundtrack for /Der Golem/ by Rectoplasm® - Part One of Four

OK, gang - here we are, at it again, with another of our 'artsquonk' soundtracks.

This one is for the third great German silent Expressionist horror film, Paul Wegener's 1920 classic /Der Golem und wie er in die Welt kam/. Wegener co-directs, stars as the Golem, and co-wrote the screenplay.

Details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golem:_How_He_Came_into_the_World

As the Wiki says, the film concerns itself with conflict between 'the Jews' of Prague and the Gentile community, and it is set in approximately the 16th century. As a reflection of the conflict, the two groups have different musical systems. The 'Jews' use a justly-intoned system (remaining on A=440Hz for convenience), with these intervals: 1/1 16/15 9/8 6/5 5/4 4/3 45/32 3/2 8/5 5/3 9/5 15/8 and 2/1.

The Gentiles use a Werckmeister, I think it's III (V). It mightn't be exactly 'period', but hey! neither's a Golem, is it?

The soundtrack, such as it is, was 'improvised in the studio' over a period more than a year, doing tracks whenever 'spare' time permitted. Retakes were kept to an absolute minimum. We quote a couple of tracks in two places, one a medieval dance and one a traditional Eastern European 'Jewish' song. We got these from the Net, but after many crashes and reinstalls I no longer have a record of exactly how and where. They were claimed to be public domain, so thanks to the uploaders, as well, of course, to the Internet Archive (www.archive.org), which provided the original public domain print of the film.

Hope people enjoy it, and appreciate that no particular political message should be read into our choice of musical systems, or anything else in the soundtrack, except for a general plea for tolerance between people.

Main instruments used:

Arturia Moog Modular V
Astralis microtonal synth (http://www.hgsounds.com/shop/astralis/astralis-vst-collection)
Fractal Tune Smithy (http://robertinventor.com/software/tunesmithy/music.htm)
Korg Legacy and Monotron
Native Instruments Absynth 4 and FM8
Electric mandolin
Electric fretless bass (through SubDecay Noise Box: http://www.subdecay.com/noise-box-harmonic-frequency-generator)
and I had some fun sawing away at a cello, which did nothing I know of to deserve such a fate...

Category:

Music

Tags:

• rectoplasm
• golem
• fnord
• just
• intonation
• soundtrack
• zibethicus
• expressionism
• wegener