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Brighton: symphony of a city

composition
posted on 2023-06-09, 02:43 authored by Ed HughesEd Hughes
This is the score of an original composition for symphony orchestra, to be performed simultaneously with the screening of a contemporary silent film. Brighton: Symphony of a City was conceived in collaboration with the film maker Lizzie Thynne. The project was inspired by the city symphony films of the 1920s and 1930s. Through a silent film with live music the aim was a visual and musical portrait of the city of Brighton. It was commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the Brighton Festival and premiered in the Brighton Dome with the Orchestra of Sound and Light, conducted by the composer, on 11 May 2016. The film creates a dynamic portrait of Brighton today, and in its dawn to dusk and then night approach consciously references Walter Ruttmann’s great rhythmic and poetic film ‘Berlin: Symphony of a Great City’ (1927). The music conveys colour and contrasts, echoing those of the modern urban environment, but constantly aware of seascape. As writer and musicologist Mervyn Cooke observes, gently pulsating cross rhythms and subtle dislocations of the metre, combined with long-breathed dynamic ebbs and flows and vividly contrasting orchestral colours, wonderfully capture not only the broad sweep of the city itself, but also (as with Vigo’s Nice) the alluring expanse of the open sea beyond its shore. Unlike Ruttmann’s film, Thynne also draws on archival silent moving images from Screen Archive South East, creating unexpected, informative and poignant juxtapositions. Towards the close of the film the images employ montage and the music and picture seem to fuse into a state of symphony as their separate languages merge.

Funding

Brighton: Symphony of a City; G1881; Brighton Dome And Brighton Festival

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Publisher

University of York Music Press

Department affiliated with

  • Music Publications

Full text available

  • No

Legacy Posted Date

2016-09-05

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-09-05

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