La Chute de la maison Usher music for the silent movie by Jean Epstein (1928) for full Orchestra

Peter Swinnen
Promotors: Jean Paul Van Bendegem, André Laporte

It is well known that in his 1928 film adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's novella "The fall of the house of Usher", Jean Epstein not only drew on this masterpiece of so-called "fantastic" literature, but cleverly intertwined it with another novella by the same author, "The Oval Portrait". Yet these two stories are not enough to fully understand Epstein's images. Indeed, a closer look at the various scenes reveals subtle references to other texts by Poe, including "Ligeia" and "The Pit and the Pendulum", among others. But also "Berenice" and "The Premature Burial" and even his theoretical tracts "Philosophy of Furniture" and "The Philosophy of Composition" have left their mark.

It is therefore mainly in these implicitly suggested texts that I found material to musically enrich the rather limited character drawings of Epstein's visualisation. Indeed, they provide the necessary elements to give the various characters a previous history - and thus a psychological depth: Madeline thus becomes the reincarnation of the consecrated priestess Ligeia and Roderick the sickly studioso from Berenice. Even the demonic "physician" and the scene in which the coffin falls and breaks open can be traced back to motifs from Poe's collected œuvre. All this is complemented by symbols from Jewish and pre-biblical tradition: the night owl and the flapping curtains are presumably references to the ancient Mesopotamian storm demon Lilith, while the copious references to mud and rot may well be related to the legend of the Golem. Couple this with the historical fact that after "La chute de la maison Usher" Epstein stopped making art films, then the interpretation some give to this film that "Roderick, by resisting his urge to paint, overcomes his demons and reclaims his wife" may not even be that moralising, but may be biographically explainable.

Therefore, in order not to inadvertently turn the expressionistic acting style of the early years of the 7th art into a comic caricature, it seemed appropriate to me not to compose a typical horror music as found in old manuals for cinema pianists. Instead, I chose to create an unusual climate by using very special chords. I derived these from sounds of natural disasters that basically evoke a primary fear: volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods and so on. In nature, they prompt you to run away, in the concert hall ...