Among the items in the Mills Music Library Special Collections is a score to the silent film Menilmontant (1925), the second and most famous production of Estonian-born film maker Dimitri Kirsanoff (1899-1957). At present, this is the only known copy of the score, whose authorship is unknown.
Kirsanoff trained as a musician in Paris, where he studied cello at the Ecole Normal and played music for silent films. He became associated with the circle of avant-garde impressionist French film makers and began producing his own low budget films. These earned him critical acclaim and were later deemed precursors of both French "poetic realism" and Italian neo-realism.
Menilmontant was filmed during the winter of 1924-25 principally on location in the working class suburb of Paris from which it takes its name. It was first presented at Jean Tedesco's Vieux-Colombier theatre and soon became a major film on the cine-club circuit. Its story is told entirely in image, without the use of intertitles and Kirsanoff employed techniques such as montage, hand-held cameras, and superimposition to achieve the transcendent quality sought after by the French impressionist film directors of the era.
Following Menilmontant , Kirsanoff continued his experiments in film, most notable with Rapt (1934), featuring the use of contrapuntal sound, with music by Arthur Honegger.
Mills' score, a piano reduction, was utilized by David Badagnani who composed new music to accompany the film. Badagnani, a candidate for the Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at Kent State, scored his composition for oboe, english horn, accordion, piano, violin, double bass, guzheng (Chinese zither), waterphone, African and other percussion, and Asian mouth organs (sheng and khaen ). He quoted melodic and thematic materials from the original composition in his work. Badagnani's group, "The Pointless Orchestra" performed the work in October and November at film festivals in Cleveland and Columbus, playing while the film was viewed.
[ Adapted from program notes by David Badagnani ]