One of the highlights of the seventh edition of the ME_MMIX Festival was undoubtedly the performance by the French ensemble Multilatérale under the direction of Yann Robin, at the Teatre Principal in Palma on November 19. I must admit that experimental music is not one of my priorities, although the proposal on this occasion did catch my attention, even more so because of its proximity to the presentation I was commissioned to give on the music of the Bill Frisell Trio for Buster Keaton’s silent films, on November 11 at Es Baluard. The French ensemble arrived with the commission to perform Martín Matalon’s scores for Buster Keaton’s silent films. That coincidence was what drew my attention.
There is a certain parallel between the two composers, since they both began in what is known as Cinema-Concert, commissioned to write music for silent cinema. The American Film Institute (AFI) commissioned Bill Frisell in 1985 to write music for Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927), the emblematic drama about slavery, while Martín Matalon received in 1993 a commission from the French Institute for Acoustic and Musical Research (IRCAM) to write the score for the restored print of Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang, an undisputed jewel of German Expressionism. After that, each went their own way.
The thematic coincidence between the two has a name: Buster Keaton. It is precisely in this chapter where the stylistic differences become clear.
Frisell is closer to jazz and traditional music, and Matalon leans toward experimental music. The former improvised music for Buster Keaton’s films in 1995 in one go, accompanied by his trio. Matalon, however, completed his work gradually: in 2021 The Scarecrow (1920), in 2022 The Playhouse (1921), and finally in 2023 he did the same with One Week (1920). This last short by Keaton was one of the three for which Frisell wrote music. The other two were The High Sign (1921) and Go West (1925). That is to say, what was seen and heard at the Teatre Principal referred to three short films lasting between nineteen and twenty-four minutes. A very different matter from Bill Frisell’s, which included a 69-minute feature film.
This detail is not minor, since Matalon’s shorts correspond to the years of influence of David W. Griffith’s inspired planning in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), while the feature chosen by Frisell is contemporary with the montage that sealed cinematic language in 1925, with Sergei M. Eisenstein’s monumental Battleship Potemkin. This fact conditions the work of both composers when facing either purely descriptive shots or a shot structure loaded with intentionality and counterpoint thanks to montage.
In both cases, however, we are talking about spectacular results: the overflowing imagination of Frisell’s trio contrasted with Matalon’s finely calibrated approach, entrusted to a chamber sextet. From the ME_MMIX Fest they referred to the night at the Teatre Principal by reminding us that we were about to witness “avant-garde music that fascinates Europe.” Of course, the connection with Buster Keaton cannot be ignored. Musicology has long recognized that Buster Keaton’s works are an open book when it comes to composing music, because his physical humor “offers a palette of emotions and movements that can be translated into rhythm and meter.” And without forgetting his specific choreographic value: “The ability to synchronize movements and reactions with precision is a central concept in music, and through dance he uses the body as the main tool of expression.”
As I said at the beginning: this time I enjoyed experimental music. It may be because we are placed before the celebration of pure, unadulterated incidental music, which does not allow itself to drift too far—and sometimes frivolously—from what is already established.