When it was first released in 1922, Nosferatu, the black-and-white vampire film directed by F. W. Murnau, was accompanied by a live performance of the Hans Erdmann score, performed by Erdmann and the Otto Kermbach Orchestra. Since then, the original score has largely been lost, but composers and musicians continue to interpret the film’s soundtrack to accompany live screenings of the film.
On October 31, master organist and silent-film preservationist Dennis James will perform his own interpretation of the score — now a Halloween tradition — on the Davis Concert Organ at the Winspear Centre. For more than five decades, James has been reviving the lost art of live silent-film accompaniment, performing classics — from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to the 1925 western Tumbleweeds — in historic theatres and concert halls worldwide.
Ahead of this year’s performance, James gave us an inside into his creative process and his experience working with silent film.
Edify: You’ve been performing musical scores for classic silent cinema for more than five decades. What still thrills you when the lights go down and the first frame flickers on screen?
Dennis James: I’m thrilled to help keep this art form alive — to preserve a piece of our cultural and media history and give the presentation of projected images and live music a genuine historical continuity.
My approach stands in direct opposition to many modern soundtracks imposed on silent films today — productions that shift their intentional focus onto the music, often obliterating its supportive role and detaching it from the images entirely. I instead follow the documented musical standards of the period to ensure that the films and their music are experienced as authentically as possible — just as they were when first shown with live accompaniment. When the lights dim and audiences see those historic images paired with matching live music, many describe it as the closest thing to time travel in the arts.
Edify: How do you decide when to reconstruct a period score versus creating something new or improvised?
James: I avoid reconstructing period scores whenever possible with my preference being to perform them completely unchanged. The reconstruction process for Nosferatu is required, of course, because only 11 minutes of the original 1922 score by Hans Erdmann have survived. So, I play my carefully prepared transcriptions and organ arrangements based on whatever historical material remains. I also conduct meticulous rehearsals to ensure precise cue alignment, reserving my improvisational techniques as enhancement rather than necessity.
Edify: Nosferatu has been in your repertoire since its ’90s restoration. Do you remember the first time you watched it?
James: I first saw Nosferatu in Canada in 1987 when the first touring restoration of the film played in the nascent Toronto International Film Festival with Enno Patalas, a renowned film restorer, in attendance. I just happened to be performing in town that week when a festival representative called me at my hotel to tell me that the originally assigned music score improviser had suddenly backed out of performing the day it was supposed to screen. Apparently, it was too challenging for him.
Because I’d never seen the film myself, I asked if there was time to screen it for me — but there wasn’t even time for that. I’d have to score the film at first sight. After the show, Enno hired me on the spot to join his restored Nosferatu tour, which led to working together on many subsequent restorations and performance presentations of eminent classic German silent films.
Edify: What pitfalls catch less experienced players?
James: The biggest pitfalls are a lack of improvisational skill at the organ and a shallow understanding of historical film-music composition. Those were the same challenges that caused that musician in Toronto to withdraw.
Edify: Silent films rely so much on exaggerated facial expressions and gestures to tell the story. As a musician, how do you respond to that visually expressive acting?
James: When performing existing published scores, I follow every indication in the manuscript exactly as written by the composer, editor or publisher. For everything else, I try to perform in the same manner as the period-original musicians, relying on historical trade journals, solo musician textbooks, how-to manuals and presentation guides published throughout the silent film era.
The actors are the essential guide but all visual material in the film influences my playing, including the timing, tone and phrasing matched to the material. I also assess and interpret the intentions of the director, screenwriters and editors to shape the overall presentation.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Dennis James will be performing Nosferatu’s live score at the Winspear on October 31 at 7:30 pm.
