Program Note:   

(Note: This program note pertains to the concert work derived from Hagen’s various scores for silent films. For Hagen’s score to the Orson Welles short Too Much Johnson, click here.)

A Moviola is an iconic, now obsolete machine used by filmmakers to edit film by viewing picture and sound on a small integrated screen. While its role has been eclipsed by digital editing, this suite, Moviola, serves as a musical summation of five silent film scores I crafted between 2015–2022 for Erin Freeman and the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra.

The first movement, Exit, Pursued, draws inspiration from Shakespeare’s famously perplexing stage direction in The Winter’s Tale. Whether the bear interlude marks a tragic end or a comic beginning, the musical ideas here originate in my score for Orson Welles’ “lost” silent film, Too Much Johnson.

The second movement, Glass Heart, explores a sense of guileless tendresse. It weaves together a gymnopédie theme originally written for the Flower Girl in Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights, a second theme for alto flute from A Dog’s Life, and fragments from a piano concerto composed for The Tramp.

The finale, Sixteen Kisses, finds its roots in a 1985 art song set to Emily Dickinson’s poem "Ample Make This Bed." In this movement, sixteen musical variations track the evolving relationship between Dr. Jekyll and his fiancée, Millicent, from John Barrymore’s 1920 classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.