Modern Times

Charlie Chaplin is best known as a silent movie star, but he was one of the few who made a successful transition to talkies, and also became a prolific and inventive composer of soundtrack music. An article on CharlieChaplin.com claims:...the pinnacle of his composing career is most assuredly the complex and innovative score to Modern Times (1935-36). It marks a vast mental and practical leap from his previous score to City Lights made up of primarily dance-band forces of fewer than 30 musicians, to the symphonic proportions of 64 players as required by Modern Times. This decision was not so much due to many a composers inherent taste for ego-driven sound power, as is so often is the case for new composers who, upon hearing their work for the first time, are allured by the mere numbers, but rather it was a conscious choice warranted by the film itself. The thematic imagery of Modern Times would provide a complex array of symphonic ideas to any composer, but no more so than to the man who created them in the first place.