Nosferatu...not for the faint hearted!

So I got a real sense, earlier today, of how powerful music can be! I'm in the front row of an empty Ulster Hall. In front of me a big screen. On it a still of the creepy looking vampire from the 1922 horror movie Nosferatu. And behind the screen, various organ sounds coming from the Mulholland Grand Organ. Some are soft and menacing, shivers down your spine sounds; others are, "stops pulled out" kind of stifle your screams, nervous giggle, grab the person beside you! Not that I did, as the person beside me was a complete stranger. Martin Baker, the Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral. He was calling out various instructions to the person behind the screen, who, it turned out, was Belfast City Organist Colm Carey. 

Tomorrow night, Martin will be behind that screen for a special screening of Murnau’s classic 1922 Vampire movie - considered by many the first and greatest adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, even if Stoker's estate wasn't best pleased!

Anyhow, while the film is played, Martin will be playing a live, improvised score. And he's still not sure what notes he'll be playing. This is a man who takes his improv very seriously. It's a respite from his day job. Reading Martin's biog, he's a pretty significant figure in English Roman Catholic liturgical music. He's commissioned and directed the Cathedral choir in the premieres of a number of new choral masses, including works by composers such as James MacMillan, Peter Maxwell Davies, Judith Bingham and John Tavener. And he's hung out, so to speak, with the current Pope in the Sistine Chapel.

As he calls out to Colm, behind the screen, with various organists' technical inspeak, Martin seems to know what he's looking for. He's played the Mulholland before. Back in the 90's but this will be his first time since then and since it was refurbished. At one point, in response to a particularly "let it rip" sound from Colm, he says "that sounds exactly like Notre Dame". But now Charles Laughton's Hunchback of Notre Dame and Max Schrek's Nosferatu are sharing space in my head. For someone who couldn't watch Dr. Who in the 70's, this is very scary stuff indeed.