Music for silent films
"Music for Silent Films" is an interdisciplinary and inter-university teaching project that has been taking place since 2011 in cooperation with the Hessian Film and Media Academy hFMA and was awarded the Hessian Teaching Prize in 2021.
The concept is simple and convincing:
- HfMDK students compose new music for short films by students from the hFMA network of the four film-making universities in Darmstadt, Kassel, Offenbach and Wiesbaden
- The results will be performed live to the film in public concerts by the Kammerphilharmonie Frankfurt under the direction of the composers.
- Students from the Sound and Music Production course at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences will make recordings, which they will then make available to the filmmakers and composers. For live-streamed concerts, they are responsible for the live sound of the streaming concert.
For the HfMDK students involved, "Music for Silent Films" offers particularly practical and interdisciplinary experience: It combines composition, music theory, arranging, improvisation, rehearsing and conducting - disciplines that are otherwise often treated in isolation during studies. By working with the Kammerphilharmonie Frankfurt, the filmmakers and the dedicated teachers, the student conductors learn a lot, develop their personality and musical skills and engage with film as an art form.
