Brahms through the Ears of Charlie Chaplin in “The Gold Rush”
With a statue of Charlie Chaplin in Vevey, Switzerland, 2011.
When you turn on a comedy movie, you don’t expect to hear Brahms as part of the soundtrack. Yet this week, re-watching a classic Charlie Chaplin slapstick/romance film, I almost jumped out of my chair when I recognized the theme of a Brahms piece I had been working on just hours earlier.
A silver lining in quarantine has been time to immerse myself in new repertoire, especially Brahms’ Six Pieces for Piano, Op. 118. I have wanted to learn it for years because the set includes some of his most sublimely beautiful music—especially the Romance in F major. The piece pulled me in with a hypnotizing charm, and an exceptionally vibrant second theme.
It seems Chaplin was as taken with it as I am, as a slightly rearranged string version of its melodies plays over and over in his wonderful film, The Gold Rush. Chaplin was a creative genius who wrote the screenplays, directed the films, and starred in them too, most memorably as a lovable tramp. He also wrote, directed and composed much of the music for his films, which included a vast amount of original scores and artful quotes of well-known pieces of classical music.
In a silent film, music takes on an especially prominent role in communicating emotions. Most of the emotion in the second half of the film centers around the penniless, naïve, gold-prospecting tramp pursuing the beautiful, young Georgia, who is way out of his league, and she and her friends know it. Chaplin uses these melodies to dramatize the tramp’s happiest and saddest moments.
Chaplin quotes the main melody and its variation in the final measures of the Romance to suit the narrative of the scene. The piano work is transcribed for high strings, whose lush, sweeping romanticism often communicates the tramp’s unrequited love for Georgia.
Brahms, “Romance,” Op. 118, No. 5, mm. 1-3
Brahms, “Romance,” Op. 118, No. 5, mm. 51-53
The second theme provides a light-hearted and dance-like contrast, accentuated by the left hand rhythms. Chaplin uses this melody during the tramp’s moments of pure joy. After Georgia has agreed to have Christmas Eve dinner with him, the tramp jumps up and down, and flings objects around his cabin, unable to contain his childlike excitement.
Brahms, “Romance,” Op. 118, No. 5, mm. 17-23
Hearing this music in such a powerful film was a lot of fun, and it also illustrated the power of classical music to express the deepest human emotions with such beauty and simplicity. It’s a testament to Brahms and Chaplin, two very different geniuses, that they could come together in such a fun, popular setting, without losing any of their power of expression.