REVIEW OF FILM SCORE : Club Foot Orchestra Adds Humor to ‘Nosferatu’

Perhaps composer Richard Marriott sees himself as a musical ambassador. To him the current world of music is a collection of different isolated styles waiting to be joined into one big multifarious style.

Tonight through Saturday at the Nuart Theatre, the Club Foot Orchestra performs his film music for “Nosferatu,” F. W. Murnau’s classic 1922 vampire movie. It’s an unusual, eclectic musical event as well as cinema with a touch of wit.

Not unexpectedly, extended sections of atonal improvisation, multiphonics on the bass clarinet and fidgety spiccato violin riffs accompany the more uncanny, horrific sections along with other sections of generic tonal film music. Less typically, Marriott juxtaposes Gypsy-like melodies, rock licks, Latin beats and jazz, creating the grammatical equivalent of a sentence made up of words from different foreign languages.

Recurring leitmotifs include a synthesized chorus of voices for Mina (protagonist Jonathan Harker’s fiance); nervous, twitchy violin scratchings for Renfield (the vampire’s deranged sidekick) and a bigger-than-life swing section with plenty of “Pink Panther” doo-wahs when Nosferatu seduces his victims and drinks their blood.

A former student of avant-gardist Pauline Olivaros and a trombonist-keyboardist-flutist-vocalist for the Club Foot Orchestra, Marriott does tend to dabble in the various styles instead of yielding substantial examples of heart-rending rock or jazz or whatever kind of music. The result is a carefully wrought composition, but without the vitality it should have.

The orchestra, a group of 10 musicians whose ensemble most closely resembles a small dance band, play with composure and professionalism under the stoical direction of Steed Cowart. However virtuosity, which gives silent films an extra energetic clip, doesn’t seem to be a part of what they do. Or perhaps it’s that composer Marriott rarely gives them the opportunity to demonstrate whether they are capable of it.

But Marriott’s intentions are laudable. And he effectively plays off the monster movie fun that “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and its crazed, costumed cult of fans have generated.

If there are purists who want to see “Nosferatu” as it was originally intended, this is probably not the way to do it. With its deadpan campiness, the humor of the music often becomes more prominent than the original expressionist Angst , poking fun more than enhancing, normally a film composer’s no-no.