‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ composer Volker Bertelmann on creating ‘devastating’ sounds for a unique score

For No news from the western front, the director Edward Berger wanted the film to be shot from a German perspective. He commissioned composer Volker Bertelmann to create a score he had never done before, giving him little insight into what he wanted for the final version. Based on the 1928 novel of the same name, the film follows Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) as a young German soldier experiences the terrible reality of service at the front. Bertelmann wanted to use instruments from that period, so he used a refurbished harmonium that his grandmother had given him.

DEADLINE: How did you get into this? No news from the western front?

VOLKER BERTELMANN: I think this is the fourth film I’ve done with director Edward Berger. I got a call from him in October and he said, “I want you to do this and can you come to Berlin and watch the film with me and we can talk about what’s going on?”

And so I went to Berlin and saw the whole film and we talked about it very briefly. The film leaves such a strong impression and you can’t talk so much after such a film, which I think is great because you then also discuss it with yourself. what was that Why do I feel this? Edward told me he wanted a score from me, which I had never done before. That was the first thing he said. Second, he wants something for the stomach of Paul Bäumer, the protagonist. He wanted something destructive in the music and had some snares played by someone who couldn’t play the snares.

DEADLINE: This is very specific.

Bertelmann: Yes, it is very specific. To be honest, it took me the longest because I’m used to working with people who know how to play snares. So I had to find a way to make the snares sound more like a volley than just a snare hit. Then I took the train home from Berlin to Dusseldorf, which is a four-hour train journey, and I thought how he wanted something I had never done before. It’s a challenge and I thought of an instrument that I could use and I had a feeling it might be an instrument from the early 1900s. Even if it doesn’t sound different from today, there would be a connection with back then. I remembered that I had a harmonium, or some people say pump organ, which I had renovated a year ago and which my grandmother had given me as a present, which was in her house in central Germany around 1900 .

DEADLINE: I can’t get over the “snare played by someone who has never played the snare”. How do you achieve this sound?

Bertelmann: Well, you can take me along, I can play a snare, but I’m not a snare player. Many of the instruments I play are sometimes very rudimentary. But I’m a big fan of both worlds. I’m a fan of a viola player who can play extremely well, and at the same time I’m interested in people who come up with something new and try something strange. So in a way you have to find an approach where you pretend to be someone who didn’t play the trick.

I’ve never recorded so many snares just to find the tone. Do you want a metal string, a wooden string? Do we want something that sounds really high? Do we want something that sounds military? Ultimately it’s a combination of layering different snare sounds on top of each other, but also using a Gran Cassa with a lot of crap on it. So when you hit it, the debris flies up and falls down and you hear that weird tail of string sound.

DEADLINE: How do you balance the score with the sound effects of explosions and gunshots during battle?

Bertelmann: I would say you need something that is a kind of dark maelstrom, like a wave of sounds that you can form, let’s say, a maelstrom under the explosions, the tanks, the gunfire. But every now and then there are changes in the battle where a lot of people are shooting, then suddenly someone runs away and all you hear is breathing. For example, there is a position where you can make strange noises in a certain way that scream or languish. Sounds that just pop up like an animal on the hunt or even injured and waiting for help somewhere in the woods or something.

You have to find ways to place them and the problem is that when you have melodies that are too long, they are always interrupted by gunshots and you never quite hear the score and it sounds very unfinished. So you need several elements that you can variably change over time on the grid, because the track is not always the track from start to finish. By the end of the film, you’ve moved certain elements, but to the area where the mixer can really crank it up.

DEADLINE: What were the biggest challenges for you in this project?

Bertelmann: In my opinion, the biggest challenge was to find a music that was not pathetic and not heroic and that really reinforced the attitude of a film shot from a German perspective. It helps a bit to actually release an international film rather than tarnish it or give too much away… if you’re American or English you can’t because you’re acting from a completely different historical perspective , but we are still in this area where we have responsibilities and a lot of shame and guilt for the things we brought to other countries. So actually hold that responsibility in the music and present it with confidence instead of being too shy. That was the biggest challenge.