The romantic atmosphere of Nosferatu, which makes nature’s dark, unseen forces visible with images based on Friedrich, is in fact a faithful reproduction of the spirit of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Why did Murnau choose Lübeck for shooting many of the film’s scenes? Perhaps Murnau was influenced by the haunting image that Edvard Munch created from the facade of an old store in the city. Munch worked in Lübeck between 1902 and 1903.
What is certain is that he planned the film around paintings. (…) It may seem a little over the top that Murnau used paintings by his friend Franz Marc like Weidende Pferde, of 1910, at the time kept at the Lenbach Haus in Munich, for a mere shot of backlit horses frightened by hyenas. But I think that Murnau referred to another image by Marc: the wolves howling in the dark of night like in Die Wölfe (Balkan Krieg), of 1913. Murnau replaced the wolves with hyenas but used the image of the horses painted by his friend, which clearly emerges from comparing the film’s unusual framing with Landschaft mit Pferden, of 1909. I believe he changed the wolves into hyenas due to the in uence of drawings by Alfred Kubin like Hyäne, of 1920, which depicts the hyena as a kind of vampire devouring human cadavers in cemeteries. A much more striking image than a wolf. (…) But the most significant artistic influence on the film’s character was the work of Kaspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). It was undoubtedly an idea of Murnau to use the works of Friedrich to develop Grau and Galeen’s visual concept of the darks forces of Nature. (…)
With the works of these romantic painters, Murnau obtained an unusual result for film. Making the invisible visible. Forcing the presence of the dark forces of Nature on the viewer’s unconscious mind.

Luciano Berriatúa, Los proverbios chinos de F. W. Murnau. Etapa alemana, Filmoteca Española, Madrid 1990

The Adaptation of Heinrich Marschner’s Der Vampyr for Nosferatu
At the première screening of Nosferatu, in Berlin on March 5th, 1922, it has been well documented that the orchestra that accompanied the lm performed as pre-curtain stage-setter, the operatic overture to Der Vampyr (1826) by German opera-composer Heinrich Marschner. Alas, like many original orchestral scores from this period of cinematic history, the original score to Nosferatu, by Hans Erdmann, had been lost. What does survive, ironically, is music that is nearly 100 years older, and was hand-picked by F.W. Murnau himself a suitable prelude for his Symphony of Horrors.
The great loss of not having the original 1922 Erdmann score gave me the idea to adapt the entire Marschner opera score as an accompanying dramatic narrative, liberally transforming selected scenes, admittedly without regard to the Der Vampyr libretto, as the opera’s scenario is quite unrelated to that of Nosferatu or Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
I began transcribing the entire opera as raw symphonic material, selecting adaptable scenes and passages, incorporating the vocal lines, and starting anew as a film score. Freeing this music from the confines of its original stage setting, I detailed and developed those passages and made liberal use of the material which I believed made Der Vampyr uniquely beautiful.
I found helpful the model used by Schönberg when he adapted the Handel op. 6, or the harpsichord concerto of Matthias Monn, both of which inspired him to create completely new works while striving to maintain the sound and feel of the original source.
Mind you, the listener will obviously not hear his music as Marschner intended it. I did, however, endeavor to make the same dark and sinister impact that he was hoping to achieve, inspired by his own Vampire fascination (Even Richard Wagner wrote, after the Leipzig première in 1828 that he considered the Marschner work one of the great “Demonic” operas of all-time).
I have kept nearly the exact original orchestration, with the addition of an organ and a bass-clarinet part. The instrumentation is 2 piccolos, 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, percussion, organ and strings.

Timothy Brock