All Quiet on the Western Front [Soundtrack from the Netflix Film]

by Volker Bertelmann

Overview

Released under his own name instead of his better-known, piano-associated alias, Hauschka, composer Volker Bertelmann does a lot with a little on his menacing, minimalist score to Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front (2022). The most striking -- unforgettable even -- part of the score is a repeated, pounding three-note motif introduced with the first cue and recurring only occasionally to ominous effect (notably on "Search Party," "Retreat," and "The End"). The composer has revealed that those tones were produced on his great-grandmother's harmonium, making use of its double-bass function (allowing users to replace one register with a lower octave). Much of the rest of Bertelmann's music here is a somber mix of ambient and bleakly percussive atmospheres; he deliberately omitted brass and woodwinds, opting for slow-shifting strings and more-mechanical sounds, such as layered snares, ratchet noise, and a gran cassa with objects placed on it to create a sound tail after being struck. Two of Berger's early notes to Bertelmann were to "destroy" images -- not sentimentalize -- and to aim for something never heard before, especially in a war movie. On those points, it's safe to say that Bertelmann delivered. ~ Marcy Donelson

Product Details

Release Date:	04/28/2023
Label:	Music On Vinyl
UPC:	8719262029675

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Volker Bertelmann   Primary Artist