Program Note:   

A completely new instrumental score to Charlie Chaplin's 1931 (public domain) silent classic City Lights. (Hagen has previously created new scores to The Tramp and A Dog's Life: both scores were debuted at the Wintergreen Festival.) City Lights followed the misadventures of Chaplin's Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl and develops a turbulent relationship with a troubled millionaire. City Lights: A Chaplin Symphony exists in three movements, and consists of several entirely themes and motives developed and intertwined in the fashion beloved of every working opera composer—there’s a tender pavane for the Flower Girl, of course; a bittersweet shuffle for the Tramp, a sexy, dissolute tango for the Plutocrat, and so forth. But the interplay of musical ideas is more akin to the way Strauss manipulated the ideas in the Symphonia Domestica. As Strauss wove in themes from his earlier works to provide context, autobiographical clues, and narrative depth, I wove together the strands of themes from my previous Chaplin-inspired scores, as well as other themes from my catalogue.