Overture Magazine 2013-2014 January-February 2014 | Page 32

{ Program Notes
Jo seph M eyer ho f f Sy m pho ny Hall

B a lt i m o r e S y m p h o n y O rc h e s t r a
Marin Alsop
Music Director • Harvey M. And Lyn P. Meyerhoff Chair

Chaplin’s Back!

Thursday, January 30, 2014 — 8p.m.
Friday, January 31, 2014 — 8p.m.
Marin Alsop, Conductor

Charlie Chaplin’s
The Idle Class
and

The Kid
Music composed by Charles Chaplin
Music Associate Eric James
Orchestrated by Eric Rogers
Scores arranged and adapted for live performance by Carl Davis
The concert will end at approximately 9:30 p.m.

The Idle Class © Roy Export S.A.S
Music for The Idle Class Copyright © Roy Export Company Establishment and Bourne Co. All rights reserved.
The Kid © Roy Export S.A.S
Music for The Kid Copyright © Roy Export Company Establishment and Bourne Co. All rights reserved.

Marin Alsop
For Marin Alsop’s bio., please see pg. 12.

About the concert:
The Idle Class
The Kid

Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr.
Born in London, April 16, 1889; died in Vevey,
Switzerland, December 25, 1977

When Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr. was
born in a working-class South London

30 O v ertur e |

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neighborhood in 1889, his situation
hardly suggested a glorious future. His
father, Charles Sr., was a handsome,
modestly successful singer/actor in the
London music halls of the day, but he
was also an alcoholic who abandoned
Charlie and his mother soon after the
boy was born. His mother, Hannah,
was also a variety performer, but her
singing voice gave out early and she
was barely able to support Charlie and
his older half-brother Sydney. The
family spent several periods living in
soul-destroying workhouses for the

indigent, and the mentally unstable
Hannah Chaplin was committed more
than once to an asylum, leaving her
two boys virtually parentless.
Young Charlie’s budding performing talent provided the way out of these
miserable circumstances. At age nine, he
became a singing member of The Eight
Lancashire Lads, which appeared in
London and on tours around England.
Soon he was in demand as a child actor,
specializing in the cheeky role of Billy the
Messenger in several Sherlock Holmes
plays. Chaplin’s big break came in 1908,
when the 18-year-old became a featured
performer with the very popular Fred
Karno Company, soon becoming one of
its stars. In 1910, the Karno Company
toured America, and Chaplin got his first
glimpse of New York City and California.
After another Karno American tour,
Chaplin decided to try his luck in the
very young world of silent film. In 1913,
he signed a contract with Mack Sennett’s
Keystone Film Company and moved to
Hollywood. Renowned for their hyperkinetic Keystone Cops, Sennett’s films were
hastily shot one-reelers sometimes lasting
as little as five minutes; Chaplin appeared
in 35 of them before moving on to the Essanay studios in 1915. Now directing his
films as well as acting in them, he introduced the world to his signature character
in The Tramp, released in 1915.
Chaplin recalled that his beloved
gentleman tramp with the inimitable
rolling walk, originally invented for Sennett in 1914, was a sudden inspiration,
undoubtedly based on down-and-out
characters he had observed growing up on
London’s meaner streets. “I had no idea of
the character,