MRH: Your latest project is an historical war film called Habermann (2010), and I wonder if you could describe your score, since it’s probably quite different from your horror scores?

EC: Yes, we just finished mixing today. I had almost a seventy-piece orchestra and two soloists (violin and cello). It’s very traditional. Very little electronics; maybe two, three or four drones, that’s it; there’s no sound design in the score.

MRH: Because the story takes place between 1938-1945, did you have to do any research for folk music, the orchestral style of the era, or perhaps mimic some kind of propaganda music?

EC: Not really. I’m European, and I’m well familiar with the music from this era, [as well as] before and after. Melodically and thematically it was not really difficult for me because with Czechs and Germans, we traded both food culture and music culture.
 
There is a piece [for the sequence] when Czechoslovakia is invaded by Germans in 1938-1939. Instead of using original German marching bands, I kind of wrote music in that direction. I had to listen to a couple of pieces on the internet, and how they used flutes and piccolos and drums.

MRH: I’ve seen some of the Nazi propaganda films, and the music is quite different from what you hear today; there were specific sounds the Nazi regime liked, as well a bizarre obsession with marching music.

EC: Right. There were a lot of choirs; usually songs sung by mixed choir.

MRH: Had you worked with director Juraj Herz before?

EC: No, this was the first time. He was one of my childhood heroes. He’s a 75 or 76 year old director, so it was very interesting for me to work with a different generation director.

I know his movies, so for me it was really an honor to work with him, especially on this movie. His life is also very rich because he was interned in a concentration camp for his experience with Germany; after 1958, he wasn’t allowed to work [because of the communists] in Czechoslovakia.

MRH: Is the film autobiographical from his side?

EC: No, not at all. It’s based actually on two stories. Just shortly when the German army moved out in 1945, there were a lot of settlers on the border between Czechoslovakia and Germany, and the bank of land which [the Sudetenland] was always mixed Czechs and Germans, [including] mixed marriages. When the Germans moved out, Czechs took revenge on the settlers and beat them; many people disappeared, they were actually chased out from their houses, and Czechs confiscated property.

The Czechs [in the film] are not turning out so nice. I think it’s going to be very interesting to see how people in the Czech Republic react to this part. As a matter of fact, because it’s based on a true story, descendents of the people from the town where this tragic thing happened came out to the media when the director started to shoot the movie, and in Prague, one asked my mom, ‘I hear your son will shoot a movie based on lies.’ So they’re already reactions.

MRH: I guess this film must be one of the first to address the conflicts between Germans and Czechs during that lengthy period.

EC: Exactly. I don’t remember any movie that touched this. It’s very dark. Who wants to hear about it?

MRH: Essentially it’s a statement on an historical event that probably very few people know about, certainly outside of Europe, so it’s definitely a worthwhile endeavor.

EC: Absolutely. I was very excited about the project when I heard about it, when I read about it, and when I got the offer from the producer I was like ‘Yeah! A drama on this kind of subject? Absolutely!

MRH: Will there be score albums for Forget me Not and Habermann?

EC: I definitely hope so. Habermann is going to be mixed in the end of December, but the score is going to be ready in two weeks.

MRH: Hopefully Habermann will get a Canadian and American release. I think Werner Herzog’s company is involved in the production (it’s listed as one of the four participating companies).

EC: I know that it’s a German-Czech co-production. I hope it will be released here in the U.S. and Canada. It’s an interesting art movie and WWII drama, and I think it’s really, really well done