David Briggs, world-famous organist, adds colour to a black and white film with his sound, in Truro Cathedral's attempt to lighten up Halloween and celebrate the eve of All Saints Day.

By night, the interior lighting in Truro Cathedral shows off its Victorian, Gothic lines and warms the limestone walls against dark, lancet windows. In this setting and to a packed audience, a vibrant cathedral community decided to show the 1923 silent movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame - with Lon Chaney as Quasimodo in a narrative nearly faithful to Hugo's original novel. Well, minus the hanging of La Esmeralda.

For this, they brought in David Briggs from Boston USA, easily one of the most decent organ improvisers on the planet. Yep, he makes stuff up for two hours solid - while watching the film. We were promised music never heard before in a "free, spontaneous fusion between ear, organ and telly."

This is an organist who himself has played in Notre Dame five times, but still goes dewy-eyed over Truro's 'Father Willis' machine of music; it's one of the best in the country.

Brigg's 'colouristic' interpretation of the black and white images brought out the whole sound-pallet. These grey pipes threw out pastel hues to full-block print colours that thundered down past the pews. You got the idea that it mimics a full orchestra, only with 45 stops, four keyboards for hands and another for feet. A one man band? A one man orchestra, more like.

Briggs himself visualises the structure of a standard symphonic orchestra when he plays, but feels his musical ideas are post-structuralist as he "diffuses the film from the 1920s and adds spontaneous themes in a 2009 context". Not once did you feel you'd gone back in time to watch an oldie. In fact, it was a shock to be reminded by Briggs that he was "bringing something contemporary to a film that's nearly a hundred years old."

These themes were dynamic and responsive with crescendos and changes in pace,  following the acceleration of the narrative - elation with rising chords in the right hand, trills for menacing moments and some treading motion in the left hand.

Quasimodo's suffering was brought out, against the bustling crowd scenes with their  carousel sounds. There was a slightly comical fusing of the Wedding March when La Esmeralda dreams of marrying Phoebus during La Seduction. The Marseillaise was also thrown in at times, with a strong nightmarish feel to it.

These musical themes were all colourful - crowds, circuses, the French flag, wedding dreams. You could hear the tapestry of woven-in tunes and ideas being pulled in from all parts of Brigg's imagination. Just goes to show, you can take a dark Gothic idea and brighten it up with some sound. Maybe that's what all Halloween parties are really about. (Georgina Brown)

www.david-briggs.org.uk
www.trurocathedral.org.uk