Serienmörder - The Experience
SOUNDTRACK: CLASSICS REWORKED
PRODUCTION
EXHIBITION HUB
SEMMEL EXHIBITIONS
ACOUSTIC SCENOGRAPHY AND AUDIO PRODUCTION
LEM-STUDIOS, BERLIN
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CONCEPT
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
In early discussions about the musical direction of the exhibition, Christoph Scholz proposed Hans Zimmer’s Hannibal soundtrack as a key artistic reference and conceptual guideline.
Zimmer’s score draws heavily on the gravitas of late Romantic orchestral writing—slow, ceremonial strings, choral shadows, and ecclesiastical harmonies—yet deliberately withholds catharsis. Nothing resolves. The music circles, stalks, inhales. Rather than guiding emotional release, it sustains a state of suspended tension.
This approach resonates with the original function of sacred Western music, particularly pre-Romantic liturgical traditions. Such music was not intended to express individual emotion, but to contain forces larger than the human: death, sin, mystery, divinity. Its power lies in restraint, ritual, and repetition rather than narrative payoff.
HOLLYWOOD THRILLERS VS. EUROPEAN ART HORROR
Mainstream Hollywood thrillers typically score fear as physiological urgency—through pulses, ostinati, accelerating tempos, and percussive insistence. The body is compelled to react.
By contrast, European art-horror—exemplified by filmmakers such as Polanski, Haneke, Argento, or early Cronenberg—treats horror as contemplative unease. Fear emerges not from pursuit, but from enforced attention. The terror lies in being made to look.
Zimmer’s Hannibal score belongs firmly to this second lineage. It does not raise the heart rate; it lowers the room temperature. It invites focus rather than reflex. Crucially, the music never reassures. There is no musical “good side.” This mirrors European art-horror’s resistance to moral binaries. The score does not shield the audience; it stands beside the violence with near-archival neutrality. That indifference is what makes it deeply unsettling.
REQUIEMS AND RELATED SACRED WORKS AS MUSICAL DNA
To resist conventional genre expectations, the musical DNA of the exhibition soundtrack could be extracted from Requiems and related sacred works by canonical composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and Prokofiev.
A Requiem—traditionally part of the Roman Catholic funeral mass—is not designed to explain death, but to structure an encounter with it.
Like a liturgical mass:
- The audience gathers
- The ritual unfolds
- Violence is neither justified nor explained
- No absolution is granted
- Everyone departs altered, but not cleansed
This framework offers a powerful parallel for the exhibition experience.
Musically, the soundtrack could draw inspiration from contemporary re-contextualizations of classical material by artists such as Max Richter, Hans Zimmer, Gustavo Dudamel, and Uri Caine—figures who reinterpret historical forms without neutralizing their gravity.
Additionally, composers including Nils Frahm, Alva Noto, and Ryuichi Sakamoto provide a compelling reference point. Even when not directly reworking Mozart or Beethoven, their work inhabits the same ecosystem: classical formal thinking translated through contemporary, electronic, and minimalist execution.
The result would be a soundtrack that functions less as accompaniment and more as ritual space—an atmosphere that does not comfort, explain, or resolve, but quietly insists on attention.
The soundtrack could comprise contemporary reworks of the following pieces:
- Beethoven: Moonlight Sonata 1st Movement
- Chopin: Nocturne in E-Flat Major, Op.9, No.2
- Mozart: Requiem K626 Lacrimosa
- Franz Liszt: Dante Sonata
- Samuel Barber: Adagio for Stings
- Maria durch ein Dornwald ging
These reinterpretations can be arranged and produced across varying degrees of dynamic range and structural complexity, from sparse ambient (use in exhibition) treatments to dense, cinematic statements (use in trailers etc.) , while preserving the timeless quality of the original works and the recognizability of their melodies and motifs.