Elias Johannes Alder, the lead character in Brother of Sleep, possesses a special gift of having supernatural powers of hearing. He can hear things the other villagers cannot hear. He hears the singing of the trees and stones, the speech of animals, the music of the stars, the heartbeats of unborn people. For him, the world is full of rhythms and sounds. The translation of these phenomena into film required a unique collaboration between composer, sound editor and mixer. The realistic world of sound around Elias and in the village is repeatedly overlaid by a second, surreal layer, a parallel to the aural landscape in Elias' head.
The organ in the village church is a central source of music, and it is this organ that Elias learns to play. The musical concept of the film avoids the use of realistic organ music, as well as any representation of the historical style of music as it existed in the early 19th century. Elias is far ahead of his time and plays harmonies and melodies that would be typical of this century rather than Elias'. In the historical context, this creates the positive impression of something unprecedented, bold, Utopian, extraordinary, a product of genius.
The music has an archaic, primeval, and thus almost timeless character. This was achieved stylistically by having a large symphony orchestra play rudimentary musical elements -- sustained notes, attenuated sounds, elemental tones and rhythms -- rather than well-known tunes or familiar harmonies. Natural sounds were worked into the symphonic texture by means of digital sampling techniques. As a result, the music sounds new, mysterious, and exciting. Top-quality stereophonic recordings of wind, rain, birdsong, animal calls, thunder and the gurgling of water was electronically edited and combined with the music. The natural sounds were collected at the original film location in Hoch-Montafon in Austria. In addition to the natural images shot in the landscape, there were layers of original, natural sounds, recorded in the studio. The central instrument for Elias' most intimate aural sensations was the glass harmonica, an instrument known in Mozart's time. By rubbing sheets of glass, a kind of "celestial" harmony, a music of the spheres, was produced. The natural sounds (whether derived from wood, metal, glass, or the acoustic panorama of nature recorded outdoors) were interwoven with the orchestral sound and used at various points to suggest the music that Elias conjured from his organ.
Everything was done in order to assure André Eisermann's credibility as an organ player: He sat in on the organ classes of Professor Harold Feller at Munich Musikhochschule. He was given the musical themes as early as possible and had rhythmic exercises. This practice enabled him to precisely move his hands on the keys of the Bruckner Organ in Salzburg, where close-ups of the hands playing and of the inner workings of an historical instrument were filmed.
