UC Davis professor and composer Pablo Ortiz has scored a dramatic new work to accompany a classic silent film, Ramona (1910), adapted from Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel of the same name — a book about racial conflict in early California.

The world premiere of Ortiz’s new work, also titled Ramona (for violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet, piano and percussion) is set for Jan. 25, to be performed by UC Davis’ Empyrean Ensemble, the university’s professional ensemble in residence, specializing in new music.

Ramona the film will be screened in the background as the ensemble plays Ortiz’s new work in the Mondavi Center’s Studio Theatre. The Ramona project is part of the ensemble’s winter concert, Americana: American Themes in Music and Film, featuring four world premieres. (See the concert details and the complete program.)

The 16-minute-long Ramona, starring Mary Pickford and directed by D.W. Griffith, centers on oppressed love between Ramona, from an aristocratic Mexican family, and Alessandro, a California mission Indian.

Ortiz has written movie soundtracks before, but never a piece for a silent film.

“I am trying to write loosely following the style of early silent film music,” Ortiz said by e-mail. “In silent movies, romantic scenes, for instance, would have romantic music, but not always necessarily composed for the specific film.

“In other words, a pianist or organist would have a repertoire of pieces intended for certain types of scenes (the storm scene, the hot pursuit scene, the kiss) that s/he would use for different movies.

“Here I take this notion and revive it to an extent, by alluding and loosely quoting some works from the repertoire.”

He gave these examples: “A baby dies, and I allude in my music to Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder; the luck of Ramona and Alessandro changes overnight, and I allude to Schonberg’s Transfigured Night.”

Ortiz continued: “I had a lot of fun writing these allusions into the work, and even if you are unable to detect them in the piece, they still provide a certain context.”

The composer credited the Empyrean Ensemble’s directors, Kurt Rohde and Laurie San Martin, for being “brave enough to go through with the program.”

Ortiz said he started the project with an idea from Alan S. Taylor, professor of history, who imagined an Empyrean Ensemble concert of patriotic songs and American-themed compositions.

“I decided to work on the concept,” Ortiz said, “and though the process I had conversations with my colleague (Professor) Chris Reynolds, who works on allusions in music.”

Ortiz also contacted Scott Simmon, professor of English, who, as an expert on early American film, works with the National Film Preservation Foundation. The foundation has issued three DVD sets, all curated by Simmon. The third of these sets came out in 2007; it is titled “Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934”—and it includes Ramona.

Simmon said the source film is in excellent condition for its age, having been preserved by the Library of Congress from a print donated by Pickford.

With Ramona the book, which carries the subtitle “A Story of the White Man’s Injustice to the Indian,” Hunt Jackson was trying to motivate reform through fiction, according to Simmon’s notes that accompany the DVD set. Soon after the book's publication, Ramona came to be regarded as essentially a true story, Simmon said.

Ortiz adds further “life” to the film. “My piece is very dramatic indeed,” he said. “It should make you cry.”

On the Net

National Film Preservation Foundation: filmpreservation.org