to add to E's notes on Greek drama

"For the Greeks the noblest purpose of music was to enhance drama. Dramatists were frequently the composers of the music for their words. This music took the form of recitative in some of the dialogue, accompanied note for note by aulos or kithara or both. In this economy of accompaniment the words were perfectly understood by the audience. There were also lyrical passages and, at critical dramatic points, floods of music, by chorus, actors, and instruments. Consequently the modern scholar reading ancient drama gains only a fraction of the total result. As one modern writer puts it, 'to the Greeks the words are but part of a complex art form that weaves poetry, music, acting, and the dance into a profound and moving unity'" (Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music p. 10, quoting Will Durant, The Life of Greece pp. 379-380).

It makes sense that Greek dramatists often wrote both words and music, given that Greek was (probably) a tonal language: every word choice was also a musical choice.

Partch describes the development of opera in Italy circa 1600 as a "re-establishment of the Greek ideals" and points out that at the same time, in Japan, Kabuki was developing as "a re-establishment of Noh's original ideals" (Genesis p. 13).

Vocal conundrums

It seems like this show is probably going to have a lot of choral singing, which I'm excited about because I haven't done much choral writing, so it's an opportunity for me to work on something new and different. Also it makes sense from a practical angle, since group singing is easier than solo singing and allows more kids to participate.

Another thing about the vocal writing for this show: Elissa is writing the characters as non-gender-specific; she intends for the casting to be gender-blind. I totally dig this idea, but it leads to a compositional problem I'm not sure how I'm going to solve. Usually one of the first things I do when scoring a show is assign vocal ranges to each of the characters: she's a soprano, he's a baritone. I imagine each character's tone quality and delivery style - how their personality is expressed musically - and I find it nearly impossible to write for a character until I've worked those things out. (Case in point: last show I wrote, I was blocked for a long time because I couldn't figure out how the main character was supposed to sound. I just couldn't hear him - maybe because although I liked and sympathized with him, his personality was too different from my own and I couldn't really relate to him. [It came to me eventually, though I can't really explain how.])

So how do I figure out what a character sounds like when I don't know if it's a he or a she? I suppose I can probably think in terms of high or low - as in, this character will have a high voice (i.e., be either a soprano or a tenor) and that character will have a low voice (either alto or baritone/bass), since the standard soprano range is roughly identical to tenor, and alto to bass, with the men's voices being simply an octave lower than the women's. But I would find it useful to know what octave the melody is going to be in when working out the accompaniment, so it's not ideal. Another possibility, though probably not a good solution, would be to limit the vocal range for characters of unspecified gender to the small set of notes that are singable by most people, male or female. As I said to Elissa, I tend to favor gender-neutral vocal territory anyway - I'm disinclined to write high soprano lines, for instance, unless it's dramatically motivated in some way. So yeah, I don't know - something to figure out.

Back to the choral writing: I was thinking it should be in three parts, labeled low, middle, and high. That way, it's likely to be easier than the standard four parts; also, it avoids the gender-fied SATB configuration - the middle line, at least, could potentially be sung by both male and female voices.

stuff we ought to learn more about

Elissa emailed me these articles on Pinter and Busby Berkeley - just linking to them here for future reference.

Sussing out the sound world of the show

Been thinking about what the music of these creatures should sound like. Probably otherworldly in some way - but since our intention is to write a show performable by high schoolers, it also needs to be relatively simple. Maybe based on some kind of pentatonic scale?

Also: the kind of music we make is influenced by the kind of environment we're in - so what kind of music do cave dwellers make? I'm reminded of Renaissance era church music - how the acoustic environment of those cavernous churches encouraged harmonically static music (because in that kind of space, sound reverberates for a long time, so if you change chords too frequently, the harmonies pile on top of each other and it sounds all geschmuggled [which might be fine if you're Charles Ives, but not so much if you're Palestrina]). So maybe these creatures' music is harmonically static?

Nixon at the North Pole

When Elissa emailed me the first few pages she'd written, I commented that the repetition of the lyrics made me think of John Adams' Nixon in China -- specifically what came to mind was Nixon's first aria where he sings "News/news/news/news/news/news/news/news/news/news/news/news/has a/has a/has a/has a/kind of mystery..."

Talking with Rob about it later, I realized that Elissa's opening scene has more in common with Nixon in China than just lyrical repetition: kind of like Nixon, fresh off the plane in a country that until then had been completely closed off from the West, Elissa's creatures have just emerged from the cave they've been living in for centuries (or millennia?) and are trying to make sense of the new world they've found themselves in. Maybe I was making that connection subconsciously?

Rachel and Elissa write a musical!

Rachel and I are going to write a musical, ideally one that we can bring back to our high school for them to perform. We've been talking a lot about it, and she had the idea that we start a blog to keep track of our ideas as they come up. So this is mostly for us, at this point at least, but anyone who wants to can read along and follow our process/progress, and comment if you feel like it.

Right, Rachel?