About the Composer

In the last two posts, I alluded to the musical I’m currently working on and expect to finish within a few months. The musical adaptation of Robertson Davies’ one-act play Eros At Breakfast began almost by accident about two years ago when playwright/performer Janet Roitz mentioned the play in the course of a conversation we were having.

It turns out Janet had long been an avid fan of Davies’ work in general, and had wished for a long time to stage this play. As she described to me what it’s about, my wheels started turning almost immediately, and we both came up with the idea of adapting it.

Eros At Breakfast is a fantasy set in the solar plexus of a young man. The play envisions the various components of the human body as departments of some big bureaucracy such as the military or a big corporation. As changes seem to be on the way in this man’s otherwise unremarkable life, the various departments are affected in different ways and amusing conflicts come about.

In the preface of Four Favourite Plays, Robertson Davies describes how he got the idea for Eros At Breakfast. He remembers that at his school they used to put on what were known as “health dialogues”, which were meant to teach lessons about hygiene and good health habits.

I was impressed as a child by a health dialogue the scene of which was laid in a human stomach. Various characters appeared there, of which some were quarrelsome and harmful like Piece of Pie and Slice of Cake, and others were of a noble and uplifting nature like Fresh Vegetables and Whole-wheat Bread. The hero and heroine were handsome young Mr. Apple and Miss Glass of Milk … How delightful, I thought, to have a play going on inside somebody.

In Davies’ resulting play, the characters are Chremes and Aristophontes, the heads of the Solar Plexus and Intelligence departments, respectively, along with Parmeno, an envoy from the heart and Hepatica from the Liver. It’s a very funny play, and has just the right level of simplicity so as to lend itself to musical adaptation. Janet has written an absolutely hilarious draft adaptation. I’ll be happy if my lyrics are half as funny as Janet’s dialogue. There isn’t enough music yet for me to say much about it here, but I will discuss that soon.

I get into such trouble with this stuff: I’m a classical composer who wants to write musicals; I’m a theater composer with Uptown training whose music is weird, unpredictable and unnecessarily difficult.

In classical circles, it’s OK, actually. As far as I know, I haven’t been judged negatively because there are musicals in my bio, but in my head at least, there’s the danger of that. (You’re judging me right now, aren’t you!)

But dealing with theater people has been a tricky dance. Actors tend to like my stuff, but they look at it kind of sidewise and treat it as an oddity. They don’t complain about how difficult it is, but they do make a topic of it. In one case I was turned down by a playwright because my music wasn’t “tuneful” enough. He knew what he wanted and had a valid point, although I was baffled at the time. I think my music is very lyrical and reasonably easy. But what do I know? I can take 4-part dictation, so my idea of easy has nothing to do with it. I’m still learning on that front.

Here’s the problem: Most people equate “musical theater” with “Broadway”. I do not. Broadway has turned into something that I’m not particularly interested in being a part of. There’s still a place for Sondheim there, because he’s Sondheim. Put someone else’s name on Passion or Sunday in the Park With George, and they’ll show you the door pretty quickly.

So where do I fit in? No really, I’m asking.

Given the nomenclature available to us now, I have two choices: it’s a “musical” or an “opera”. Eros At Breakfast doesn’t quite fit the average person’s idea of either of these. It’s clearly not an opera, because, for one thing, it’s not all sung. It’s written with actors in mind, not singers. Singing actors, yes, but actors. That’s why I call it a musical.

But the music is conceived much in the way of an opera. It’s not lead-sheet tunes to be scored for reeds, bass and drums. The accompaniment helps tell the story; the composition is often driven by counterpoint, and not by chord progressions. Some songs don’t end, because the character is interrupted, so there’s a contiguous feel similar to most contemporary operas.

So, no, this isn’t intended for Broadway, although of course I would be delighted. Maybe someday Broadway will go back to being about theater more than it’s about money. For now, I can think of numerous regional and local theater companies around the country that have done very well with this sort of thing.

(But they’ll still think it’s weird.)

It seems likely there will now be some changes in the nature of this blog, at least for a while. Some readers may lose interest. I hope not, but it’s probably inevitable. Perhaps new ones will come along.

When I started blogging in August of 2005, I was in the middle of writing an orchestral piece, and that’s what was on my mind, plus related things like the whole Hungary thing. So that’s mainly what I wrote about.

I have mentioned in passing from time to time that in addition to being a “classical” composer, I also write musicals. This was my original path into composition, and what I think I’m really good at. At the moment I’m in sprint mode to finish Eros At Breakfast, a musical that’s been on my plate for what must be a couple of years now. With crazy plumbing and technology crises behind me, I’ve made rapid progress over the past month, and I can really see this thing being finished now. I’m shooting for the Spring.

So, for the time being, many of my posts will deal with what I’m working on. While wearing my musical theater hat, I also write lyrics, I’m finally ready to claim, so I may be discussing that as well to some extent. If you’re one who shrugs or winces at the thought of a “musical”, I hope you’ll keep reading anyway, or at least checking the headlines. If not, I understand.

If you’re a Mac user and you do any writing at all, you should take a look at Scrivener. At first, you’ll think it’s a word processor, but you’ll find it’s a lot more interesting and useful. My 30-day trial period just ended, and I paid for it without hesitation.

Basically, Scrivener makes it easy to break your writing down hierarchically. So, if you organize your writing around an outline, even a really simple one in your head, Scrivener makes it easy to put your ideas where they fit within the outline, to be fleshed out in situ or moved around, or whatever.

I discovered Scrivener by way of 43 Folders, a blog I follow to satisfy my inner geek. Merlin Mann does a better and more thorough job of explaining it than I do, so feel free to just jump over to his review.

By the way, Merlin’s non-linear approach to writing sounds a lot like the way I compose. I think it’s a good way to work actually.

If you write like I do (and I pray that you do not), you have a messy approach to drafting that is iterative, intuitive, and far from linear. You do a brain dump, then type a little, then research a little, then type a little more, then move a bunch of stuff around, then groan aloud, then 80% start over and so on until something is done. Yes, it would be more tidy if we all followed the mandate of our elementary school teachers and wrote perfect 5-paragraph essays straight from a completed outline. But, such is life. And Scrivener seems to get that.

What It Does

There are several views of your work. The basic working view is a folder tree on the left, representing your outline, or whatever kind of hierarchy you have, and your writing on the right.

So, let’s say you’re writing a little biography of Bartók. You might create several outline items in the tree on the left, say, Early Life, Conservatory, Folk Music Collecting, Works, Emigration. Under “Works”, you can then put any number of sub-items (piano, orchestral, chamber, choral, etc.), and so on. If you start out inspired to write about Bartók’s emigration, it’s now very easy to just start there. Later, you may decide to be clever and open with his emigration. So, you just drag that item up to where you want it in the tree.

When you’ve filled in all your content, Scrivener will export the whole thing into whatever real word processor you like for final editing and polishing.

There’s another view, which is kind of interesting. It’s a corkboard, with all of your notes presented as index cards pinned to it. You can double click any index card to drill down to any sub-items on a new corkboard.

I’ve only scratched the surface of what Scrivener can do. In the past month, I’ve used it to prepare a pre-concert talk, and I’m now using it to organize the lyrics for the musical I’m now working on. (And I’m using it to write this post.)

Joshua Kosman has a pretty funny anecdote about a know-it-all violinist musician. I suppose her ignorance shouldn’t be surprising, given her bad attitude, but…. sheesh!

Here’s what my almost-four-year-old says to me in the car on the way down to San Jose for the Letter to Hungary performance:

Dad, is that a special towel that you wear for concerts?

He’s referring to what might be the only elegant piece of clothing I own, which is a sport jacket from Jhane Barnes.

As promised, I’ve put up some excerpts of last week’s performance of Letter To Hungary. You’ll find them on this page.

Enjoy.

Letter to Hungary received it’s U.S. premiere in San Jose last Saturday. A brilliant performance by the Mission Chamber Orchestra.

It has been many years since I’ve enjoyed hearing my own music performed this much. Part of it has to do with it being a second performance, as opposed to a premiere. I’m historically (hysterically) too nervous and stressed out at premieres to actually enjoy them.

But mainly, it’s about confidence. Most of my premieres have been under-rehearsed. That’s just the way it is with the new piece on the concert. I’ve gotten used to that. I’m usually happy with the performance anyway, because I care about the overall effect of a piece more than whether the violas cut off right on the downbeat. But when something’s under-rehearsed, everyone knows it, and everyone wonders where the big train wreck is going to happen, and they know it’s going to happen. So, it’s tense. I don’t like tense.

I was thrilled with the Budapest premiere of this piece, which was carried largely by nervous energy. It was exciting and well-received, but just a little rough around the edges, only because of a simple lack of rehearsal time.

In this case, rehearsal time was ample. I had been to one of the later rehearsals, which knocked my socks off, and I witnessed conductor Emily Ray sweating details of the sort that normally go unaddressed in premieres. A tricky rhythm; an interesting-but-correct pitch clash that needs to be tuned; etcetera. So, during the performance, I was oddly relaxed, and just able to enjoy the performance like a regular person.

The brand new San Jose City Hall Rotunda turned out to be a great concert venue. (I’d never heard of it. I live under a rock.) It’s basically a giant (3-4 storey?) glass dome, which looks out onto the street. It’s a little like the Today Show, with the street just sort of “happening” out there behind the orchestra. Actually, during the Shostakovich Cello Concerto, an ambulance went by, which was a drag, but also kind of cool and surreal. But the sound was good, and the atmosphere was elegant.

A couple of excerpts of the performance can be heard here. If you want to hear the whole thing, let me know.

Thanks again to Emily Ray and the Mission Chamber Orchestra. If you’re in the South Bay, you must check them out. Coming up in April they’ve got pianist Jon Nakamatsu. See their site for details.