About the Composer

This past Sunday was a date I’d been anticipating for months. As part of the City Arts and Lectures series here in San Francisco, Stephen Sondheim sat down with Frank Rich for a thoroughly spontaneous and entertaining hour-and-a-half discussion.

Now, I’ve read and heard so many interviews and similar Sondheim talks over the years, so there was very little new information for me, but this is my first opportunity to sit through one in person. Sondheim was upbeat, forthcoming and very funny; a true mensh.

Here are some tidbits of information offered by Mr. Sondheim that was indeed new to me, in stream-of-consciousness order:

• The accompaniment in the song “The Little Things You Do Together” from Company is as jumpy as it is, because Sondheim wrote the song while on a cruise ship that was listing drastically as he worked out the accompaniment.
• As he worked in an unoccupied lounge on the ship, passengers would come in and sit down, enjoying what they thought was a performance, despite what must have been a lot of stopping and starting and noodling, etc.
• Sondheim has very recently abandoned the idea of adapting the film Ground Hog Day into a musical, to the disappointment of many
• Elaine Stritch in a bar at 2am: “Bartender, just give me a bottle of vodka and a floorplan.”
• Sondheim thinks the film Vertigo is overrated. This was before a San Francisco audience, mind you. I don’t quite agree with that, but I would say that the film is entirely carried by the score.
• Vertigo is one of Frank Rich’s favorite films. (There you go: conflict=drama)

I’m kicking myself violently for not springing for a bigger ticket that would have included a private dinner with Mr. Sondheim at Absinthe afterwards. There were two left when I bought my ticket. Why? I don’t know. The San Francisco Chronicle apparently didn’t see this as a worthwhile event to cover, which baffles me, but then my big complaint when I first moved here in 1994 was that no one knows who Stephen Sondheim is.

Incidentally, I’m also a big fan of Frank Rich, who, if you’re not familiar, was a New York Times theater critic in the 1980’s — the so-called “Butcher of Broadway”. His memoir Ghost Light was a must-read for me as a fellow Washingtonian and theater fan.

It is well known among Sondheim kooks such as myself that Stephen Sondheim’s favorite among his own songs is “Someone in a Tree” from the 1976 musical Pacific Overtures. I love this song too, but it’s never been clear to me exactly why it stands out in particular for Sondheim.

Briefly, the song attempts to deal with a particular event that’s important to the piece, but not particularly dramatic. Sondheim even calls it a “song about nothing” (which is very interesting in these post-Seinfeld times). What’s interesting about the song is the reciter’s setup line: “No one knows what happened in the treaty house.” The solution is to tell the story from three points of view: 1) An old man who remembers watching from the top of a tree when he was a boy; 2) That same old man as a 10-year-old boy; and 3) A soldier hiding under the floorboards of the treaty house.

The old man and the boy report what they’ve seen. The soldier reports what he’s heard. It’s a brilliant use of time and space in a theatrical moment.

The first video below is a very young Frank Rich interviewing Sondheim and his collaborator John Weidman in Sondheim’s house, presumably during the (extremely brief) run of the original Broadway production. In this video discusses in depth how the song came about and why he loves it so much. He also talks about the repetitive accompaniment figure, and how it came about.

The second video is a continuation of the first, where Sondheim accompanies the four cast members involved in a reading of the song.

Now, here’s the song as it looked in it’s full production.

Just a personal note about all this. I’m literally kvelling that YouTube has made it possible to see all of this. I had once before seen the second video, with the actors in Sondheim’s house, at a Sondheim-kook event here in San Francisco many years ago, but I did not know of the existence of the first part. I used to think I’d seen every Sondheim interview that exists on video. I also have to say that it’s really fun to see what the inside of his house looks like (or at least what it looked like in 1976).

Why am I so uninterested in the new Sweeney Todd movie? It’s as much a surprise to me as it is to anyone who knows me. I remember being excited about it about 15 years ago when there began to be noise about a Tim Burton adaptation, but in recent years I’ve lost interest.

The original stage version of Sweeney Todd is a masterpiece, and I’ve written before about how my first exposure to it put me on the path toward being a composer. Over many years I’ve studied the score so thoroughly and seen so many productions, some good and some bad, that I don’t think I can ever get excited about it again. It’s not just this film adaptation I’m down on; I’m normally loathe to go and see new stage productions as well. It’s also not that I don’t think the original 1979 Harold Prince production can’t be improved upon, but that happens so rarely.

Also, I hate violence in movies (everywhere, really). I have no tolerance for it. I’m not sure why I find it more acceptable on stage, but I do. On stage, it’s a play and it’s about characters, whereas judging from the trailers and reviews, the violence is more front and center here, and can’t imagine that would add anything new or constructive. I’m a little concerned that the new audience for the piece brought about by the film will only see the blood and not the characters or the ingenious musical dramaturgy.

From the excerpts I’ve heard, the film version seems vocally miscast. This music demands strong voices. Even if, through the magic of mixing, we can have Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter compete with a full orchestra, it sounds weird to me, because the energy of an actor projecting on stage (even an amplified one) is missing. And, no, it’s not just the nature of a movie musical. Listen to Topol in the film version of Fiddler on the Roof (the best-ever film adaptation of a musical in my opinion).

I will see the film, probably on DVD in a few months. Despite whatever may bug me about it, it clearly offers a new look. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

What About the Recent Stage Revival?
I was more excited about the recent revival that was on here in San Francisco a few months ago. What I really can’t stand is when “new” productions basically just ape the original Harold Prince staging. This one had a new angle, and I found it thoroughly entertaining (mainly as someone familiar with the piece), because there was a sort of new sub-plot going on: the instrumental parts are played by actors on stage. So, in addition to being able to hear a really nifty, new orchestration, there’s this circus-like feel of watching the actors navigate transitions from playing to acting and back, and in some cases switching from instrument to instrument.

Unfortunately, the price of that (originally cost-cutting) gimmick is that those in the audience who are unfamiliar with the piece get shortchanged in a couple of ways. For one thing, particularly in the minor roles, the casting tended to skew toward competent instrumental playing, which made for some slightly amateurish acting performances, although the leads were top-notch. But there was also a weird disconnect among the actors. Since they were playing instruments they often couldn’t make eye contact with each other or the audience, so there was a sort of detachment about their performances.

Still, I love that production for at least attempting something different.

Other Productions?
Two other productions of Sweeney Todd stand out in my memory as being new and interesting. One was an early-90’s offering by Signature Theater in Arlington, Va., which was staged in a “black box” environment. Not only was it “in the round”, but the audience seating was arranged such that the action took place among the audience, if you can picture that. It was intensely creepy. And new.

Then there was the San Francisco Symphony “concert” version bringing George Hearn back to the title role. The semi-staging by Lonny Price, where action was played on platforms above and among the orchestra, was as effective as any full staging, and the power of the full orchestra made the drama soar.

It will be worth your while to see writer/performer Amanda Moody’s latest music theater piece D’Arc, Woman on Fire, music by Jay Cloidt, at Footloose & Shotwell Studios.

D’Arc offers a surreal inquiry into the costs of dreams, lived and unlived. Weaving the threads of the Dark Ages with our own dark times, D’Arc depicts a present-day intercession by Saint Joan of Arc. We meet Joanne. Home alone, she fixates on letters from her daughter who vanished while working abroad in a war-torn region. Raging against loss, Joanne begins to receive bizarre visions through the cold flame of her television set. It is Saint Joan, burning through the TV twilight to answer her grief. Relating tales of her own battles and trials, Joan teases and admonishes Joanne, disrupts her obsessions and challenges her to listen anew to the call of her own life.

Jay Cloidt’s haunting music drives this D’Arc night of the soul. Integrating Moody’s mercurial vocalizations with acoustic and processed cello, the composition features original songs, underscoring, and sound design. His composition spans 14th century hymns, post-Romanticism, aggressive electronic music and heart-thumping gospel to evoke the strange dream of Joanne and Joan’s collision-course.

I haven’t seen it yet, but I can vouch for Amanda as a really interesting dramatic writer, and a powerful performer.

Throughout the year I’ve been occasionally posting recordings of songs from my earlier musical The Ghost of Wu. Today’s installment is the song “You Must Learn”, in which an ambitious mother lectures her naïve daughter, a concubine, in the ways of the Emperor’s court.

This song is probably the most Sondheim-derivative thing I’ve ever written. When I was a student, all of my music was completely derivative, and over the years I learned how to avoid that to some degree. This is a rare case where I was not only being openly derivative, but I actually knew what I was doing. If you know your Sondheim, you will surely recognize the influence.

(download)
4′12″

The lyrics are mine too, by the way. You can follow them and the score if you’d like on this dedicated page.

By the way, there’s a running index of all the songs I’ve posted so far on this page.

Sometime last year I struck up an email correspondence via this blog with poet/librettist Karren Alenier, whose opera with composer William Banfield Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On was premiered in 2005 in New York by Encompass New Opera Theatre. Karren has written a very entertaining book about what it takes to see an opera project through from concept to production.

As someone with a new opera idea in the pipeline, I’m keenly interested this topic and Karren was kind enough to let me read an advance copy of the book. I’m not a critic, so I’m unable to offer an in-depth review, but I thought I should at least call readers’ attention to it.

The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas uses Karren’s own project as a frame of reference throughout, but she also wisely sought input from other professionals in the field, including the likes of Placido Domingo, Mark Adamo, Libby Larsen and Ned Rorem. Every aspect of making a new opera is discussed: collaboration, finding an audience, finding a commission, working with singers, working with directors, critics and more.

As far as my own project is concerned (it’s a secret), reading this book has given me a good picture of the various ways to pursue it, and what to expect if and when I do. My favorite chapter title: “Hubris, Vanity, Rejection”.

What’s really fun about this book is the structure. Karren’s own opera is a result of many years studying the work of Gertrude Stein, and the book is organized in what might be described as a “cubist” way. In a sense, it’s really two books in one: one is about her own background leading up to the creation of her opera and its production, and the other is a more general look at the world of American opera. But, the two books are presented simultaneously in layers.

Any composer or writer who is not already intimate with the vagaries of the American opera world would surely learn something from this book, but also the tone of the book is light and sharp, and so I imagine it would be enjoyable for anyone who is peripherally interested in the topic. The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas is not yet in stores, but it’s available now from the publisher’s web site.

Blue Gobo has an addictive collection of footage from original Broadway productions dating at least as far back as Rogers and Hart’s Jumbo (1935). Most of the footage that interests me is of scenes excerpted on the Ed Sullivan Show in the 50’s and 60’s.

The first one that jumped out at me was this performance of “Cool” with the original cast of West Side Story on Ed Sullivan in 1959 or so. The Jerome Robbins choreography, as I’d seen it in the film version, always seemed kind of goofy to me, but now seeing it on a stage, I can sort of imagine how effective it must have been live in its time.

And speaking of Leonard Bernstein musicals, here’s Carol Channing on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1953 doing “100 Ways to Lose A Man” from the Bernstein/Comden/Green show Wonderful Town. Mainly, I love this for the awkward, contrived setup that Ed concocted. Notice how Carol is barely able to play along.

I enjoy these clips for their historical interest as much as anything else. Here’s the 1968 cast of Hair, again on Ed Sullivan. If you watch to the end, you can see them file into the frightened and bewildered audience, and then attack a frightened and bewildered Ed with flowers.

Many more fascinating original cast excerpts, some fairly obscure, are found at Blue Gobo. My thanks to Charles Gilbert for the discovery.

Time to roll out another song from The Ghost of Wu.

Composed in the summer or fall of 2002, Welcome Home is probably my favorite song from Wu; certainly the one I’m most proud of for both music and lyrics. It’s an ensemble number for womens chorus.

Following a tumultuous journey from her village to the Emperor’s court, Wu is met by gentle chorus of concubines welcoming her into the Emperor’s harem. During the course of the song, they transform her from a simple country girl into an elegant member of their circle.

Audio, lyrics and the score are all right here.

In advance of the upcoming premiere of his harp concerto, Mark Adamo (seen below in a recent photo, pre-haircut) has written a fascinating description of the challenges involved in writing such a thing, and how he approached it. How do you get beyond the clichés and build something where the harp isn’t just adding some attack to the clarinets or providing noodledy-noodley filigree? How can the harp “own” the material?

Whether or not you have any interest at all in the harp as an intstrument, this is a worthwhile thing to read. It’s a great example of how a smart composer starts a new project by asking questions. Mark’s approach here reminds me of thorough advance work he puts into his stage works. (More on that here.)

1.) Since the harp is, by design, more impressive spelling out harmony than theme—but I want a theme with a real authority on which to organize the piece—can I come up with a melody that’s all harmony and all line at the same time, and yet is still versatile enough to express whatever I need?

2.) Are there unusual technical or timbral resources the harp can muster that are theatrical (read: loud) enough to hold their own in an orchestral texture? Can I design a movement to ask a question to which these timbres would be the answer?

3.) And how do I make this piece not just an orchestra score which happens to have a very large harp part, but a true concerto: one which sounds as if all of its gestures and materials are generated by the soloist? In other words, how do I keep the orchestra, with its limitless melodic potential, from upstaging the harp?

Mark’s Four Angels will receive its premiere at the Kennedy Center on June 7 – 9, 2007 performed by Dotian Levalier and the National Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, conductor.

As mentioned in my last post, the opening song from Eros at Breakfast was performed a couple of weeks ago, launching what I hope will be a series of similar informal performances as the pieces start coming together.

It has occurred to me that it’s relatively easy to also document this work-in-progress on video, and so we got back together over the weekend to shoot this scene for that purpose. The result is a very tight, energetic and musically accurate performance. On the other hand, this particular scene calls for a lot going on onstage, and all we have is our main character (the only one who actually sings here), so you need to use your imagination to some degree.

Thanks again to Loren Nordlund, praised in my last post, and to wonder-pianist Jennifer Peringer, who, it turns out, has five hands.

Without further ado, please have a look at “Routine”. Video and a very brief synopsis are on a dedicated page.