US History Drama Writing Instruction
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Teaching US History Drama Writing Instruction |
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Read a tribute to my composition teacher, Dr. James Sclater.
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 Liner NotesIt's unlikely that I'll ever record a CD of my songs for Greek gods, saints, and cartoon characters, and neither Celine Dione nor Tony Bennett have returned my calls. Until they do, here are MIDI arrangements that demonstrate the first and best lesson I ever learned about composition: make the most of the least (cf., James Sclater, composition teacher). Even without voices and words, the listener will find interest in patterns woven from sounds.We open with songs by sixth graders for my class called "Music, Speech, and Drama." I assigned them to write words for a cartoon character. Then I handed them xylophones, and let them pick out tunes. When they wanted to write the tunes on paper, I showed them how. I fed their tunes to my computer, adding layers of notes above and beneath the melody for atmosphere. In the first two of these examples, I added only echoes of their notes.
Of all the tunes and lyrics I've written, I'm most proud of my bossa-nova piece Imagine Forever from THE ANCIENT WORLD. It's for Aphrodite, teasing Prometheus on his rock. I'm goddess of loversThe song stops here for some dialogue, then continues, with some annoying ocean nymphs echoing Aphrodite (conclusion): Don't worry what's right, dear.By the way, the melody is based on the exotic whole-tone scale. How do you keep a song interesting when it repeats verse after verse? The Choir of St. James, Marietta, twice commissioned me to compose anthems, giving me a chance to solve that nagging problem. In each of four verses of his "Christmas Carol," poet G. K. Chesterton changes little besides the word he uses to describe the Christ-child's role in this "weary world," as a light, a star, a consuming fire, and a king. I varied the accompaniment and the fourth phrase of each verse, to suggest each of those images (Chesterton). For St. James Day, I based an original text on three stories from Scripture about James Zebedee (whose name means "Son of Thunder"). He makes a miraculous catch of fish on stormy waves, he boasts to the other apostles, and, finally, he's the church's first martyr. In each case, "God calls" and takes James to a place he didn't expect, and he follows. The melody stays the same, but the accompaniment suggests the waves, the boasting, and the somber reflection on what it means when God calls (Son of Thunder). Another piece sets sacred text for a piece of historical theatre. In THE ANCIENT WORLD, Pharoah Aknaten proclaims that there is only one god, the sun. (The words are actual ancient text.) At the hymn's climax, Tutankamen slays him and re-establishes worship of the old gods. Hebrew slaves are left to toil, and they sing Psalm 104, which parallels the imagery of Aknaten's hymn. (Hymn to the Sun / Fall of Aknaten / Thou God Alone). The last four notes of the hymn are picked up as the first four notes of the show's main theme, Out of the Dark: Out of the dark, into the light; An important acknowledgement: My music for Aknaten's fall deliberately imitates the distinctive "minimalist" style of contemporary American composer Philip Glass. His opera AKNATEN covers this same dramatic territory -- much more deeply, of course. But that's not the only reason for my parody. It's also a tribute. He is the most extreme exemplar of the principle of "making the most of the least." It was hearing his music in 1986, so rich and yet based on such simple material, that inspired me to think that I could dare to become a composer myself. A couple of sixth grade girls composed a song for the cartoon "Tom and Jerry." They imagined a cat cornering the mouse, and then the mouse pleading, Why Can't We Just Be Friends?. (Read their words.)They wrote the words and the pitches, but they were a little vague on the rhythm. After the cat creeps up, I fit the mouse's syllables into a waltz, and the result is one of my favorite compositions (being a composer partial to waltzes). Sixth graders composed an opera, THE FROG PRINCE. They wrote words, tunes, and sometimes both together. I mixed, matched, and arranged. Here's the Overture. The Hard Rock Blues and Standing By You both imitate 60s style rock songs as jokes. When Prometheus is chained to a hard rock, Hermes taunts him -- until Zeus gets impatient and sends thunderbolts to interrupt the song. A trio of water nymphs dance around Prometheus, offering sympathy, sounding a lot like a girl group in love with the "leader of the pack" : The gods all say you're bad, but we don't care, uh-uh. The next piece, Beowulf, scene one, is a full self-contained musical drama that my sixth graders wrote with me, piece by piece. In the first ten seconds, you hear almost every theme: the scary bass line for the monster Grendl, the march for the Geat soldiers, the chorus's party theme, and the snarl of envious Unferth. Then the curtain opens on the dark, snowy forest as peasants approach the great new castle Heorot. They sing, "Outside, it's dark; it's warm in Heorot," and the music contrasts the cold with the golden light inside. The heavy doors swing open to reveal a feast in progress: "There's plenty to eat, and stuff that is sweet, so every Geat, Let's Eat!" The student writers emphasize how these people are overconfident and unaware of danger outside the castle and among themselves. So we hear the overconfident soldiers' boasting, their prissy wives sniping at the Queen, the Queen singing obliviously about how happy everyone is. Mid-way, the old king throws aside his walking stick and dances a show tune, improvised (words, music, and dance!) by Randall Bentley: Oh, the party's going great!. But now the envious Unferth, seeing the people contented and sleepy, meets evil Grendl at the door, and lets the monster in. In the last moments of the song, when everyone has fallen asleep, the monsters sing, "Let's eat." What follows, of course, is too violent for this web site! A sixth grade girl imagined a ballad for the last scene of BEOWULF. According to the ancient saga, Beowulf perishes, slaying a dragon, having protected the Geats for generations. This young composer/lyricist imagines the people marching in for his funeral, lamenting, "Who will be our hero . . . / And save us from the terrible terrorist threats?" The answer rises up from the crowd that it's up to the people themselves to be courageous from now on. Here's my arrangement of her song, which she wrote out complete with words and tune, using just a xylophone! (Who Will Be Our Hero? | Read her name and her words). Now that we have a great opening scene and a great finale -- we need only three acts to complete the show! For THE MIDDLE AGES, I based a song on a medieval tale, "The Peasant Doctor." It's a slapstick story in which a wife gets revenge on her bully husband. Here, at the end of the story, beaten and repentant, he comes back to her bearing gold from the king, begging forgiveness and stealing a kiss. The Peasant Doctor (finale). The opening number for THE MIDDLE AGES makes a good finale for my CD. The song Welcome to the Middle Ages contains two musical tricks. First, the tune develops from a measure of the hymn "O God Our Help in Ages Past." I used that hymn in all four musicals of my history cycle. Then, in the accompaniment, I imitate the very popular "Carmina Burana," Carl Orff's choral setting of medieval poetry. Here the tune is reprised for the finale: This is an era |
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