Today I held in my hands the new Leroy Anderson disc on ASV, for which I wrote the liner notes. I got a call from the fifth floor data entry team asking me my middle name, and I answered "Neal", and then they told me the piece had come in. It was nice to see it, even though ASV hasn't sent a copy to me (nor have they paid me for the work). I'll probably just order one - they're pretty good notes, and I'd like to hear how the music turned out. Since Lennick produced it, I'll bet it's wonderful.
Since this blog is partly about the preservation of my work, I'd like to write up some notes about my operas. I have worked on six or seven of them over the years. My definition of what an "opera" is may not square with convention. To me it is a staged work with music, and needn't consist of more than that.
The Director (December 1970)
This, my first, opera was written when I was nine in late 1970, crammed onto three pages of 12-stave paper, one stave per system of music. Basically it was all the vocal parts in succesive order with no accompanient. The score is long gone, and I can only remember one short part of it. The plot was that of a short-tempered director auditioning various musical acts, all of which are bad so they make him scream and yell insults. The opera ends when he finally hears a song he likes. This was a fairly long piece for my earliest efforts - perhaps 4-5 minutes.
The part I remember was the "avant-garde" song, where a performer comes into deliver what my nine-year old mind thought an avant-garde piece sounded like. The text is given below:
Avant-garde singer:
Blood!
Brains!
Gore!
Gob-ble-dy-gook!
Director: (something like) No! No ! No!! That's all wrong, that's all wrong - what do you call that music? How can you call that music?
Avant Garde Singer: It's avant-garde music.
Director: It's NOT music! It's NOT music! Get - out - of - here - be - fore - I -- Throw -- You -- Out!!
The Boiglar (January 1971)
I was still nine when I wrote this opus on four sheets of 12-stave, this time with two staves per system for most of it, with the text written in between the staves (although the opening four staves worth were still confined to a single line of music). This was in the same music book as "The Director", so it too is lost, but I remember practically all of it (having performed it and all the parts at the piano several times) and can easily write it out anew, if I could only find the time.
The opening scene is at an outdoor event on a platform attended by the mayor and several local dignataries. A composer has written a new song which everyone is guaranteed to like, and the whole town has gathered to hear it. The "hit" song happens to be a borrowing, to wit:
If a wood chuck could chuck wood
How much wood would he chuck?
If a wood chuck could chuck wood
How much would he chuck?
This is followed by tumultous applause (signified by fff sixteenth-note triads). The mayor announces that as the song awaits publication it will be placed in a bank vault for safekeeping. The next scene is in the bank - the mayor puts the song in the vault and the lights are turned off. In steps "the boiglar" (i.e. the burglar) who sings a song in a minor key (with a tune like "Drill ye Tarriers Drill") called "I'll steal this piece". He escapes, but the law are right on his heels. This was intended to be followed by a filmed segment of a car chase drawn from stock footage, though in practice I just played chase music on the piano and described the action verbally. Ultimately the car runs off a cliff and crashes, and when the cops get down to the boiglar's car his arm is found sticking out of the window holding the piece of music in his hand. The cops sing a chorus "Hooray! We got the piece of music back". The opera closes much as it opened, with a reprise of the "woodchuck" song and everyone applauding, this time even louder.
This was one of the longest of my very early compositions, maybe six or seven minutes.
Latin is a Dead Language (January 1972)
This work was written on a single sheet of typing paper with freehand-drawn staves. It takes less than a minute to perform. The original I managed to hang on to for quite awhile, but now it too is gone. I would only need it for sentimental value though, as I still remember the whole work. Here is the complete libretto:
First Man:
Latin is a dead language
Dead as it can be
It killed off all the Latins
And now it's killing me.
So it's time to
Kill the Latins!
Kill the Latins!
Kill the Latins!
Kill them all!
(of course, this verse is set to a faciltated version of "Wo-jo-to-jo" from Die Walkure, though I had Elmer Fudd in mind.)
Second man (spoken):
No no no no! You can't
Kill all the Latins.
(sung)
Like you said -
They're already dead.
First man:
Oh - Okay. Sorry.
Reggie, Jessie, Piece of Meat (April 1974)
This is, and always was, a fragment. Originally it was intended to be an opera based around the plot of a Tom and Jerry cartoon where Tom and Spike (the big bulldog) fight over a steak that falls from a meat wagon. My friend and "biographer" Greg Fernandez once apprised me of the title of this cartoon, but I've forgotten it. Anyway, it got no further than a repeating 12-bar boogie-woogie pattern stated in strict quarter-notes in the bass clef, with the following text entered above on the treble-clef:
Piece of meat! Piece of meat!
Piece of meat! Piece of meat!
It's a-Reggie and a-Jessie
Fightin' over a piece of meat!
It was marked with repeat signs at the end - I guess you were just supposed to keep singing the damn thing forever. The manuscript for this almost survived - it does not do so now, but if I wasn't so tired I could go write it down this minute, and it would still be the same as it was in 1974.
So that's the dope on my first four operas, written from the ages of nine to twelve. I didn't stop there, but I will stop here now, and pick up this thread at another time.
Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis@hotmail.com