Range: a call for a sane approach

Look. I get it. I really, really do.

But we have to take a step back from the arms race towards uniquely treble-heavy, throaty voices.

    It's not a new phenomenon- in fact, it's ticked on quietly since the beginning. In 1952, John Raitt took the climax of Carousel's legendary "Soliloquy" up to a high Bb. In 1970, Ian Gillian screamed out an epic, full-throated G in Jesus Christ Superstar's "Gethsemane". What do A Little Night Music (1973) and Les Misérables (1980) have in common? Big fat Bs, that's what, in "Who am I" and "Later" respectively. And that's only the low voices.

    Such athleticism has always been inherently dramatic and deeply thrilling, and while vocal technique may have changed, the reasonable limits and reachable extremes of the human throat have not. Plus, the Mister Golightlys of the world make up their own delightful cottage industry. I'm not against this phenomenon- of deploying superstar notes on superstar vocalists for exceptional theatrical effect.

    What troubles me is when notes that were once extremes become expectations. A decade ago, tenor repertoire regularly topped out at Gs and As. Massively popular, and massively marketed, shows like Dear Evan Hansen and Moulin Rogue pushed that envelope to Bbs and Bs; now, the ubiquity of pieces written like The Great Gatsby, The Lost Boys, and Two Strangers Carry A Cake Across New York suggest that the genie has left the bottle. All the while, the number of roles for the outermost vocal extremes- basses and head-heavy sopranos- have dwindled dramatically. (I suspect this is because these voices are at their most thrilling when they're most relaxed, which thwarts a contemporary audience's taste for strain. As Sting puts it, there's no such thing as a heavy metal baritone.)

These standards are harmful for three major reasons (though I'd love to hear more in the comments):

1) Few singers can do it. When you write for remarkably virtuosic vocalists, not only do you limit the number of professionals willing to take your work on, you also make the piece inaccessible to amateur spaces. What's to be done: Cap your tenors at a G or A, cap your altos at a C or D.

2) It's unhealthy. No voice is too gifted to be overtaxed. Especially in a commercial context, where performers are singing eight shows a week and not infrequently rehearsing or teaching during the day, the risk for fatigue and damage is substantial, and is its own stressor on top of the score's demands. (I mean, listen to Eden Espinoza post-Lempicka. But apparently she asked for it.) What's to be done: Normalize doublecasting intense vocal tracks, so that no single performer is expected to push their limits eight shows a week.

3) It sounds homogenous. The voices that are, and can be, cultivated to operate comfortably in extreme high registers tend to be timbrally light, even thin. A well-rounded cast counterweights treble, and provides a sense of contrast that keeps the ear more fully engaged. What's to be done: Commit to writing for a variety of voices, not only in range, but in style.

    We songwriters are the job-creators. We have the power and the responsibility to make these changes, for the better of the musical theatre cultural ecosystem. I, for one, am going to do my part.

...right after OVERMAN.

This is a review

Passion is good.*

Jesus Christ Superstar is good, and kicks ass.

The Lost Boys kicks ass.**

--

*Sondheim's best. Fight me.

**I really enjoyed The Lost Boys.

Songwriting sins

 A continuation from these lyrical sins. I'll continue to update this list as I discover more. First recognized, for the most part, in of my own writing...

• The bVII chord.
• Unresolved sus chords and add 2 chords.
• Playing the riff twice, then singing over it.
• Using Latin grooves or an oom-pah beat to signify It's A Comedy Song.
• Complex piano riffs that fill virtually every beat, just because you can play them.
• emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble, particularly repeated mis-emphasis.
• The same groove, song after song after song after song...

On "Eternity"

    As of 2 minutes ago, I just finished a new lyric for this song. Though the music of "Eternity" has remained almost unchanged from its first draft, the lyric has received more rewrites than, I believe, any other moment in the show.

    For much of its life, it was a solo number for the Archer, who delivered it to an otherwise unresponsive Wife, too feeble to interject. The intent was to show the way he needed to leap over himself to justify leaving, highlighting that the decision was a fundamentally self-interested one, rather than a heroic sacrifice. That didn't land, not only because I wasn't able to make the lyric stick the emotional landing, but because the Wife needed to be engaged in the scene. That meant she would need to sing.

    This had the added benefit of giving the Archer something to respond to. His turn to vulnerability is no longer a neurotic shirking of guilt, but the softening of a brave face; it's much more sympathetic. (Even so, a part of me laments the loss. I enjoy a less-than-heroic Archer.) The issue, though, is that now both characters had very few syllables with which to express themselves. I tried to add in a short chorus, but alas, the austere simplicity of the AABA bound me too tightly. So it's been a continual process of futzing with the lyrics down to the morpheme so all the emotional, and dramatic, information gets deployed comprehensibly and artfully. Hence, the long gestation process.

    This is the sort of song my lyric writing professor would call a "hookless wonder". He warned me they were very difficult to pull of, and I believe him a lot more now than I did when he first told me. What he DIDN'T warn me about, though, was how damn hard these were to title. For a while, the song was called "Make Our Moments Stay", and the Archer sang it in both the first and last verse. When I removed it from the first voice, the title no longer seemed to stick. I settled on "Eternity" because "The Potion" felt too removed, and "Eternity" was a word both the Archer and the Wife end up singing. I'm happy to solicit a better title in the comments.

    Here's the new lyric in full. Let's all pray this is the one that sticks, no?

Archer:

DON'T GET UP.

DRINK THIS ELIXIR AND YOU CAN LIVE FOREVER.

THE EMPEROR FORGAVE ME,

AND GAVE ME LIFE AMONG THE STARS.

YOU TAKE THIS NOW.

I'LL JOIN YOU THERE SOMEHOW.

AND THEN ETERNAL LIFE IS OURS.
I'LL SEE TO IT ETERNAL LIFE IS OURS.

Wife:

LIFE AMONG THE STARS, WHAT A MARVEL.

I'M DEEPLY GRATEFUL, BUT I COULD NEVER TAKE THIS.

WHAT GOOD'S ETERNITY,

IF I CAN'T SPEND IT HERE WITH YOU?

I KNOW YOU'VE TRIED.

NOW STAY HERE BY MY SIDE,

AND FILL MY DAYS UNTIL THEY'RE THROUGH.

WE'LL BE TOGETHER 'TILL MY DAYS ARE THROUGH.

Archer:

YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M SAYING.

IF I MUST, I WOULD CLIMB ANY MOUNTAIN, CROSS ANY SEA.
IF I MUST, I WOULD HOLD HEAVEN HOSTAGE 'TILL THEY AGREE.

HOWEVER SMALL THE ODDS,

I'D TAKE THEM OVER STANDING BY.

I CAN'T BEAR TO WATCH YOU DIE.

I CAN'T STOP HOPING

THAT SOMEWHERE THERE'S AN ANSWER.

SOME WAY TO BRING YOU BACK.

SOME WAY WE BOTH CAN MAKE IT THROUGH.

I'LL FIND A WAY

TO MAKE OUR MOMENTS STAY,

OR I'LL COME RIGHT BACK HOME TO YOU.

I PROMISE I'LL COME RIGHT BACK HOME TO YOU.

    Singing them back to myself, I just started crying. I think that's as good a sign as any, no?

On "Jade Rabbit (Mercy)"

    In my breakdown of "You Go", I talked about my approach to unusual metric schemes. Because I personally have such a strong physiological reaction to groove and rhythm, I tend to think of meters as, implicitly, tied to the circadian rhythms of the characters. I hear the underlying pulse as a heartbeat, or a gait, or a communicative flow. "Jade Rabbit (Mercy)" takes this idea to its most extreme. Though the core of the song is nominally an ABAC (I'm a sucker for traditional forms, even in unusual contexts!), once the beat kicks in, it takes 17 bars until the same meter occurs two measures in a row. You can see 4 different meters in 6 bars below:

    Why would I torment these poor performers with rhythms this dense? And, furthermore, with extreme and difficult-to-tune dissonances like parallel 9ths and 7ths? It's not simply because I think it sounds cool and kicks ass, which for the record I do. The Emperor has just lost 9 children in one day. I feel that his grief, and rage, are towering, so much so that if I brought him onstage, it would change the show's emotional center of gravity. That's part of why I mediate the interaction through the rabbit; it gives the Emperor some much-needed distance, ensuring he doesn't have the chance to steal the scene.

    Even so, I wanted to hold the audience in a sort of state of immediacy with the Emperor's emotional intensity. I'm paraphrasing here, but George C. Wolfe talks about the way a repetitive groove can cause an audience to skate over a dramatic moment. When the audience can't locate a downbeat, can't adjust to a tempo scheme, can't identify a tonality, they're confronting the music much more directly. That lets me load in all the musical anguish I can, knowing that an audience will take it straight to the jugular, so to speak.

    There's another way I set the audience up to best absorb this number. I start the scene out with a short, musically simple comic moment with Magpie "becoming" the rabbit, and the Archer reacting to her arrival. If that sequence weren't there, we'd transition straight from the somber ending of "It's Coming Down" into the rage of "Jade Rabbit (Mercy)". With the moment of contrast, however, the audience has a moment to relax again, so that the ferocity of the Emperor's emotion hits them fresh. I think a lot of operas in particular shoot themselves in the foot by neglecting this sense of relaxing tension. An audience acclimatizes to anything that's sustained, even if what's sustained is emotional and musical intensity. By taking away their sense of expectation and introducing contrast, whether within or between numbers, you engage them more completely.

    Doesn't it all kick so much ass, though? I love contemporary classical writing so much, y'all.

"One after one after one after one after one/and then show mercy..."

Magpie's Song visual references

    I found these pictures before the first production of Magpie's Song at Yale, to serve as common visual references and inspiration as I continued to develop the score. These images were compiled in the early days of AI, just as the technology was beginning to produce sophisticated, realistic images but before it was common practice to screen for AI when sourcing art. I hate AI, and I'd never platform it, nor do I give anyone permission to platform my art in any sort of conjunction with AI-generated material; I take this as a historical artifact.

MAGPIE + THE SHOW

THE LOVE STORY

THE WAR STORY

THE MONSTER STORY

On "It's Coming Down"

    This song was, in small part, inspired by "The Western Wall". That number culminates in full-throated rock counterpoint, complete with an electric guitar soloing over not one, but two riffing vocalists. When I first saw the piece, I remember that musical climax pushing me right to my saturation point, and relenting right when I felt I couldn't take in any more information.

    "It's Coming Down" was an exercise in pushing past that point, and accessing total musical overwhelm as a dramatic affect. The counterpoint is too dense with layers for the audience to grasp; the richness and dissonance of the texture makes it impossible to catch anything more than fragments of lyrical and melodic information. Just when the ear has had enough, the counterpoint muscles forward with renewed ferocity as the band slams out huge stabs, a thundering heartbeat. The effect is totally disorienting and overwhelming, and simulates for the listener how Archer is trying, and failing, to "block out the noise". In the heat of the moment, he can't center himself, so neither can the audience's ear.

    If Johann Joseph Fux were alive to hear this, he'd have a heart attack, which delights me to no end. Dramatic music affords the adventurous composer the freedom to pursue musical ideas that wouldn't hold up to standards of clarity and cohesion in a piece of concert or pop music.

    When I was looking for visual references for Magpie's Song, I found this painting of Hou Yi shooting down the suns. I loved the imagery of the Emperor's sons being birds, and the undeniable pile of broken bodies accumulated in frame. This idea never found its way into the show, because the sons being birds gets confusing when Vega is a human woman, but the image has always stuck with me, so I wanted to share it here.

    "Just hold on tighter to keep my hands from shaking..."