Peter Brook still making magic

At the end of the Guardian article about Peter Brook's latest production, Mozart's Magic Flute, the writer quotes Brook as saying: what does touch me is when people come up to me in the street, as they sometimes do since they mistakenly think I've retired, and talk about some experience that has remained with them. That for me is the only real legacy: the idea that one has left a lingering trace in people's memories. In the end, that's all a director can hope to do."

I still remember seeing his Midsummer Night's Dream in the sixties - the set was a bare white box with a door at the back (I don't remember any other entrances). Everything was 'created' in this white space, and amazingly what was seen and heard was wondrous. It had a marvellous life. As Brook notes, you can't recreate 'Brook' - each director has to do his own work.

My first reaction, however, to his Magic Flute production was that he's skimmed it down to next to nothing. Here's how it's described.

His 90-minute production of Mozart's A Magic Flute, which comes to the Barbican next week, is quintessential late Brook. Out go the opera's pantomimic spectacle, big processions and trios of boys and ladies. Instead, we have a stage bare except for bamboo poles and minimal props and a young, nine-strong cast who deliver the work – sung in German with dialogue in French – crucially situated in front of Franck Krawczyk at the piano. As Brook wryly says: "If you come to this production looking for something that will slam you in the eyes, you've come to the wrong address."

That, at first, puts me off. However, you need to read further into the article. While this can't be a visual spectacle it's obviously going to be effective.

One other thing struck me: he also says:

"I have an unshakeable conviction," says Brook, "that never in history has a guy written the tunes, and someone has come along and put the words to them. I once asked Richard Rodgers whether he had any tunes in his bottom draw waiting for a lyric. He told me that it was only when he heard the lyricist's precise words, such as Oscar Hammerstein's "O, what a beautiful mornin'", that the melodies emerged. And in Mozart, the music is drawn to the surface by the words."

Brook's 'unshakeable conviction' may or may not be correct. I've certainly puzzled over the idea that tunes came first for many of the great musical comedy writers of the 20th century, but it's been stated in more than a few places that that's how they worked. Perhaps the answer is closer to this: the lyricist proposes some words; the composer gets a framework of an idea for the music; the lyricist fits his words to the music; the composer rearranges his music to make it work better; the lyricist alters his words to fit the rearranged music - and so on, until the product is ready. This may happen in a matter of hours, weeks or months. And perhaps the composers/lyricists, in reflecting back on how a song was written, forget all the to-ing and fro-ing that's gone on.

The 'grandfather of NZ music' strikes again

1st day of my holidays, and I woke at something like 4.30 am. Eventually went back to sleep, but some visitors got up early, and so most of us were around by seven. Finally lack of sleep caught up with me and I went back to bed, only to be woken by some music on the radio.
It turned out to be the end of Douglas Lilburn's: Elegy in Memoriam Noel Newson. From where I was in bed listening, it sounded as though the words came from Shakespeare - I caught 'nothing shall afright thee' or some such, but the rest of it was so badly articulated that I couldn't get the detail at all.
More than that though was the almost perverse way in which the string accompaniment seemed to be at odds with the singer(s). The latter were chauntering along in a banal enough way - the melody line, typically of Lilburn, having virtually no melody - but the strings kept fluffling around doing some chordal stuff that seldom integrated with the singers. And at the end, they played a few desultory bars and pretty well gave up. Lilburn the great pioneer New Zealand composer shoots music in the foot again!
I can't find much out about this piece of music (the few references on Google all seem to go to broken links). To be fair, I'll see if I can track it down at the library and give it another shot. But what I heard this morning (even coming out of a deep sleep) was enough to make me think that I'm not going to be impressed.
Later: I've just found a small amount on the SOUNZ site. The last piece, as I thought, was to words by Shakespeare: Fear no more the heat o' the sun. Herrick, Blake and Herbert are the other three lyricists.

More unearthed treasures

'Treasures' might be a bit of an overstatement, but back in the early 80s sometime, I wrote a 'musical' for my church - the Assembly of God in those days. (It's gone through several changes of name since then; seems to be that the Pentecostals no longer want to stick with their original nomenclatures for some reason. Not trendy enough, perhaps. They've been called Southern Hills, and, Nations, at various times over the last couple of decades.)
Anyway, the musical was fairly short; probably twenty minutes at the most. I scripted it and wrote the music. It was just one of those times when everything comes together without huge effort.
I've had the music to hand pretty much ever since then, because I spent some time at one point putting all my church songs in one manuscript book. But the script had gone missing.
Until today, when it turned up in the stuff that had been in my piano stool. Obviously I haven't been through that stuff for a very long time!
The musical had its roots in the Lost Sheep parable, but that was only part of what went on in it. The only words that I set to music that I didn't write were those for William Blake's poem, Little Lamb, Who Made Thee? This is also the only song that's had a life outside the staging of the musical.
The musical was rather curiously staged: we had people playing the parts, but their songs were sung by other people. Perhaps it was because the singers didn't feel confident acting. And there were dancers involved too, particularly in a song called, There is more rejoicing over one lost sheep (than the ninety-nine who never go astray). At that time in the AOG history, banners and long pieces of material were in, and the dancers often used to use these in the services. So we incorporated some of that in the musical.
We even had a tiny orchestra: yours truly on the piano, along with a flute, a violin and some other things which I can no longer recall.
Anyway, it was a great effort and came off pretty well, all things considered.