Road Report #3: The Composer’s Guide to Singers

In an orange-and-brown high school classroom in Richmond, Virginia, my first choral composition was sung for the first time. It was 1999, and I was a keen, bright-eyed 15-year-old beginner. The piece was entitled Silence of the Night (on a poem written by my piano teacher), and I passed out handwritten copies. My generous choir director, Dwight Graham, played the piano as my fellow choristers sang.

About ten bars into the piece, the sopranos were told to sing a high B-flat on the word “see.” Where I had hoped for a glorious, ringing tone, a primordial squawk emerged.

We finished singing, and I walked around the room to collect my copies. I approached the soprano section expecting florid apologies for the fumbled high note, but was instead met with silence. In their eyes was a white-hot rage that communicated a single phrase: “Never again.”

Beeson's Dr. Heidegger at Hunter College Opera

Today  Hunter College Opera Theater performs Jack Beeson's one act opera, DR. HEIDEGGER'S FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. Jack was one of the founding board members of the Moore Fund and a close friend and colleague of Douglas Moore. There is a lovely recording of the opera.

 

Road Report #2: The state of the art form

Premature declarations of death have become a modern comedy cliché – think of Monty Python’s classic “Bring out your dead” skit, or Will Ferrell’s hilariously protracted death scene from the first Austin Powers movie.

We like it when people jump the gun, and we laugh when the down-and-out bounce back and refuse to go quietly into that good night.

And so it gives me great pleasure to write that modern opera, despite the doomsday claims of many, is healthy and thriving.

Road Report #1

I’m sitting in an opera rehearsal, and I catch someone’s eye. We introduce ourselves, engage in the usual pleasantries, and then comes the inevitable question: “So, what do you do?”

Most people in the room don’t have a hard time answering this question. They’re singers, stagehands, conductors, choreographers, or even wigmakers. Their roles are clear, and their presence is justified. But when I answer, “I’m a composer,” my interrogator’s brow furrows, and more questions follow.

“Do you compose operas?” Yes, I’ve written one.

“Are you writing us an opera?” Not right now, but I hope to eventually.

“Then what are you doing here?”

What's that aroma?

Congratulations to 2010-2011 Moore Fund fellow Dan Visconti for being selected one of the winners of the prestigious Rome Prize competition. Here's a link to the story on NewMusicBox.

Getting started

Although the Moore Fund first funded a fellowship in '04-'05, it hasn't been up on the world wide web. We are in the process of getting a website DouglasMooreFund.org going and it will go live by the end of the month.

The website and blog will be of interest to aspiring composers and librettists who want to learn more about breaking into the fields of opera and musical theater. It will also be of interest to fans of Douglas Moore's work and also a group of composers associated with him, including Jack Beeson and John Kander. Moore had a big influence on a generation of composers through his work producing opera at the Columbia Opera Workshop. You may be surprised to learn that the workshop premiered operas by composers such as Britten, Menotti, Thompson, and Ward.