A Post from A Dark Theatre

I write this blog on a break during a 10 out of 12. Originally I'd thought I'd write a post about the differences between designing for a published work, versus designing for a new work. But instead I'm finding the challanges of period music more on my mind.

My current project at ASF is a sound design for a "The Flag Maker of Market Street," a new play by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder. The play is set in Montgomery Alabama in 1860 in the months leading up to the Civil War. (Lincoln is about to be sworn in as president in the Northern states, Davis has taken office in the Southern.) As the title implies, the action is about the creation of the first flag of the Confederacy. At this place in history, Montgomery is really a small town, as much as it's wealthy inhabitants are trying to make it into a center of society. So what's the music?

One of my long standing professional challanges is that I'm not a composer. Outside of reading a vocal score to sing in a choir, or following a conductor score for a musical, and picking a few chords on a guitar, I have no musical training. (A blog for another day - recommendations for aspiring sound designers. #1 - take music classes including composition and computer music.) SO - original music is out.

The first pieces suggested by the playwright, as well as other pieces I pulled, were music pieces from the period - simple pieces that today that we'd call folk music. (Think Yankee Doodle non-spunky.) The reaction to several of our artistic staff is that the music was too country - that it should be classical to match the aspring society. The problem dramaturgically speaking is that classical music as we think of it isn't yet being performed on a civic level in much of the state. Only a handful of symphonies are in their early years in large industrial cities of the North. Never mind the problem that the music really needs to be "American."

So where do the modern ears meet the period music?

My first reaction was to treat the music as a cinematographic score, using modern instrumentations with melodies or thematics based on music from the period. After listening to a lot of music, I realized that wasn't right. This is not a memory piece - the characters in the play don't even know they will be going to war. Nor does that compliment the world the scene designer has created, or that the actors are living in. We are in the Market street store front that the flag is created in.

My next place was finding the classical pieces that were composed in the States - if not right at 1860 in the next few years, and letting the modern orchestration slide. The problem there were finding multiple pieces that fit the mood of the respective scenes the music transitions in/out of.

The compromise arrived in a combination of looking at earlier, colonial music, and simplified "classical." The closest type name is "parlor music" - a wide variety of tempos and themes, played on violin and piano, both instruments are crossovers between "folk" and "classical." Most of the pieces we are using are violin.

So far... a nice compromise. We'll see how our first audience reacts in a few days...