Mrs. Pianoman and I have returned from our Italian adventure. While in Venice, we visited the islands of Murano (glass) and Burano (lace). Unfortunately, we didn't have time to take in the waters at the spa of Merano. Maybe next time!
The Merano sequence is in three parts. The first part is the Mayor and people of Merano singing about how wonderful the place is, and how much they are looking forward to the upcoming Chess tournament. The third part is a reprise of the first part. The second part is the introduction of the brash American Chess grandmaster, Freddie Trumper. Freddies "tone" is good old American rock 'n roll, and that's where a lot of the electric guitar comes in.
But before we get to "Rock Merano", there's a small change that takes place in the ensemble. Bars 164-166 are replicated at measure 190; we're creating bars 190A-D, and cutting m.191. Bar 190C goes into 2/4 time. It looks like this:
Switching to 2/4 time helps to transition from the 6/8 feel into the 4/4 feel of "Rock Merano". Note that this is something that's not in the score at all, but it's here because I prefer a more gradual transition.
The London score that I was using has gaps at m.10 and m.33, and that has music that we want to use. For each of those bars, we're playing what we played in m.2. My guess is that these "extra" bars were removed during the West End production, but I prefer keeping them for musical continuity.
When we get to the "S.R.O" section, we had Freddie and Florence sing the first one, then we added the ensemble for the second one. I liked the idea of Florence joining in on "S.R.O", as this is part of her complete support for Freddie.
Someone in the cast had never heard that term before, as it's not commonly used these days. Actually, it almost never happens in theaters, as it's a total safety violation. For those who don't know: "S.R.O" stands for Standing Room Only Interesting factoid from the page:
Standing tickets are a key feature of the annual London concert season "The Proms", with up to 1350 "Promenaders" buying cheaper tickets to stand in unreserved space in the area and gallery of the Royal Albert Hall.
If you look at YouTube videos of the Promenaders, it reminds me of slam circles and mosh pits ... which is also a version of SRO, I guess!
"The Story Of Chess" ends with Arbiter alone on stage, setting up the next song. He announces that he's the President of the organizers of the tournament, which is between Freddy Trumper of the U.S., and Anatoly Sergievski of the Soviet Union.
During this brief piece of dialogue, the band plays the Arbiter's "theme", which is the first phrase of the Arbiter song: "I've a duty as the referree ..." This phrase is played twice here, and I reuse it late in the second act. It's interesting to note that Benny & Bjorn (to be referred to from now on as B&B) are using this theme before it's used in a song. Normally in a musical, a melody line is reprised AFTER it's been established; here, the melody line is "pre-reprised". "The Arbiter" isn't sung until halfway through the first act.
"#2 Merano" is supposed to start with 11 bars of underscoring, but it's unclear what this is supposed to underscore. The end of "Story Of Chess" has plenty of music for the Arbiter to give his lines. Also, those first 11 bars are labelled measures A-K, which indicates that it was added to the original score at some point. My guess is that there was a scene change here, and these extra bars were added to cover it. The original soundtrack album actually starts with bar 1 of "Merano", so after our Arbiter says, "Welcome to Merano!", we started the song.
It's coincidental that I've reached this point of the Chess Chronicles the night before Mrs. Pianoman and I are headed to Italy. Some folks from her choir are joining another choir in Rome, and they will be singing the Verdi Requiem at three locations across the country. Our trip will take us through Rome, Florence, Verona, Vincenza, Asiago, and Vcnice; unfortunately, we will be passing roughly 2 1/2 hours south of Merano, and will not be able to partake of the spa there.
The character of Anatoly Sergievski is loosely based on two Soviet chess champions: Anatoly Karpov, and Viktor Korchnoi. It's interesting to note that these two champions played the 1981 World Chess Championship in Merano, and is certainly one of the reasons Act 1 is located there. Another interesting chess fact is that the "Meran Varation" of the "Semi-Slav Defense" is name after the city following its successful use in a chess tournament held in Merano in 1924.
"Merano" is in a fast 6/8, and most of the lyrics are sung on eighth notes. This gives it a real "patter song" feel. The trick to making the song work is setting the tempo slow enough to where the audience can understand the lyrics, while keeping it fast enough to be bouncy and joyful. These are the residents of Merano, clinking their wine glasses together, and singing about how wonderful their town is, so it needs to be happy.
There are many great lines from the song, but my favorite is:
Right now we're Italian / We used to be German / The borders keep shifting around
This is a reference to World War 2, when Italy was occupied by the Nazis.
The Mayor of Merano is a pure capitalist:
Speaking as one of the patriarchs / I don't mind taking your Lira or Marks
For those of you born after the Euro, the Lira was the currency of Italy in the pre-Euro days. Austria is just north of Merano, and their pre-Euro currency was the Deutschmark - "mark" for short.
Each time the Mayor sings, the music ritards to a stop ... then there's a pause, and then off we go again. Normally, these moments are conducted from the pit, with the music director visible to the cast. However, the Lyceum Theater at Vanguard University doesn't have a pit. The theater was originally a lecture hall, and was converted to a theater ... and since lecture halls don't have pits, this theater doesn't have one either. There's not really room for one anyway, as the center seats are only a couple yards away from the stage.
Instead, the pit is elevated above the audience and the stage, to the stage left side. We refer to it as the "loft", or sometimes the "crow's nest". Since it's not within the normal sight line of the singers, we need to create ways to stay together in the absence of a conductor's bow.
In the case of "Merano", the way we come back together is four counts, in "normal" tempo, from the time I play the seventh note in the E7 chord, i.e., the "D". So literally in my mind, I'm thinking:
D, two, three, four
If you do that same thing enough during rehearsals, eventually the ensemble starts to intuitively sense when to come back in. Also, doing these kinds of things over and over helps everyone get used to the idea of "feeling it".
Most shows at the Lyceum utilize these workarounds to some extent. There are several more in Chess, and I'll note them when they occur.
One other quick note about this section has to do with the whistling. We tried it a few times during rehearsal, but couldn't get it loud enough to actually be effective. Since the cast was moving here, we decided to just abandon it. Put this under the category of, "Yes, this would be cool, but audience members aren't going to miss it when it's gone". I ended up playing the melody line myself.
After the "whistling section", there's a brief instrumental section that slows to a halt before restarting with the ensemble. This is another "cast can't see the conductor" moment, and so I decided to just skip the rallantando completely. So from the start of the whistling section, I maintained a steady tempo all the way until the ensemble came back in.
More about "Merano", and the first appearance of Freddie Trumper, in Part 6. For now, Mrs. Pianoman and I need to finish packing for our Italian adventure. Here's one of my favorite Italian songs, along with amazing animation:
In "The Story Of Chess", the Ensemble gives us a history lesson about the origins of chess:
Not much is known about the early days of Chess beyond a vague report that 1500 years ago, two princes fought each other, though brothers, for a Hindu throne. Their mother cried, for no one really likes their offspring fighting to the death. She begged them, "Stop the slaughter!" with her every breath, but sure enough, one brother died.
None of this rhymes, of course, so it's more like the Ensemble is singing recitative here. And it turns out this is probably not a literal story at all; Wikipedia refers to it as, "an apocryphal account of the origins of the game of Chess".
This story is found in the "Shahnameh", also known as the "Shahnama", literally translated as "The Book Of Kings", which is:
a long epic poem written by the Persian poetFerdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couplets (two-line verses),[2] the Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems, and the longest epic poem created by a single author.[3][4][5] It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century.
The story is about Talhand and Gav, two half-brothers who vie for the throne of Hind (modern day India). They met in battle three times. Gav won the first two battles decisively. At the end of the third battle, Talhand was completely surrounded and was in a position of no escape. Gav did not kill his brother, but Talhand died on his war elephant, exhausted by the battle.
The position of "no escape" was expressed by the Persian word "shah mat", which means "check mate".
Back to the musical:
Sad beyond belief, she told her winning son, "You have caused such grief, I can't forgive this evil thing you've done". He tried to explain how things had really been, but he tried in vain. No words of his could mollify the Queen. And so he asked the wisest men he knew to lessen her distress. They told him he'd be pretty certain to impress by using model soldiers on a checkered board to show it was his brother's fault. They thus invented Chess.
This part rhymes a little bit, and is less like a pure recitative than the first part. It's not exactly accurate to say that Talhand's death was his fault; Gav's army held superior positions and Talhand's army was wiped out. It's possible Talhand was to blame for them fighting a third battle at all; you'd think after losing two times, Talhand would have know that he was beaten.
Chess historians believe that the India game of "Chaturanga" is the common ancestor of games such as "Xiangqi" (China), "Janggi" (Korea), "Shogi" (Japan), "Sittuyin" (Burma), "Makruk" (Thailand), "Ouk Chatrang" (Cambodia), and "Shatranj" (Persia), which in turn was the form of Chess brought to medieval Europe. Chaturanga flourished in India by the 6th century, and is the earliest known game to have two essential features found in all later chess variations: 1) Different pieces have different powers (which differentiates it from Checkers and Go); 2) Victory depends on one piece: The King.
The most powerful piece was the Chariot; it moved the way a Chess Rook moves. All other pieces had limits on the number of squares they could move.
"Chataranga" is a word that means, "having four limbs or parts", and in epic poetry often means "army". The name originally refers to a battle formation that has four separate components: Elephantry, Chariotry, Cavalry, and Infantry. The "Mahabharata" describes a battle formation referred to as a "Akshauhini", which is a mixed formation of the four unit types, and is very much like the opening formation of a chess game.
Shatranj is the predecessor to Chess, and it differed from Chataranga in the following ways:
In Chaturanga, the King could be captured and this ended the game. Shatranj introduced the idea of warning the King was under attack by announcing "check". This was done to avoid accidental endings to games.
In Shatranj, a King could not be moved into check or left in check. As a result, the King could not be captured, and checkmate was the only decisive way to end a game.
The appearance of the pieces changed from animals to abstract shapes due to a Muslim ban on lifelike pieces, as they were said to have been too like idols. (Islam forbids depiction of animals and humans in art.)
In the song is the phrase, "Soon spread to Persia", when the reality appears to be that Chess as we know it originated in Persia, but was heavily influenced by a game from India.
This is all fascinating stuff, and it's very interesting to see how a single board game invented in India could have that much influence across the world, thousands of years later ... and how this apocrophal story ended up in a musical.
"The Story Of Chess" is the opening number in the London version; for the Concord Theatricals version, the opening number is called, "Prologue: The Story Of Chess". In spite of the name, the "Prologue" from the 2008 Royal Albert version isn't used here. It's a little confusing.
Like many songs in the show, this one is too long and repetitive. After a 55-bar intro, in which the whole chord sequence is played out, the Arbiter sings the first line:
Each game of Chess means there's one less variation left to be played
Each day got through means one or two less mistakes remain to be made.
These two lines immediately establish one of the show's themes: Chess is a metaphor for Life.
The ensemble then repeats what the Arbiter just said in four part harmony. Since I wasn't planning to use the ensemble harmonies for telling the story, I cut those 16 bars out (m.72-87).
M.88 is the beginning of the story ("Not much is known"). When we first rehearsed this piece, I wasn't sure what the director was planning to do with blocking, so I had the whole ensemble learn the melody lines. I didn't want to take the time to teach parts only to discard them later, so we just stuck with unison. The 2008 Royal Albert version assigns various parts of the story to different members of the ensemble, and in the end that's what we ended up doing.
Just to reiterate: We didn't do any harmonies during the "telling of the story". We also didn't do any of the "background vocals". For example, in m.88-94, we didn't sing any of the "Each game / Of Chess" parts. All we wanted was a single line, made up of one or more ensemble members, singing the melody.
In order to keep the momentum going, I cut m.102-116, and had the word "Died" overlap with m.117, "Sad". I think my approach is pretty clear; I'm not a fan of playing the intro chord sequence without vocals over and over, and it seems like that happens a lot in this score.
M.141 has an inexplicable key change to C# minor. I don't have the libretto with me any more, so it's possible that there's dialogue here. I decided to cut all of that out, and stay in the original key. We added a bar of C minor just to complete the phrase from 140, and called it measure 140A. Note that I'm establishing a precedent here; not only do I plan to cut bars, but I also plan to insert bars where necessary.
From there we jumped to m.196 as that's where the story is picked up again ("Chess displayed no inertia / Soon spread to Persia"). When we got to m.233, the entire ensemble came together to sing, "King and Queen and Rook and Bishop, Knight and Pawn" in unison; the ensemble drops out after m.239.
The Arbiter then finishes the story. The score has a great sixteenth-note passage from m.247-252, and it should be used if possible. The Arbiter and I gradually slowed this down all the way to the end.
CHANGES: Cut m.72-87, m.102-116, m.141-195; Insert m.140A, a Cm chord.
