"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.
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