The vamps at the end of Arbiter end on an E major chord ... which conveniently is the first chord that the ensemble sings in m.4 of the Hymn. I decided to cut bars 1-3, as we already had the ensemble on stage and didn't need any extra music. It also seemed like a natural fit with the Arbiter's final line:
Let us dedicate ourselves to the spirit of chess!
It makes me wonder why there was an intro at all. Perhaps they needed three bars to get the ensemble into place?
I used our Arbiter as a conductor, which was his first time conducting. He was a good sport about it, and did a fine job. We took this slowly, and took large breaks in m.8 and m.10. Doing this without a conductor would have been very difficult to keep together.
(If I hadn't mentioned it before -- this is one of the many challenges we face at the Lyceum. There is no "pit", as the theater is a converted lecture hall. So the "pit" is in a loft, above the Stage Left area. The cast can't see us, so there's no way to give physical direction. In places where direction is needed, we do whatever makes the most sense to make it work. Sometimes it involves pressing someone into conducting; sometimes it involves setting a hard number of counts; sometimes it'll involve something else. It all depends on the circumstance.)
After a suitable pause, we go right into Merchandisers. We cut m.1-4, did the four bar drum into, and then off we went into the song. This is one of the few songs that we made no changes to, apart from cutting the first four bars.
No comments:
Post a Comment