"Scoreplay"

Complete with a Microsoft Office template designed for screenplays, the scoreplay is pretty cool if you ask me...

As promised, I have an update on what I am currently working on, namely, my new (and first) piece for wind ensemble, The Lady, or the Tiger?, based on the short story by Frank Stockton.  (I discussed some preliminary details about this piece in a previous entry.)  While I have been working a little on the actual music (in addition to writing a clarinet solo piece on the side to keep my creative juices flowing), the bulk of the work has been planning out how exactly this piece will unfold.

The first task was to shorten the text a little, to keep the piece from becoming too long.  What is too long, you may ask?  Well, I hope that when the piece is ready, it will ultimately get performed.  Asking a group to learn a piece that’s 20-plus minutes long by some composer-nobody like myself (at the moment) is a lot to ask, both in terms of rehearsal time and concert time.  On the other hand, I don’t want the piece to be so short that it doesn’t reach its full potential.  A 3-minute piece would be easy to squeeze into a rehearsal or concert, but it would certainly lose some of its positive qualities that would make ensembles want to play it in the first place (in this particular case, anyway).  So I’ve adapted the text, and now it takes me about 10 minutes to read through.  With there being built-in pauses for the narrator and chances for the music to take center stage, the piece might end up being closer to 15 minutes.  In all honesty, this is probably on the long end of things; but, the story is riveting (as I hope the music will be), and my impression is that it won’t necessarily feel like a long piece.


But I digress (as usual) from the focal point of this entry.  Looking at the title, you may be wondering what a “scoreplay” is.  I can tell you that it’s not something you’ll find on Wikipedia (though you will find a hint if you try searching for “scoreplay”).  As far as I know (and in this case I might not know very far), I am the first to use the word “scoreplay,” at least in this context.  (If you’re good at rhyming, you might get some ideas about where other people might try using the term.)

A scoreplay, simply put, is a screenplay for narrative pieces of music.  It not only includes the text to be spoken throughout the piece (in this case, my adapted version of The Lady, or the Tiger?), but also where the music will be featured, and what themes will come in where.  I’ve pasted a section of my scoreplay to the right; you’ll see that it looks just like a screenplay, which is because I found a screenplay template online for Microsoft Word.

To be sure, the scoreplay is subject to change.  When I’m actually in the middle of writing the music, I may well decide that the music needs to go in a different direction, or maybe I’ll need to adjust the text if the timing with the music isn’t working.  But, if I do type so myself, the scoreplay is a pretty neat way to plan out a musical story.  Just from piecing the story together in the scoreplay, I’ve realized that (for now) I will need to have different themes:

1. The King’s Theme: like the “flying” theme from E.T., this theme will also serve as the “main theme” (or the theme that with any luck the audience will be whistling on their way out...) I’ve actually sketched this one out.
2. The Princess’s Theme: a love theme of sorts, but with a flavor of the King’s theme (they are related, after all).  I’ve also plotted out this theme as well -- the melody is fairly plain, but the harmony takes it to another level.
3. The Lover’s Theme: I’d write you a theme too if you had to pick one of two doors with a 50% chance of being devoured by a ferocious tiger.
4. The Tiger Theme: representing one possible outcome of the story.
5. The Lady Theme: representing both the other possible outcome of the tale, but also the specific lady of whom the princess may be quite jealous.  There will surely be some “competition” between this theme and the Tiger theme.
6. The Doors Theme: I imagine this theme will be more of a motive, or perhaps even just a distinctive chord, but as I was putting the text together, I noticed some moments that would work well with a reference to those fateful doors.

Could a scoreplay work for other types of pieces, i.e., those without a central (and narrated) story?  Perhaps.  It would obviously vary from work to work, and from composer to composer.  I may try the technique out with my next piece, whatever that may be.  But for now, I’ll be using what may be the world’s first scoreplay to write some music for The Lady, or the Tiger?

Until next time, I’ll leave you with an image I came across in a wallpaper app on my iPad: