A blast from the past...
/…or a shot across the bow? (The metaphor makes no sense. Ignore that.)
In the rearranging and subsequent tidying of my attic study so that the new air-conditioning unit could be installed, I came across a pack of papers, folded. It turned out to be an ancient — like 50 years old — photocopied script, The Kama Sutra. Notations on it showed that it belonged to Ginny Henninger, my girlfriend at the time. (She’s been my wife for 47 years.)
Context: In the spring of my senior year of college as a theatre major, I came across this play either in the UGA bookstore or the library and decided it would be fun to produce/direct. Bear in mind that students simply didn’t produce plays. There were the regular season shows, and directing classes did opening scenes and one acts, but the idea of one of us actually doing theater on our own didn’t seem to occur to anyone.
Nevertheless, I roped a fairly large number of my friends into rehearsing and performing — one performance only! — this quirky, cheesy, bawdy off-off-Bway piece, which would have been fairly new at the time.
[Sidebar: There was no author noted on any of the photocopied pages, and my brain wouldn’t let go of the idea that Robert Patrick wrote it. However, it was not in his Robert Patrick’s Cheap Theatricks, and I will spare you the travails of searching “kama sutra play” online. Eventually my awesome google-fu skills prevailed and I found the author to be Tom Eyen, whom I in no way remember. I found the script to be available and have ordered it; we’ll see if my google-fu has led me astray.]
None of that is what I’m writing about this morning.
Instead, gaze upon this beauty:
This was the opening number for Kama Sutra. Very hippie, much 70s. I know there must have been music for this number somewhere in NYC, but remember that in 1976 we still used the Pony Express to communicate between artistes, so it was a lot faster for me just to write something myself.
As far as I can remember, this is the first piece of music that I wrote that was actually performed. (There may have been a flute duet back in high school, but I don’t think I still have that music anywhere.)
The song still kind of works, kind of. The phrase “When spring melted winter into flowers” is really clumsy to sing, but that’s on the lyricist, not me. Otherwise, it’s perfectly cromulent and very much of its time.
I have a few observations about this thing, and then we can consign it to the archives.
Notice the perfectly drawn noteheads. Once I graduated and became a real person, I found and began using a music pen, one with a flattened nib that could draw noteheads, stems, and flags with some precision. (I just looked it up to give you an example, and wowza — these things didn’t cost that much 50 years ago, or I would never have become the composer I am today.) Now, of course, if I’m working on paper I just use whatever pencil is handy, and my manuscripts are a complete mess. Just like Beethoven.
My predilection for oddball rhythms and multiple time signatures was already in evidence. By the time I wrote “Too Late for Happiness” for our production of Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor a couple of years later, I was more than comfortable with 7/4 time. (That piece was then recycled into “The Cratchits’ Prayer.”)
I seemed to already have an understanding of the ABA song form and the da capo/coda structure. (I would have been exposed to the notation at least both in concert band and in church choir.)
I do not remember any accompaniment; the cast must have sung it a capella. I know I can hear a Hair-like ensemble in my head, but that’s just a shinyperfect.
In four years, I’d be composing A Christmas Carol, still one of my most popular works.
If I wanted to be bitter about my life, I’d have to wonder about a theatre department that saw this and didn’t immediately think, “Hey, this young person might have some talent (or at least an interest) for this; maybe we should provide some career guidance or at least recommend that he take a music theory/composition class…” As my Lovely First Wife and I sometimes comment, our department was not much given to grooming us for professional theatre careers.
I’m not bitter, of course. My life has been about as perfect as it could have been, and every switch, every swerve, every random event has led to everything I’ve been able to do. I can’t complain about never having had some vague more that was not at all guaranteed.
Onward — to two more Little Waltzes!
