The Music Director's Process
"Most of the songs in Heartfield are very conversational and patter-like, not intended to be sung in a weighty, overly lyrical way, but rather to be driven by the words and sung almost informally. " -- Peter Foley
Peter
Foley, the Music Director of Heartfield, describes
what a music director does:
"The role of the music director is to oversee all the musical aspects of the production, to communicate the composer's musical intentions to the cast and the musicians, and thus to the audience. The musical director assists the director in the interpretation of the songs, and offers technical and interpretive guidance to the actors and musicians. During performances, the musical director is usually the conductor of the show, and, as in the case of Heartfield, is sometimes the keyboard player as well."
Discussing the process of working on Heartfield, Foley explains that, "With Heartfield, the first step of the process was to prepare the score for rehearsal. This involved choosing an appropriate key for each song, so that the notes are reasonably comfortable for the actors to sing. I added harmonies and vocal arrangements to some of the group numbers, where the composer thought it would be effective to do so. I added modulations and key-changes within certain songs to make them more dramatic, and added elements to the accompaniments of some songs, to add variety or subtext or color."
"After the score was in reasonable shape, I began to teach the actors their songs, both as individuals and in groups. Because of the limited rehearsal time and the large amount of music to cover, the actors were encouraged to make tape recordings so they could practice extensively on their own. I also discussed some specific interpretive details, such as attempting to keep all of Dietrich's music in the lower part of the actress's range, somewhat in contrast to the songs that the same actress sings when playing Gertrud, John Heartfield's third wife. We discuss tempos, rhythm, dynamics and articulation of lyrics (particularly important, and problematic, in this very wordy score filled with German, Italian and French phrases as well as some tongue-twisting English)."
"Because of the particular style of music in most of the Heartfield score, we did not spend a great deal of time discussing the technical aspects of vocal production, coloration of sound, tone quality, etc. Most of the songs are very conversational and patter-like, not intended to be sung in a weighty, overly lyrical way, but rather to be driven by the words and sung almost informally. A good deal of time has been spent on the choral sections of the score, which are always challenging, especially for a cast of eight singers divided into four parts."
"Once the music is roughly learned, staging begins, and the challenge becomes one of maintaining proper musical performance while making accomodations for the fact that the actors must move, speak, act and dance while they sing; and to further complicate matters, they are often unable to see me cuing them from the piano, located on the far side of the stage."
"During performances, my job will be to give the cast a vocal warm-up before each show, to run through any trouble spots, and to control the tempos of the songs (and by extension, the tempo of the whole performance) in accordance to my sense of the audience's energy and the actor's needs, while playing the entire score from the piano."
