Best Orchestration... Really??? — Page 2

Sondheim writes out fairly detailed two-stave accompaniments. Tunick (or Starobin) has sometimes added countermelodies (for example, the scalar countermelody in mm. 29-33 of "Losing My Mind", and, of course, songs often end up in different keys, but . . . well, let's let Sondheim discuss it:

"I write extremely complete piano copy because of . . . my training. So most of the counterpoint—in fact, all of it except for those things that are necessary to hold the orchestra together—[is] written down. . . . Jonathan is restricted by the notes I write . . . But . . . he listens to me play it on the piano and he tapes everything so hears the approach . . . where I hit the climaxes and . . . where I'm using rubato . . .he gets much more out of what I have in my mind than just the notes on the paper."

And:

"I've learned over the last 15 years more and more to notate the phrasing, otherwise Jonathan asks me . . . and then I have to tell him . . . Jonathan . .. . has never phrased anything that I didn't specifically either notate or want."

Discussing the manuscript of "A Bowler Hat":

I put all those slurs in, and the staccato notes, when the copyist made the copy. Jonathan, as he's done in about a third of the songs I've written, literally took my piano copy and wrote, 'cello, bass, clarinet, harp, etc.' In other words, a song as simple as this, and there are numerous others in my canon, doesn't need him to make his orchestration sketch anything but the actual notes that I've written. Obviously, the doublings are indeed his."

Trude Rittman said of Rodgers that he wrote out the harmony for his songs, "but in a sort of primitive way. It was not very elaborate. He was not at all well educated in music."

Rittman did indeed sometimes do more than just dance arrangements and scene change music.There's some reason to believe, for example, that she may have written the famous counterpoint to the "When you know the notes to sing" melody in "Do Re Mi."

According to Rittman, Rodgers was also much helped by his rehearsal pianist Margot Hopkins.

Rittman had more respect for Loewe, who at least sometimes did the choral arrangements for his shows. I've read that he did write a lot of the dance music, but Rittman says that he didn't, at least not for Brigadoon.

Of course, the famous choral arrangement of "Oklahoma!" was completely created by Robert Russell Bennett and Jay Blackton.

Porter, although fairly well-educated as a composer, was much helped by Albert Sirmay in notating it and sometimes suggesting harmonies. It seems, though, that Porter often wrote the dance music, even when others were credited with it.

So it really does vary.

Updated On: 2/11/19 at 12:26 AM