PERFORMANCE NOTES
Background
Nothing is made from scratch, and the kind of music theater
I have tried to create in The Ghost Dancers has many antecedents.
No one will fail to see my debt to Greek drama, which I studied
intensively both in college and afterwards, on my own. At that
time I had decided to attempt a new translation of Aeschylus'
Oresteia, and I was both perplexed and fascinated with questions
of performance: how were the plays originally performed, and how
could they be faithfully carried over to the modern stage? My
perplexity (and my fascination as well) centered mainly on one
element: the chorus. What was it that the chorus did, precisely,
with their choral lines on an ancient Greek stage? It was
certainly not the clamorous murmuring in not-quite unison so
painfully familiar to audiences at modern revivals. But if it was
singing, it must have been a far cry from the kind of singing
associated with our own tradition of "serious" music. It has
always been an axiom with opera librettists that nothing too
subtle or earth-shaking better be said in arias and choruses,
since half of the words will not be understood anyway. But the
choral lyrics of Aeschylus and Sophocles are as subtle and as
laden with meaning as any poetry ever written. What sort of music
was it that could forcefully convey -- to an open-air audience of
some twenty thousand people -- poetry of this quality?
I read everything I could find on the subject, but it wasn't
until a year or so later that I encountered the work of two
twentieth century figures who had not only concerned themselves
with this question of the intelligible delivery of words in
musical performance, but had actually come up with practical
artistic solutions. The first was the late American composer
Harry Partch. Partch is best known for his microtonality and
bizarre hand-made instruments, but the original impetus to his
work was the desire to restore the old Greek unity of words and
music. To do so he decided, early in his career, that he needed a
more finely divided scale than the one provided by tempered
instruments. Hence the need for instruments of his own design.
His thoughts on the subject and on the development of his
techniques are set out in great detail in his book Genesis of
a Music.
The second was the poet William Butler Yeats, whom Partch
visited in Dublin in 1934 with a proposal to set to music Yeats'
translation of Sophocles' King Oedipus. Yeats had no musical
training himself, and his ideas about combining words and music
were only sketched out, chiefly in his essay "Speaking to the
Psaltery," which Partch had devoured with avidity. Yeats had also
written a number of his own plays, though, in which he and his
collaborators had attempted to put these ideas into practice.
These plays had not generally shared the high reputation of those
marvelous verses that had already had such an impact on my own
development as a poet.
Luckily there happened to be, in Ann Arbor where I was
living, a highly original theater company (several of whose
members later took part in the first script-in-hand performance
of The Ghost Dancers in 1983) called the Yeats Ensemble, led by
Irene Connors. The group was dedicated entirely to performing
these mostly neglected works of Yeats. In their performances,
which incorporated music, dance, and various novel and exciting
forms of vocal delivery, I saw that Yeats had understood
perfectly well what he was about in these plays, though he may
not have had performers with the expertise to realize his
intentions. Here -- and in tapes I acquired of Partch's setting
of King Oedipus, completed long after Yeats' death,* and his
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*Unfortunately Partch was refused permission by the Yeats estate
to perform and record the poet's version of the tragedy, which
forced him to rewrite the work using his own translation.
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later adaptation of The Bacchae of Euripides (Revelation in the
Courthouse Park) -- I saw the first glimmers of the kind of
theater I wanted to achieve in The Ghost Dancers.
Another kind of illumination came from a far better-known
work of twentieth-century theater: Brecht and Weill's Threepenny
Opera, whose example provided something of a counterweight to the
first two. This famous team did not, like Partch and Yeats, labor
to reconstruct lost or remote traditions; they simply made the
best possible use of our own modern traditions of popular song
and musical theater. So maybe, I thought, there was a way closer
at hand to get what I wanted, without having to venture into
microtonality, instrument-building, and the like -- or to rely on
the improvisations of brilliant but not always available
performers. The possibility of grounding new works in well-
understood forms and practice, on whatever level, is certainly a
great boon to anyone as reliant on other talents as the dramatist
is.
Still, the example of Partch (and the sound of his music)
was so seductive on the one hand, that I experimented for a
number of years with (pretty rudimentary) microtonal instruments,
studying his tuning system thoroughly, while on the other hand my
diffidence about my own musical abilities slowed my work on the
Ghost Dancers score considerably. I had the idea -- no doubt a
carryover from an early ambition to compose "absolute" music --
that to attempt to excel at more than one art was the height of
impertinence. Gradually, though, I came to see that what I was
attempting was not two arts, but one, just as it was for
Aeschylus, and just as it is for any number of popular songsters
in our own time. The arts, I believe, are as reasonable and
practical as any human activity, which means that as long as you
have a good reason for doing what you are doing, heaven will not
strike you down.
And heaven, in my case, helped me to the bridge that made my
two arts one. For Partch the bridge was intonation, for me it was
rhythm. As a poet who disliked free verse in principle, though
not always in practice, I had long tried to find new meters that
would give, in a more rational way, some of the variety that
free verse poets were supposedly after in abandoning meter
altogether. In my work on the Aeschylus translation I had already
come up with some fairly novel items to render the extremely
varied and contrasting meters encountered in his great choruses.
Not surprisingly, I saw that these new rhythms had come out of my
involvement with music. By the time I wrote the text of The Ghost
Dancers I had considerable experience with these little
discoveries of mine, and had rationalized their principles to a
degree. Of course there was nothing really all that new about
them. They were based on a very natural tradition in the English
language, but one that has had more use in popular than in
serious verse. The principle was simply to time all your strong
accents to a beat. It was the principle used by Gilbert and
Sullivan, and is the principle now used by rap musicians. I saw
no reason why the same principle might not be used in serious
verse, though it would need some refining.
But it was still a long struggle to turn these rhythmic
choruses, once I was satisfied with them as poetry, into a
performable music. Things finally came together with the Ghost
Dance Song, which was performed in rough-and-ready fashion with
its music during the 1983 reading, along with the instrumental
Prologue, the next part of the score to be composed and the only
part played in its entirety and with correct instrumentation at
that reading.* Now, eleven years later, the music is complete. It
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*Actually a recording, made at Marilyn Mason's organ studio in
Ann Arbor, was used.
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is a poet's music, and I make no claim for it other than that if
you, the performers, will respect and accept it as such, it will
do its job just as well as you do yours.
Notes for the chorus
At the outset it should be said that unless a clear and
expressive delivery of the words is attained, not only will the
drama suffer, but the songs will lose much of whatever
effectiveness they have as music. Many of them, indeed, will
hardly prove singable at all unless this is respected. The effect
needs to be much more speechlike than in classical choral
singing, and yet the songs are songs, and should be sung, which
means that apart from occasional portamento, and passages where
the lyrics are explicitly indicated as being spoken, the written
pitches should be adhered to. Rhythm can be treated more freely.
But whatever liberties are taken, the chorus, when singing
together, must take them as a unit, not individually: no
raggedness can be tolerated. Although good voices are needed,
"in character" singing, somewhat in the manner of musicals, is
definitely more important than striving after an impressive or
operatic sound.
Choristers trained in classical singing must rigorously
unlearn the conventional rules of enunciation. The pronunciation
to be adopted is standard American. A few other points under this
heading are as follows.
Consonants. These must not be minimized, as is frequent in
choral singing. Not only will clarity suffer, but consonant
sounds often figure into the songs as rhythmic elements. They
should, however, be pronounced normally; e.g. the t in "waiting"
should be given the normal nonemphatic or "d" sound it has in
American speech. R's, it goes without saying, should not be
rolled.
Syllables. The tendency to pronounce a syllable differently
when it is given a bit more prominence than in normal speech must
be resisted. Thus, in the Entrance Chorus, the second syllable of
"baskets" must be pronounced with its normal minimal vowel, and
not as if it were spelled "basquettes." Here as elsewhere,
syllables should be divided as indicated in the score.
Slurs on vowels. Similarly, when a vowel glides from one
note to another, one must resist the tendency to insert an alien
sound. Thus, in the Ghost Dance Song, verse 2, the altos must
glide on the diphthong in "firelike," and not divide it into
"fah-yerlike."
The rest I leave to the common sense of performers. The
usual unconsciousness of one's own speech habits, though, makes
this an aspect of rendition to be closely attended to.
Although the vocal score is notated for conventional SATB
choir, the tessituras are generally low. The basses, in
particular, spend most of their time in the profondo range.
Likewise the tenor part might be profitably assigned to
baritones, and the soprano to mezzo sopranos (some high a-flats
are called for). The altos need to be true altos, not mezzos.
The difficulty of some of this music for untrained singers,
and the further requirements that the chorus not only sing but
dance, sometimes simultaneously, and act, again sometimes while
singing, and that for verisimilitude they all be of reasonably
lean stature as well, may tempt the production into compromises,
though I believe none of these requirements, save possibly the
last, is an obstacle that sufficient rehearsal could not
overcome. Choreography, though obviously essential, need not be
elaborate. The acting demands, in terms of spoken words, are not
great; more important is that the chorus know how to move
onstage. Perhaps the single most crucial dramatic effect in the
whole play is the transformation of the chorus from gnarled and
feeble elders at the beginning into limber, youthful celebrants
during the dance and back into gnarled and feeble elders at the
end, and the more training, whether by way of mime or formal
dance, the chorus members have to make this transformation
convincing, the better the play will come off.
But if choristers adequately trained in all areas are not to
be found, other measures might perhaps be adopted without totally
ruining the play.
First, an offstage singing chorus and an onstage acting
chorus could be used. In this case the onstage chorus should lip
the words of the songs along with the actual singers, and the
problem remains of positioning the offstage chorus discreetly yet
audibly. Better, in this case, that the onstage chorus consist of
trained dancers, since their movements will keep attention on the
stage, where it should be.
Second, some sort of mixed chorus of singers, actors, and/or
dancers could be put onstage, the various specialists performing
their functions when needed and the rest trying to look as though
they were taking part. This would obviously require a large
stage.
If all chorus members can sing and act and dance, then the
chorus could number as few as four -- one for each vocal part. Of
course distinctions between solo and full section in the score
will then be lost, and if only for that reason, eight or twelve
(the traditional number in Greek tragedy) would be far better. In
a pinch, almost any number between four and twenty could be made
to work: good singers can compensate for any imbalance among
parts, and if a part has only one singer on it, it can be doubled
by singers on other parts, provided their range allows it, for
passages in which that part is indicated as singing alone in full
section.
Finally, a word about the chorus leader. This character,
acting as a sort of spokesman (and the role is intended as a male
one) speaks in a more formal style than the one in which the
chorus pass comments among themselves. His bearing should be
appropriate to this.
Notes for the actors
What was said about pronunciation for the chorus applies
doubly for the actors. What I have attempted in this play is a
poetic stylization of (not necessarily present-day) American
speech. No matter that the vocabulary may not always look
particularly American; the rhythms and expressive patterns are
definitely intended to be felt as such. The fact that a speech
may be in blank verse and use poetic diction must not cause the
actor to automatically adopt a pseudo-British or otherwise
"exalted" intonation. When exaltation is called for, the proper
tone should be sought in native sources.
Though none of the actors apart from the chorus is required
to sing, three of them, as well as the chorus itself, must speak
at certain points to musical accompaniment. When this is a matter
of simple background, or "melodrama," there should be no
particular problem: the actor speaks at his own pace and the
musicians take their cues from him. These parts need only to be
thoroughly rehearsed, so actor and musicians know what to expect
of each other. The declamatory passages leading up to the dance
are far trickier, and demand of the actor playing Kicking Bear a
powerful (though not necessarily a singer's) voice, good breath
control, and an exceptional sense of rhythm. He must take his
cues from the music, which is maintaining a steady beat. He must
fit his words into the allotted measures, and take care that
important syllables fall on or near the indicated beat, and yet
he must avoid anything mechanical in his delivery: his words
should never just chug along with the beat, but glide over it
like a tightrope walker. He should never stress a syllable
inappropriately merely because it happens to coincide with a
strong drumbeat. He may deliver the words to the songs (Song for
the Donning of the Shirt, Ghost Dance Song) in the same manner,
or he may sing them or half-sing them, as he chooses. Sitting
Bull's brief passages to drumbeats require no such delicate
coordination; the dramatic point will be served better, in fact,
if he is felt not to be too in step with the drum.
Notes for the instrumentalists
I trust percussionists will know what a plains Indian drum
is supposed to sound like; depending on the size of the
performance space, a small bass drum or a tenor drum played with
a soft beater will serve. Whatever is used, the sound, during the
dance, must be controlled but powerful -- short of drowning out
the actors and giving the audience a headache.
A synthesizer, if it has good organ sounds, is perfectly
acceptable for the organ part, and will probably be the most
practical instrument to use, though if the performance should
happen to take place in a church or other space equipped with a
pipe organ, and the instrument is positioned in a convenient way,
use of it might certainly be considered. It should not be used in
the Ghost Dance sequences, however, unless it has some
registration that sounds reasonably close to an old Hammond
electric with a good bouncy reverb, which is the precise sound I
had in mind for those sections.
The marimba and xylophone parts are written for standard-
range instruments. Their combined parts can be handled by two
players, with both occasionally on one instrument.
Though much of the time only a couple of instruments are
playing, the full instrumental score, as far as I can see, will
require five players.
Musicians and instruments can be placed in the orchestra pit
if there is one; otherwise there is no objection to the
instrumentalists being onstage if there is a good place for them.
The offstage music in the Night Scene need not be played
literally offstage: the musicians can play very softly or the
music can be programmed with a marimba and drum sound into the
synthesizer's internal sequencer.
Notes for the choreographer
Choreography was touched on briefly in the notes for the
chorus. The approach will obviously very much depend on the
dancing abilities of the chorus. Unless a separate dancing chorus
is used, it is likely that the choreographer will have to work
with dancers whose abilities are considerably below those of a
professional troupe. Any experience in choreographing musicals
will be helpful: in general the dancing should be an extension of
the acting and singing; it should be gestural and reinforce the
words of the songs. Broadway brashness is to be avoided, though:
until the Ghost Dance proper begins, the chorus have to convey
weariness in all their movements. The first two songs after the
Entrance Chorus, and the Night Song, are actually performed
sitting, or more precisely, on the floor, since any position
short of standing (and an occasional chorus member could even do
that) can be used to lend interest and expressiveness to the
movement -- as long as it is a position in which one can
comfortably sing as well.
The Ghost Dance itself must convey the opposite effect, one
of almost supernatural vigor, and here even a certain brashness
is not out of place. The instrumental sequences following the
song allow some scope for "pure" movement; even here, though, the
dramatic situation must not be lost sight of. In the first
sequence the chorus is learning the dance: their movements should
still be somewhat tentative. In the second sequence preacher and
chorus are gloating over having chased away (as they see it) the
policemen; all hesitancy is gone, and the dance, before abruptly
breaking off, reaches its high point of excitement.
The music to this section is structured as follows: like the
Ghost Dance Song, it is in mixed measures of three and four
beats. The nine-measure drum pattern
3 4 3 4 3 4 3 3 3
is repeated nine times. The xylophone echoes the marimba's
phrases, but at a progressively widening time interval, since the
marimba and organ start a measure earlier in the pattern each
time. As the xylophone plays the marimba's eighth phrase, the
marimba and organ, in lieu of a tenth phrase, play the beginning
of the Ghost Dance Song, and the music breaks off (the music in
the first sequence is essentially the same, but gets only as far
as the fifth marimba phrase before it breaks off).
A final word on "authenticity." No one who hears my music is
likely to mistake it for genuine Lakota or Ghost Dance music, and
it would be silly to demand a dance more authentic than the music
that accompanies it. To achieve real authenticity the
choreographer would have to know the real dances intimately, and
such a person would hardly commit the sacrilege or faux pas of
using them unaltered in a white man's musical. The sole criterion
for the dance, as for every other element of the play, must be
dramatic relevance.
The music to the Ghost Dancers is scored for:
Organ
Marimba
Xylophone
Piccolo
Drum
SATB chorus
Musical sections of the play:
I. Opening
1. Prologue (instruments only)
2. Entrance Chorus
3. Song of the Vanished Earth
4. Song of the Invaders
5. The Sermon (background)
II. First Ghost Dance Sequence
1. Song for the Donning of the Shirt
2. Ghost Dance Song
3. Instrumental coda
III. Second Ghost Dance Sequence
1. "Now shall the seed of sin be shaken"
2. Ghost Dance Song
3. Instrumental coda
IV. Third Ghost Dance Sequence
1. "Now who can stand against us?"
2. Song for the Donning of the Shirt
V. Night Scene
1. Offstage music (Ghost Dance Song)
2. Night Song
VI. Closing
1. "O mightiest light of our nation"
2. The Stallion (background)
3. Exit Chorus