Larry, I'm curious, what precisely do you do when you speak of the "editorial job on the score"? What I love about the music is it sounds like it would from the period. But if you're using the original charts, I guess it would...But everything musical is great! Charts, orchestrations, vocal arrangements, dance arrangements. I've forgotten how many great songs are from this show. The guy playing the role of Eric Blore role is doing a very good Eric Blore.
The original orchestra parts and full scores to THE GAY DIVORCE are on file in the Shubert Archive; after the film came out, the Shubert's Century Library for theatrical rentals put together a version of the show, including the non-Porter "The Continental," with simplified arrangements. Tams-Witmark Music Library, because they handle all the Porter shows, had a piano-vocal score and the original libretto, but no original band parts! Their score was good, but incomplete without the original Overture and Entr'Acte. What a megillah!
John McGlinn did a concert of the score in the early 1990s at the Carnegie Recital Hall, but he only had new orchestra parts for the major musical numbers copied from the orchestra scores in the Shubert Archive. Several pieces didn't exist in the Carnegie Hall materials returned to the Cole Porter Trust, including scores to a couple of songs. The Trust hired me to finsh preparing those materials for the London concerts, so there were several parts to the job:
1. Assemble a full orchestra score for the show from photocopies of the full scores at the Shubert Archive; a couple of scores were recreated from the original band parts.
2. Prepare a vocal score of the entire show, so that a pianist or conductor could play the entire score for rehearsal purposes; I had to do a piano reduction of the Overture, Entr'Acte, and Exit Music, as well as copies of the unpublished songs.
3. Do the vocal arrangements for the choral singing; in the case of "Salt Air," we had no vocal for the Porter lyric countermelody, so I took it from the sax part in the orchestra score. The fact that it fit gives me the feeling it was the right choice.
4. Ascertain every bar of the new parts matched the count of my vocal score, e.g., iif "After You, Who?" was 144 bars in the orchestra parts, then the piano-vocal score had to have the same count and match so that all the players and the conductor agreed that at measure 75 they were all in the same place.
5. Check all notes in the parts for wrong notes, and there were many!
6. Copy new parts for the musical pieces not copied for the Carnegie Hall concerts.
It was a great way to spend a summer at the Cole Porter Trust.
