I've had vocal scores for Wozzeck and Lulu for years, but every time I put on a recording and started following the score, I had major anxiety attacks - how do you know if someone plays a wrong note? how does a singer find a pitch - that after about fifteen minutes I turned the opera off. In the late 1990s my late friend Dale Kugel, former librarian of Tams-Witmark, invited me to a dress rehearsal of Wozzeck at the Met.
It was one of the most enlightening afternoons of my life. The production and performers was wonderful, and the music was glorious. Removing myself from the analysis of the notes, I could simply enjoy the music for what it was, and i had never realized what beautiful score it is.
I envy you that afternoon rehearsal!
And I'm amazed to hear what a challenge the score and the pitches, etc., were -- to you, of all people, sir!
I was fortunate to have had a wonderful start on these while in school, and they got into my ear fairly early. We did the
Lulu Suite and I loved playing the piano part. I just took out my Universal Ed. study-size score, and was stunned to see my neat little handwritten notes indicating that I played from that -- except wherever I wrote "switch to part", I guess for page turns! Good Lord, nowadays I wouldn't even be able to read that small print up there on the piano's music rack.
Another time, a friend asked if I'd be interested in helping him learn the pitches and intervals of
Wozzeck by the two of us singing two parts together at a time, very slowly, sort of
solfeggio style, but I truly don't remember what came out of our mouths except the notes themselves. I know we weren't singing the German; in fact, we were working on orchestral lines as much as anything, just picking two parts at a time and getting them in tune. Isn't that weird? But we went through a few scenes that way over several sessions, and it really worked. I also got to where I could play a few of the scenes on piano fairly well. Ah, those were the days...
