“There Loved Him All of Those” Gets a Start

Below is the basic rhythm of the second number, “There loved him all of those”. As before the pitches have no meaning at this point.






In the first phrase, “loved” needed some more emphasis to counter “hated”, and “those” was much too long. This version placed more weight on “hated” and “dance”, but also slows the rhythm down as the phrase progresses.



Further revision places the four principle words of the phrase, “loved”, “those”, “hated”, and “dance” on the downbeat of each bar and has a bit more rhythmic variety.



Applying the same method to the second phrase, whose four principle words are “those’, “loved”, “dance”, and “respected” yields a five-bar phrase without much rhythmic interest and which conflicts a bit with the text; these are, after all, the folks that like dancing.



Adding some syncopation resulted in a drawn-out and undanceable mess.



I’m in a coffee shop right now; the background music is a folk-dance tune, possibly Greek, wich gives me an idea: change the meter to 5/8 with a simple dotted-quarter – quarter rhythm.



I wrote this setting of the third and fourth phrases a couple of weeks ago and for now I’ll keep it. Doing so means taking the first two phrases and extending them for several more measures so that this chorale acts as a summarizing coda; I’ll do that later.



Back to the first phrase, it’s time to add pitch:



To transition from the first section I added a couple of bars after “his was a zealous life”, bringing it to a full plagal close.



And to start the second section, an introduction based on the opening figure of the vocal part:



The tale so far, from the top:

Some More Cleaning

The opening chorale (bars 1-3) had a weak harmonic progression, namely I-V-I-vi-iii-v. Changing the last two chords to I7-IV gives it a better direction and an appropriate plagal cadence.



Bars 4-7, the instrumental interlude, also were scrutinized. The voice leading in the viola part was cleaned up a bit and the harmony in bars 6 and 7 were clarified to a more definite cadence.



The strings in bars 8-10 also lacked direction. Keeping them all below the soprano line led to excessive parallel fifths and octaves so the first violin moved up to join the narrator mostly (some rhythmic exceptions). The Puritan gets the plagal treatment in bar 9.

Orchestration and Tweaking

I corrected a discordance in bar 5, where the cello plays a run of sixteenths starting on F against a run starting on G in the violin. My ears aren’t would they should be, I fear. The corrected measure is:



Another fix, a transposition error, was in bar 20. The narrator should sing an E-flat on the last beat, not an F.



The rather rough string passage in bars 20-23 has been cleaned up a bit. I left out the 1st violin to get a dark, somber sound.



The last bit of the opening number as scored for strings:



The first violin reaches for the heavens as the Puritan labors hard, then the cello descends back down to earth for the grave, zealous life.

Here are the first 32 bars:

Orchestration

I added a cello line to the introduction, contemplating two possibilities. The first has quarter notes to contrast with the choral half notes. Two difficulties with it are the break in stepwise upward motion in measure two and the discordance in beat three of the second measure. The second and third beats could be considered changing tones, but beat three is a bit too strong to be part of that. Altering beat three to an F minor or A-flat chord would muck up the voice leading for the soprano and the introductory chord progression would no longer be the same as the keys of the first six numbers. Changing the third beat from an A-flat to a D (repeating second beat) would be one way to resolve the problem. The quarter notes in the cello do add some impetus to the introduction.



The second possibility is half notes in the cello, which means it does not stand out at all until the quarters in the third bar as the choir finishes. The upward impetus of the first possibility is perhaps too subtle. The first possibility’s upward movement highlights the moral nature of the text.



So I’ll go with the first possibility:



Scored for a string quartet, the introduction and first number look like this so far(click the image to embiggen):



and sounds like this:

Introductory Remarks by the Narrator

Something needed to happen between the singing of the title and the Narrator’s opening number. One possibility is this instrumental interlude, which has a considerable amount of sub-dominance (A-flat) to it:



The accompaniment for “wrong to dance” has been altered from a plain half and two quarters to a duple transformation of the previous triple meter dance rhythm; marching is OK, but no dancing.



The “Labored hard” melisma has been extended to three bars with the dotted-quarter-eighth rhythm from two bars previous to accompany it. The E-flat minor chord at the end of the melisma has been worked into a more frowning E-flat minor seventh. The last bar of the melisma is echoed in the bass and the Puritan’s zealous life is staccato block chords; no frivolity here.

More Work on the Earnest Puritan

A Moral Little Tale opens with a short introductory harmony identical to the keys of the first part, namely E-flat, B-flat, E-flat, C minor, G minor, C minor, to which the chorus sings the title. The opening number, “There Once was an Earnest Puritan”, transposed to E-flat, for a start has rough harmony added to the first phrase. A waltz or minuet-like instrumental interlude on the word “dance” is cut short by the narrator repeating “wrong to dance”, with “dance” harmonized by a tritone, the Devil’s interval (as some would say) and the bass line echoing in a distorted way the dance rhythm. The chord progression from the introduction forms the basis for the bridge to the Narrator’s second phrase.

Overall Structure of A Moral Little Tale

Yesterday’s little exercise in vocal writing has ballooned to an ambition to set the entirety of “A Moral Little Tale” as an oratorio for small chorus, three soloists (soprano, tenor, and bass), and a few instruments. The story is just over 400 words, so it’s not that enormous a task.

The three soloists sing the roles of Narrator (soprano), Devil (Tenor), and Puritan (Bass). The text is divided into 16 numbers:

1. Narrator, E-flat major, a folk song:
There once was an earnest Puritan
who held it wrong to dance.
And for his principles he labored hard,
his was a zealous life.

2. Chorus, B-flat major, a chorale:
There loved him all of those
who hated the dance;
and those that loved the dance
respected him too.
He is a pure, good man
and acts according to his lights.

3. Narrator, E-flat major, a folk song:
He did much to discourage dancing
and helped to close
several Sunday entertainments.

4. Puritan, C minor, plain song:
Some kinds of poetry I like
but not the fanciful kind
as that might corrupt
the thoughts of the very young.

5. Narrator, G minor, a folk song:
He always dressed in black.
He was interested in morality
and was quite sincere.

6. Chorus, C minor, a chorale:
There grew to be much respect on Earth
for his honest face
and his flowing pure-white beard.

7. Narrator, G minor, a recitative:
One night the Devil appeared
unto him in a dream and said

8. Devil and Puritan, B-flat major, a duet:
[Devil] "Well done."
[Puritan] "Avaunt!"
[Devil] "No, no, friend."
[Puritan] "Dare not to call me 'friend,'"

9. Devil, D major, Da Capo Aria:
A Section:
Have you not done my work?
Have you not put apart
the couples that would dance?
Have you not checked their laughter
and their accursed mirth?
Have you not worn my livery of black?

B Section (A major):
O friend, friend, you do not know
what a detestable thing it is
to sit in hell and hear people
being happy, and singing in theatres
and singing in the fields, and whispering after dances
under the moon.

10. Puritan, B minor, plain song:
It is you that put into their hearts
the evil desire to dance;
and black is God's own livery, not yours.

11. Devil, G major modulating to B major at the end, a through-composed song:
He only made the silly colors
and useless dawns, hill-slopes facing South,
and butterflies flapping along them
as soon as the sun rose high,
and foolish maidens coming out to dance,
and the warm mad West wind,
and worst of all that pernicious influence Love.

12. Puritan, E minor, a plain song:
Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Blasphemy!

13. Devil, E major modulating to C major at the end, a through-composed song:
It's true.
It isn't I that send
the village fools muttering
and whispering two by two
in the woods when the harvest moon is high,
it's as much as I can bear
even to see them dancing.

14. Puritan and Devil, F major modulating to B-flat major, a duet:
[Puritan]
Then I have mistaken right for wrong;
but as soon as I wake I will fight you yet.

[Devil]
0, no you don't.
You don't wake up out of this sleep.

15. Narrator, E-flat major, a folk song:
Somewhere far away
Hell's black steel doors were opened,
and arm in arm those two were drawn within,
and the doors shut behind them
and still they went arm in arm,
trudging further and further,
into the deeps of Hell.

16. Chorus, E-flat major, a chorale:
It was that Puritan's punishment
to know that those that he cared for
on Earth would do evil as he had done.

The sixteen numbers fall into three parts. 1-7 provide background and introduce the Puritan and Devil. The debate between the Devil and Puritan is the middle part (numbers 8-14), which moves between less-than-closely related keys to provide a bit of dramatic tension, sort of like the development section of a sonata. The last two numbers return to the opening key of E-flat and provide the moral of the story.

The Narrator represents the populace at large, something of an Everyman while the Chorus delivers commentary, hence the chorale style. The Devil, being the bad guy, of course gets all the good solo parts; the Puritan is confined to simple, unadorned plain song.

A Moral Little Tale

I’ve been reading through Charles Adams’ How to Put a Melody on Paper which has some interesting techniques for setting text, besides its main intent of teaching a beginner the fundamentals of writing music. An experienced composer, especially one who has written for voice, would no doubt start with a reasonably good setting of a text. But for those of us, like me, who lacks both experience and innate talent, having a step-by-step guide is essential. Adams’ techniques are just that: take a text, figure out the accents, match the accents to a rhythmic beat of quarter notes, modify the note durations to highlight the significant words and meaning of the text, and set the pitches to yield a singable vocal line that compliments the text and the rhythm.

Taking the opening sentence from Lord Dunsany’s “A Moral Little Tale” (from Fifty-one Tales , published in 1914), I take a shot at using Adams’ methods. The text is prose, but Dunsany tends to write with a hint of poetic rhythm, which I think may lend itself to a musical setting.



The initial setting deals only with matching the text accents to musical accents; the oscillation between G and E is meaningless at this point. It is in duple time because triple time has a strong dance connotation. “Labored” in bar 6 slows down the flow of the tune, so the half notes were converted to eighths.



The last phrase, “his was a zealous life”, has an accent mismatch: “His” should be on a stronger beat, so it is shifted to the downbeat of the next measure. The resulting rest in bar 7 sets apart the final phrase and, I think, gives it a bit of emphasis. And to give it a somber, plain, and unadorned feel, the notes are shifted to the super tonic except for a lone E, all sung staccato to remove any lingering sense of lyricism.



The “labored” melisma is given a melodic line that climbs up a tritone, then falls to the dominant. “Principles” is emphasized by giving it sixteenth notes and reducing “he” to an eighth.



The start of the middle phrase descends down from A to “principles”, and “labored” is changed to not reach tonic (no resolution for the Puritan), drop down to an E-flat, and settle on the sub-dominant instead of dominant.



The first phrase climbs step by step to an initial climax on “Puritan”, then peaks on “dance” preceded by a strong leap from the secondary dominant. “Wrong” is emphasized with an E-flat, a sort of frowning minor that contrasts with the happier leap to “dance”.