Recently, I discovered a series entitled Fresh Eyes by Doug Newton (which I highly recommend). The insights therein can apply to every secular and spiritual field. He writes:
What if the commonplace understanding … is the very thing keeping us from seeing the text in a new, life-transforming way? 1
Newton continues:
Yet consider Jesus’ remedy: “You have heard that it was said, but I tell you . . .” He invited His listeners to break away from well-worn thinking to see something new, different. We need to look with fresh eyes at what we think we know well. A passage’s common interpretation may have taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line and been passed along like an urban legend. The application may need to shift in a different direction or include something not considered before. There’s new hope for our lives to change when we can say, “I never saw it that way before.” 2 (bold emphasis added.)
Which brings me to the topic for today—Music & Musicals—and this quote:
So many magnificent scores are trapped in dated books.3
So, what if we commit to escape the box and petition living composers or the estates of dead ones to allow their magnificent scores to be applied to fresh books, fresh lyrics, fresh commitments to “Theatre of the Good”? 4 Is this to heretical to even consider? Are we so trapped in monocular vision that the very idea is to foment war?
Do the books even have to be dated? What about doing on the musical stage what cinema has done occasionally—using the magnificence of Verdi, Beethoven, Mozart, et al.—to sustain new stories? If cinema can do it, why not the musical stage?
So, I’m going to do something out of the box, (I think). I suppose I mean “out” in more ways than one—in the sense that: 1) I don’t know if this has been done before; and 2) out-of-the-Verdi-box because what I plan to use was composed in 1841 as part of Nabucco.
Here are my reasons (hoping, in some degree, to forestall purist apoplexy):
▪ My (completely sung-thru) verse musical, entitled Joseph: Down in Memphis Town,5 needs an introductory “heavenly” overture, played by Guardian (an angel) on a solo wind instrument (e.g., flute). The only melody I hear in my head is a more joyful rendition of Verdi’s Va, Pensiero (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco. I also hear an unseen chorus of “angels” ah-ing the melody with all or part of the flute rendition overture.
▪ The symbology is apt, both to introduce the story of the Hebrew slave, Joseph in Egypt, and as a foreshadow of the slavery that would descend upon the Hebrews many years later in Egypt.
▪ The upbeat tone is because those who experience slavery often express hope through upbeat music, whereas those of us who do not know slavery, express our interpretation of slavery in melancholy and pathos.
▪ If there is nothing new under the sun 6 and if all things are visible to God—past, present, & future7—Verdi’s Va, Pensiero was known before Verdi—as a conduit for divine music—composed it.
▪ Joseph: Down in Memphis Town is an upbeat musical about Joseph’s first 14 years in Egypt from arrival at age 17 to marriage at age 30—sung-thru entirely without accompaniment, being speech/word driven. However, there are several crowd scenes that use rhythm, but otherwise, the human voice is the divine instrument of choice.
▪ For those who are appalled that an unknown, simple playwright would “team-up” (however briefly) with the magnificent Verdi, I think perhaps Verdi is the only one entitled to be appalled; and from what I sense, he seems unperturbed.
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1. Newton, Doug. Fresh Eyes on Jesus’ Miracles: Discovering New Insights in Familiar Passages (Kindle Locations 185-188). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.
2. Newton, Doug. Fresh Eyes on Jesus’ Miracles: Discovering New Insights in Familiar Passages (Kindle Locations 176-177). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.
3. D.H. Hwang, The Dramatist Magazine, March/April 2002, p. 9
4. Theatre of the Good: http://dramasmith.blogspot.com/2019/02/theatre-for-good.html
5. Which can be read for free here at https://www.zanthymhouse.ca/musicals-plays/joseph-down-in-memphis-town/
6. Old Testament | Ecclesiastes 1:9–10 ~ The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
7. Doctrine and Covenants | Section 130:6–8 ~ The angels do not reside on a planet like this earth; But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord. The place where God resides is a great Urim and Thummim.