Teammates to the Fore 3

The third and largest project that John and I wrote completely as a team was a full length ballet entitled “Leharjinn”. This was written sometime between 1983-1986 while we were living in Toronto, Ontario.

Somehow we learned of a ballet composition competition that was occurring in Geneva, Switzerland. The prize, with details now long forgotten, was a performance by some ballet company and orchestra in Europe, and a financial prize. John and I decided to dig in and submit an entry to the competition. One of the requirements was that it would be for full orchestra.

The first step was to create a story for the ballet. I dashed that off in a couple of days. Then we planned out the many individual movements that would be performed by the dancers in order to tell the story. In this situation, we felt we were each more suited to specific movements so we chose who would write each movement. The orchestration was communal however.

To describe the basic compositional process, we initially wrote the ideas for piano. At this point the work is basically a sketch for piano with the melodies, countermelodies, and harmonies outlined.  The second step is to decide which instruments are to play which notes of that piano rendition. That process is called “orchestration”. An Orchestrator makes those decisions. The Orchestrator can be likened to a painter that adds the color to a black and white sketch. The Orchestrator takes a large piece of paper that has enough staves on it for each instrument that will be performing. This is called a “score”. Then the notes are carefully placed on the individual staffs. One staff for the first violins, one staff for the second violins, then violas, cellos, and bass. This continues for each and every instrument that will have something to play. When it is completed, the score is used by the Conductor to conduct the composition.

John and I put score paper on the dining room table. For several months we ate somewhere else as that table was the creative venue for our magnum opus. Whomever strolled through that room worked on the orchestration of the entire ballet.

Months later, and a trip from Toronto, Ontario to Buffalo, New York to have it photocopied, we mailed off our entry to Switzerland.

We eventually heard that our piece was one of the top three selected for the prize: but no prize was awarded. This was both a boost to our ego and a slap in our face.

Years later we learned one of the lessons of composition competitions. Apparently it is no secret that a specific type of work is being commissioned. A competition is announced. If none of the works meets the criteria that is unofficially but realistically desired, then no award is given. The contest promoters keep their prize money and try again next year.

At one point in my career of creating performances of works on synthesizer, I actually recorded the entire ballet. Its only performance exists on a now deteriorating set of two cassette tapes. The full orchestral score is lovingly protected, carefully boxed, on a shelf in our garage. It is a skeleton living there: a relic of our past lives as professional musicians and composers together.

All lessons learned aside, John and I enjoyed every moment of writing that beautiful piece. It was yet another series of teamwork projects that solidified our capacity to work together. The real value of “Leharjinn” is that I now know that this was an important piece the Universe gave to us to prepare us for our greatest teamwork project of all, that of surviving a stroke and thriving together in love and joy.

 2014 Nancy Weckwerth