(a series of articles about how new musicals come to pass)
Preproduction: the period of time during when work is done on a show prior to the first rehearsal.
Perhaps it's an attempt to save money, or more likely because decisions are not made soon enough, but more often than not an orchestrator gets handed the bulk of the music for a new show just a few weeks prior to the first orchestra rehearsal. Money gets saved because there's little time for because people to change their minds forcing the orchestrator and copyists to redo work -- and the decision to give the orchestrator the go ahead doesn't get made earlier because, well, no one wants to be responsible for the expense of a number having to be reorchestrated or recopied when they come up with a better idea for it.
So... the orchestrator's been given the go ahead (we'll go into more depth when we cover orchestrators at some point down the road) and when he's completed (hopefully) a number it gets whisked off to the copyists.
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Many times, with shows in the state of flux that they're in in preproduction, a number will be "released" to the orchestrator in sections, as in: "Okay, do the introduction and the first verse, skip the bridge because we're going to make some changes, do the next verse and skip all the dance music until we've hired a new choreographer, then do the last chorus, but leave off the ending because they're writing a new one." This is one of the reasons why in the program you see:
...but if you look at the orchestra books you see:
Of course, the music is released to the orchestrator this way because, "well jeepers, we better give him something to do." |
Small shows may be able to get by with a single copyist, but on larger shows (especially when the orchestrator is trying to crank out the bulk of the show in the last week before the first orchestra rehearsal) you'll usually find a team working under a supervising copyist (matter of fact, if a show is running that far behind, there may actually be a team of orchestrators). To other members of the production, the supervisor will appear pretty much like a single copyist since the team will be working in the background -- but of course it's the supervisor who gets the blame for the team's errors.
At the simplest level a copyist's job at this point is to take the orchestrator's full score, which contains music for all the instruments of the orchestra, all the dynamics, articulations, tempo markings, etc. and recopies that into separate parts for each member of the orchestra. The job is actually a lot more complex than that makes it sound -- a person with patience and good handwriting could probably copy the notes from the score onto a separate sheet. But a good copyist is a good musician (which explains why professional theatre copyists are members of the American Federation of Musicians, the musicians' union); he knows what the music means and what a player needs to see. When you consider that an orchestra rehearsal may run into the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per hour, anything that delays the proceedings can be quite costly. Musicians are hired whose skills are so great that they can pretty much sightread the most challenging material -- but only if it's legible and correct. It's up to the copyist to prepare the music as accurately, precisely, and clearly as possible, to research and uncover problems or errors, and to lay it all out so well that the rehearsal flows so smoothly that the production team can devote time to more important things (like "should there really be those big rock drums in the French Revolution scenes?") than whether Reed 4 should have a G flat or a G natural in measure 3.
This is not always the case. And when it isn't the first complaint will come from the players. But the loudest complaint will come from the producers (unless they only have themselves to blame for hiring the bargain copyists) who feel like they're hemorrhaging money at every moment lost to problems.
To be continued
See you at the theatre!
Originally published at Suite101.com Theatre, 10/7/97
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