Music Notes 3-24-24

Jesus Christ Superstar began as a concept album in the late 1960’s, with Webber working with his school friend Tim Rice.  They began recording the music piecemeal, and released I Don’t Know How To Love Him as a single in 1970, which peaked at #28 in the U.S in 1971.  The lead role of Jesus was sung by Ian Gillan, who had just joined the English rock band Deep Purple and brought with him a degree of fame and following to the project.  Mary Magdalene was sung by Yvonne Elliman, who was born in Honolulu (Irish father, Japanese mother) and was singing in London clubs at the time she was discovered by Webber and Rice.  She and Barry Dennen (Pilate) were the only cast members to do the original concept album of 1970, the first authorized stage performance at the Pittsburgh Civic Auditorium in July of 1971, the original Broadway production, which opened in October of 1971, and the movie, which was released in 1973 (starring Ted Neeley as Jesus, who was the Jesus understudy for the original Broadway production).  The music director on the movie was Andre Previn, who began his career scoring movies and was hired to be the music director for the London Symphony in 1968.  He told me about his experience working on the movie while we were preparing a performance of the Britten Spring Symphony.  “I was knee-deep in the London Symphony when Norman Jewison called and told me he needed me for a movie.  I told him I didn’t have time.  He said, “It’s Jesus Christ Superstar” and I said, “Then especially NO, because I hate the piece”.  He told me that Webber had insisted on being music director and they had spent 18 three-hour sessions with the London Philharmonic and had only 2½ minutes of usable music.  I agreed to go look at what they had, and when I saw it, I told him that the problem was that the music wasn’t laid out for a movie (aside – all movie music has to be time-coded, so that it can be syncopated to the action on the screen).  After much groveling, I told him that I would do it, but I needed 2 orchestrators and 6 copyists at my disposal immediately, there was a specific music editor that he would fly out from Hollywood first class and, sorry to be crass, but it’s going to cost you a lot of money.  Jewison said “Fine.  Right now, I have no movie”.  I rewrote the score and we recorded it in 6 weeks.”  Hosanna is the song underscoring the Palm Sunday entrance of Jesus into the temple.  The Broadway production of Superstar ran for 711 shows and was nominated for 5 Tony Awards (but didn’t win any), including Best Score, and Andrew Lloyd Webber won a Drama Desk Award for “Most Promising Composer” (Oh, really?  Ya think?).

Jack Walker is a composer based in Santa Monica.  He’s written mostly for the church, including anthems, instrumentals, and musicals, including a musical called Moses (yup, it’s about exactly what you think it’s about) that was received to critical acclaim (I recorded a couple of tunes from it for him a few years ago).  He was music director at Brentwood Presbyterian Church for many years, retiring in the late 90’s, and was there when I was the bass section leader from 1987 to 1991.  One day he was complaining to me that no one would publish a communion anthem he had recently written called Come To The Table because it was a cappella (no accompaniment).  In those days especially (and even now), publishers were in the business of selling music, not publishing it, and they were looking at studies that showed that the average church choir in the country had 12 members with no tenors.  The publishers became increasingly specific about what kinds of music they would consider for publication, and for many years, the church music world was drowned in a sea of poorly written, uninspired little anthems that would never float in the real world of music, but they were easily accessible for the “average” church choir.  I told Jack to simply add a “Chopinesque” piano accompaniment and submit it, because it was a good piece of music.  He told me “Well, DO it!”  So I did, and it got published by Fred Bock Music and went on to be his best-seller.  Jack has been to visit our congregation a couple of times since I’ve been here, and gave us a copy of Come To The Table for our library.