All's Well That Ends

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Can you name the piece at left?

It's known by its incipit, the first line. As such it is "L'homme armeé", the "Armed Man" - or armèd, to take a Shakespearean accent to it.

It's a sort of 14th Century public service announcement to "beware the armed man who is on the roads, you should wear a coat of chain mail".

Good advice in all time periods, I think.

For a lot of musicbabble reasons concerning things like perfect fourth crusis intervals and subtonic shifting relations and other things not worth going into if you're not a music major - or a composer - this tune has a lot of useful little structures in it.

You can take things apart like Legos (©) and rework them in all sorts of interesting ways.

Like Silly Putty (©) you can stretch them out, compress them, throw them against the wall - and they'll all pretty much stick.

It's found its way into several of my pieces, even some arrangements I wrote for my chorus in North Yarmouth, far back in the day. A sort of private musician's joke.

I bring this before you because it was bubbling under my thoughts and feelings during my visit to my father this weekend past. I've been asked (as opposed to "commissioned" which would imply pay) to write not so much a score as much as create a background ambience to be played during the Naked Shakespeare Company's performance of "Alls Well That Ends Well".

This production opens in three days as part of the Portland Fringe Festival, the fringe of the Portland Performing Arts Festival.

The Performing Arts Festival is about a dozen "big" acts and costs about $75 for a complete ticket.

Cash.

The Fringe Festival is all of the "other" organizations that are also vying for audience attention - and financial relevancy - by putting on really cool stuff and hoping people get back into the habit of attending live performances.

Naked Shakespeare is run by ACORN Theatre, which came out of the old Acorn Theatre on Oak Street, where I did most of my onstage Shakespeare work years ago, both as actor and composer.

"Alls Well That Ends Well" is one of the Bard's "problem" plays in that it isn't a Comedy ("Merry Wives of Windsor", "Two Gentlemen of Verona"), a history ("Henry the Fifth", "King John"), a romance {"Romeo and Juliet") or a tragedy ("Hamlet", "Othello").

No, a problem play has to be taken on its own merits - "Measure For Measure", "Troilus and Cressida" and maybe "The Merchant of Venice" are others - neither "fish nor fowl nor good red herring".

The director, Mike Levine, has adjusted the play so that it now is set in late Victorian Portland, Maine - the Victorian Mansion in our town being the source for design inspiration - it's now called "All's Well On the Waterfront".

Since the action is continuous and the audience literally walks from scene to scene the sound had to suggest a menacing yet optimistic feeling, not interfere with the voices of the actors nor call attention to itself by making any sonic statement that would break focus from the action.

I think I've succeeded - the director told me this evening that it worked really well in tonight's run. This means it sets people on edge but isn't noticeable.

I can strongly identify with it.

And tucked away in the droning string part, stretched out to four times its length is my old friend "L'homme Armeè" - and I identify with him because you have to look out for the sound - it makes you nervous and you might want to have your defenses on.

Because good theatre and music - and wild emotions - can sneak up on you.

If you're lucky.

Portland, Maine