None of the tactical or financial considerations above matter much the first time you step into some old church somewhere, to hear, for the first time, a choir rehearse your piece in advance of its world premiere. The choir has already been rehearsing for weeks, and the premiere is tomorrow. They’re giddy to know you’re in the room, as demonstrated by the warm applause that greets your introduction. One by one, choristers take the rare opportunity to ask you about your libretto, right down to individual word choices. Everything you tell them is carefully absorbed—useful to their craft of interpretation. These musicians don’t just want to sing your words at tomorrow’s audience. They’re intent on conveying the meaning behind them.
You’re shown to a seat and handed a copy of the finished score. It’s heavier than you’d imagined it would be. Your name is on the facing page, opposite the composer’s. Your words, in among the staves, have been chopped into irregular, hyphen-divided syllabics.
The conductor’s hands slice the air, a pianist unspools a series of chords you’ve never heard before, the choir takes a collective breath…and suddenly sixty mouths are carving your words into the strange and marvelous space the music has made.
The phrasing isn’t what you’d expected. Nor is it a direct line-by-line delivery—some phrases repeat, or overlap. There’s discord. Pauses disrupt the flow while the piano elaborates. The conductor stops the rehearsal to give notes. Someone grumbles, someone laughs. It’s unlike any poetry reading you’ve ever attended. You’re somehow both instrumental to the work being done and incidental to it. The work is yours and not yours at the same time, a blend of languages—tonal, nontonal, and pitch-accent, all three. Your words aren’t distinct from the whole but integrated. Your vowels and consonants aren’t merely literary symbols but musical notations. You’ve worked hard to bring your voice to the page—but what is your voice, when so many other voices have united in bringing it off the page?
Beyond words and music, there is a third thing taking shape in this room—bigger than either, by a multiplicative factor. And the full shape of it won’t be apparent till tomorrow evening, when the pianist is joined by the other instrumentalists in the accompanying ensemble. Ticket holders will take their seats in the concert hall, your words in the programs in their laps. The instruments will finish tuning, and the house lights will go down. An anticipatory hush will come over everyone…. {read}