Hymns For Martyred Actors
I have no graphics, no audio and no video to share. Photos exist, but I haven’t yet found them and scanned them. All I can share is some vague memories. And my mind may be blocking a lot of them out, for creating this unusual musical was not a happy experience.
I was the composer, and, I hasten to tell you, none of the songs were hymns. My collaborator wrote the script and lyrics and directed. It was his Masters Thesis project at NYU/Tisch – in directing.
I’m not going to reveal his name but I’ll explain why. The man became extremely famous, the pre-eminent playwright of our generation. Plenty has been written about him but this here website is about the work of Noel Katz, not his famous collaborators. You might be impressed that I worked with a genius who later won all sorts of prizes, but I want to impress you with my work, not the fact that I long ago was tethered to a rising star.
The setting of our show is medieval France, so I went to Lincoln Center’s Library of the Performing Arts to learn a little about the music of that time and place. I became fascinated by the modal scales – we’re all used to major and minor, but there are many others – and planned to write each number in a different mode. I also used some rarely-heard time signatures. All of this gave the score a vaguely medieval feel. Think Pippin without the pop.
About a month after our triumphant sold-out performances, I ran into my collaborator in front of my building. We greeted each other warmly, and I asked whether the show had a future. “It’s possible,” he said, “but our working relationship was such trouble, if I ever do it again, I’ll find a different composer.”
There's Gotta Be a Song 