Incidental Music for 'The Private Life of the Master Race' (1994)
Voice(s) and ensemble
Duration: 12 minutes
Note
In the Spring of 1994, I was asked by director Zuleikha Allana to provide music for a production of Berthold Brecht's play
'The Priavate Life of the Master Race.' It would be the first of two wonderful collaborations we did while at college;
the second was incidental music for Garcia Lorca's 'House of Bernarda Alba.'
Brecht's play consists of a series of vignettes of daily life during the Third Reich, documenting a culture of suspicion and
betrayal growing within German society. Zully had chosen several of the vignettes, moved a number of things around and
transplanted some of the scenes to modern day India, which had recently seen Hindu-Muslim violence in the aftermath of
the destruction of the Babri Masjid. My job was to provide three songs - an opening chanted by the full cast and two solos
- as well as some transitional music. The play was a great success.
Limitations weren't part of my vocabulary at the time and so I created an orchestra-accompanied chanted chorus and two
complicated songs with harp and strings. I spent a few nights in the recording studio with Nathaniel Reichman to record
all the music on a sampler. Later, I would excerpt and revise two of the songs, which were read at a workshop a few months
later: there’s a recording of that somewhere.
In my archive I have the original cassette recording, various versions of the two songs, and an annotated photocopy of a
sketch score for the opening and transitions. This forms the basis of the engraved version of the score. The text is from
the English translation of Brecht's play.
When I compared what I engraved to the original tape, I discovered that there was also a prelude - it bears a strong resemblance
to the opening of Jesus Christ Superstar - and that the sketch score and recording don’t exactly match up. (The recording is better.)
I made a few quick changes, but I don’t have time - or the impetus - now to sort this out, so for now, the score will have to be
the 'manuscript version.'
- Nelsonville, September 2025
Performance History:
performed with electronic accompaniment
23, 24, 25 April 1994
Bennington College
Bennington, Vermont
Listen
Archival Recordings (original synthesized version)
Prelude
Chorus: "And when the Fuhrer had created order"
Incidental Music and Song: "Thus neighbor betrayed neighbor"
Incidental Music and Song: "And we pursued alien people"
See
Original Program
Score
Score
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