Beethoven 5 (New Orleans Style), Op. 125, No. 3 (2021)

Program Notes:

In 2021, the La Porte High School fall play (Nov. 19-21, 2021) was Leslie Caveny's Love of a Pig. Director Tito Sanchez-Williams approached me and asked me to write some incidental music to the play, since the book calls for diegetic music but we wanted to avoid licensing fees for music under copyright. I happily agreed!

Much of the plot of the play revolves around an ensemble that the main character Jenny plays in. The instrumentation described in the script is unusual, but it is clear both that the ensemble is rehearsing an arrangement of Beethoven 5 to sound like turn-of-the-century New Orleans and that the product... isn't that great. I sought to realize this by writing parts for competent orchestral players that are largely unfamiliar with Dixieland style. Improv-style solos are written out, but often compete with each other and interact in odd ways. The set player looked up one Dixieland beat on the internet and didn't learn anything else. The violin solo is not quite in the right style. All of this is intentional, as the (fictional) players make the best of a subpar arrangement! In the production, a MIDI realization was used with the NotePerformer 3 sound library.