As you may have learned from another recent post, the graduating class of 2014 is hosting our Rome Show on Friday, August 8.
As part of that event, we will be selling copies of the soundtrack from our 2011 Cultural History Play – Ilion. The album will be available for purchase via download codes at the event, and can also be purchased online at any time.
You can listen to the soundtrack over at ilion-soundtrack.bandcamp.com. The liner notes are included in this very post! See below.
Ilion Soundtrack by UWSA Class 2014
As my class prepares to graduate, it seems like a good time to reflect back on this thing we somehow accomplished – creating a play out of nothing – writing a script, composing music, raising funds, building sets, designing costumes, filming, and acting. We put our 70-odd minds together and imagined a world. Then we built it. It was an incredible experience, and it showed me that the design processes in music, writing, and architecture are remarkably similar.
Ilion is the story of the Trojan War, centered around the warrior Achilles, intertwined with the stories of the legendary poet Homer and the 19th century archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. The music was written to draw these storylines together. We performed it live, and afterward managed to record it at a local studio. In the notes that follow, we travel behind the scenes.
Track 1: Overture
A hush came over the audience as the first chords rang out. There was no announcement, no indication – we just started playing, and it all began. That was the magic of performing music live.
We had talked for weeks, jokingly, about having an overture for Ilion. It seemed like such a fancy thing to do. Finally, we sat down to write one, trying to catch the grand but melancholy tone of the story. You can hear our signature build-up from simple piano, adding strings one by one, finishing with a string of dissonant chords and a drawn-out note on the cello.
Track 2: Homer Awakens
This track illustrates the informal way in which we wrote the music. We needed a raw and rough sound for the awakening of Homer – so Alex Bodkin and Clara Walker figured out a way to basically make the cello sound like an airplane engine. Then Aidan Mitchelmore played some cool chimes in the background.
None of this could be written out in musical notation. In fact, I think the whole soundtrack was composed and performed without writing a single note. Clara helpfully kept cue cards, and we memorized the rest. This worked, most of the time.
Track 3: Invocation
During this scene, some magic happened on stage. The muses formed a circle and performed a kind of dance ritual, and at the end Achilles inexplicably appeared in the center. Here we used simple scales and repeated notes, passed back and forth between cello and violin, gradually rising and stretching out, to match the rising tension on stage.
Track 4: The Shield of Achilles
Here Homer is blinded when she first sees the incredible object created by Felix Cheong and others – the shield of Achilles. This scene is also the source of the line, “the image of the cosmos is seen through pain.” If any part of our play can be said to have inspired a meme… Well, it can’t, but this comes closest, I guess.
Track 5: War March
This track is representative of a lot of drumming which occurred in the play. Ilion is a war story, and so there must necessarily be marching. The soldiers needed drums so they could march in time. They were not very good at this. But they look awesome.
Track 6: The Dual
This is the epic dual between Achilles and Hector, in which Achilles fights with his shield behind his back, because he doesn’t want to damage the prop. The sound you hear is another kind of dual: natural harmonics on cello and violin. At one point the soft sounds on the cello become so beautifully distorted they start sounding like an electric guitar.
Since the musicians were in a curtained alcove beside the stage, only Alex Bodkin could see the action occurring. He had to raise and lower his arms to inform Clara and I when to make it sound more or less intense. Arms above the shoulders meant “louder, now it is very exciting,” while lowered arms meant “softer, Caelin is making his dying speech.”
Track 7: Call to Battle
We used this short track as atmospheric background for Achilles’ inspiring speech to rally his troops. “Men of Greece, take heart!” The simple combination of cello, violin, and djembe – it’s one of my favourites.
Track 8: Death of Achilles
Here it is. The battle music you’ve all been waiting for.
This was the battle scene where Achilles was going to die. We writers had written it as a series of flashing tabloid poses, where alternating light and darkness would reveal the actors in different positions. The directors tried it out with the warriors in the cast, and it seemed to fall flat. We worried that it would just be boring.
Then, late at night, Aidan Mitchelmore and Rachel Cohen-Murison sat down at the piano. And, almost spontaneously, they came up with a melody and a rhythm which alternated between quiet chords and heavy rhythmic drumbeats. They called me over, and I added a violin part. Sean Maciel overheard, called the directors down, and they listened. And suddenly, it was like, “this can work for the battle scene.”
There were further edits, but the next time we rehearsed that scene, we put it together with live music, and it all flowed together, vivid and dramatic.
This was an example of times when writing, acting, choreography and music worked back and forth, each influencing the other.
Track 9: Funeral
The accordion, of all things, is the instrument that infuses and blends this track together, pulsing through each chord like an orchestra taking a deep breath. We were all pretty shocked when we discovered it could make sounds like this. I think we had the preconception that accordions are good only for folksy jigs and ballads – but something magical happens when you slow it down.
Track 10: The Trojan Horse
It’s time to enter the horse.
From the beginning of the writing process, we knew we wanted to do something more with the Trojan Horse than make a big ‘rocking horse’ prop. Soon the idea emerged to immerse the audience, along with the Greek soldiers, inside the horse’s belly. This translated on set into building giant ribs rigged with black fabric and drawing them up around the crowd.
The music had to communicate a sense of enclosure, an almost stifling atmosphere, and also movement – it wouldn’t be easy to drag the huge beast inside the city walls. You’d need teams of people hauling on ropes. We thought of the Greek ships and the manpower it took to row them, pulling stroke after stroke in rhythm. This became the inspiration for the music: heavily bowed strokes from the cello, gradually joined by violins, clarinet, flute, melodica.
Track 11: Helen
The curtain falls. Soldiers pour out of the horse, running into the city. Heinrich Schliemann, the archaeologist, somehow experiences the scene as he stands in the ruins. And the piano’s melody washes up and down underneath the violins’ tense tremolo, about to break, about to snap.
“I see it! I see it all!”
So many things went into this final scene: Giles Hall’s passionate delivery of Schliemann’s descent into madness, the video projections of half our class running across a field at midnight carrying spears and shields, the watery image of Helen appearing at the final moment.
The piano plays a repeated scale as the strings drop and begin building. “He found her,” Schliemann declares. “He saw her – Helen!”
The music swells and fades. Curtain.
One last thing: several pieces were left out of this recording because of logistics and time. But I want to credit Kate Black and Simon McKenzie for their wonderful singing parts in the original live production – Kate as Helen when Achilles sneaks into Troy, and Simon as the god Apollo after his arrow strikes Achilles’ heel.
Credits (full list on bandcamp page):
Photos: Jason Wu and Polly Auyeung. Album cover design: Dennis Tang.
Musicians in recording: Alex Bodkin (music director), Amina Lalor, Clara Walker, Rachel Cohen-Murison (music director), Richard Ganton, Rosemary Ganton, Samuel Ganton.
Other musicians in original live production: Aidan Mitchelmore, Desiree Geib, Katelynn Black, Natalie Hui, Sabrina Leung, Simon McKenzie.
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