Leroy Anderson and his children Eric and Jane
| Leroy Anderson received many letters about
his music and he responded to everyone. Here is one unusual letter from a high school
student in the 1960's and his illuminating response. Dear Mr. Anderson: Our high school orchestra has performed three of your pieces in the past year, "Fiddle-Faddle", "Sleigh Ride" and "The Syncopated Clock." Each piece was played well and received an enthusiastic response from the audiences. They were the kind of pieces that all the members enjoyed performing. All, this is, except for one little section --- the viola. We found our part to be absolutely insulting to our musicianship. Being a musician yourself, you must know how frustrating it is to sit through an entire piece and pizzicato while the other sections saw out beautiful melodies. Your parts treat us like a bunch of low-grade, moronic idiots! My five-year-old sister could play our part with ease! I really donąt understand why you bothered writing us a part anyway. It's as if you had finished the score and someone came up and said, "Hey, there's another instrument you forgot." You shouldnąt have troubled yourself because the part isnąt worth the paper you printed it on! Please, please, please, give us a break. I'd admire you if I was out in the audience because all your pieces are fun to listen to. But, being a violist I canąt help but hate you for the way you treat us. I hope this letter is not insulting in any way because it's only meant to let off steam and to voice a very strong opinion. Sincerely yours, Linda B. Leroy Anderson's Response Dear Linda, I was very much interested to receive your letter because I know exactly how you feel. You see, I used to play the double bass, and if you think those viola parts are dull, you should see the parts we bass players have to put up with. Mostly we just go "zoom, zoom, zoom" all the way through the piece. From your remarks I have the feeling you donąt quite understand how music is orchestrated. When I have a new piece of music fixed in my mind, I make a sketch containing all the notes of the music and then mark which notes are to be played by strings, woodwinds and brass. From this sketch I make a full score with the notes each instrument is to play written out. The particular part of the music I assign to each instrument --- melody, accompaniment, countermelody, etc. --- depends on the music I am orchestrating. The bass part, of course, is generally given to the double bass, and in the three numbers of mine you mentioned I assigned the accompaniment to the second violins and violas because they are the instruments best suited to the purpose. When the full orchestra plays you will notice that the horns are also playing the accompaniment, because they happen to be better suited to this than trumpets and trombones. I can assure you that I try to make all the orchestra parts as interesting as possible, including the viola. If you will look at the enclosed viola parts of "The Girl in Satin" and "The First Day of Spring," you will see that the violas have a lot of interesting melodic passages. And far from treating you like "low-grade, moronic idiots," in "The Girl I Left Behind Me" from the "Irish Suite" I have given the violas some pretty difficult passages to play. I hope that you will have the chance to play these numbers someday. In the meantime, when you are playing the accompaniment, remember that this is just as important to the music as the melody. At least we bass players and viola players are better off than the poor triangle player who had to count 104 measures of rest and then go "ping!" Thank you for writing and best regards, Sincerely, Leroy Anderson P.S. - The triangle player missed it. |