Continuing my journey of discovering music by my father's students, we begin with the old All My Children theme, written by Jim Reichert. In college a friend turned me on to the show, and I watched it through a couple of years of college and off and on through grad school and beyond until my daughter required my attention more urgently. That was okay, because by then it seemed to me that it had cycled through all its shopworn plots and was just repeating them with new characters.
I'm not sure whether I knew of Reichert's involvement with the show's music or not. A letter he wrote to Dad reminded me that I met him (he said I was "a doll") in the 80s at Carnegie Hall, when I was in an orchestra accompanying the Oberlin Choir on tour. In earlier letters, he mentioned his Emmy nominations and win for his work on the show. He was teaching with David Diamond, at the Manhattan School of Music, I believe, and wryly presented his accolades in contrast with Diamond's successes in the more serious music world. I kind of think Dad, who knew vaguely (as he knew many things not musical) of my obsession with the show, told me about Rechert's work on it when he told me one of his old students might be coming backstage, but I have no clear memory of any of it.
Anyway, I consider the opening iconic, even if not serious, music. Its emphasis on strings and orchestration are right out of the playbook Dad used when writing and arranging Muzak, and it has a powerful earworm quality. It is also appropriate to introduce a post about my ghazal, "Cosette's Garden," being up at t'ART Online (still a bridesmaid there) because metaphorically, my works are my children, and this blog, which occasionally brings up my actual children, is where I recycle the shopworn plots of my aspirations for all my children and their tribulations, from conceptualization through their struggles in the outside world.
The ghazal kids, one of which I mentioned here, were written in response for a call from Rattle, and even though that publication had no use for my efforts, I was happy to learn a new form and liked several of the ghazals I wrote quite a bit. "Cosette's Garden" is inspired by the full-text version of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, and specifically by his poetic description of the garden where she meets secretly with Marius. I think it's musical and moving, though I may be swayed by my admiration for the novel. Many thanks to the t'ART team, and please go check out all the fascinating work they are doing.
Speaking of fascinating work and the wide variety of commercial and aesthetic creations artists produce, I will close with Omniphony I, a serious, collaborative composition between Tod Dockstader and Jim Reichert that he sent to Dad on a record, with a letter saying he was proud of it for the reasons given in the linked material. I agree that it combines conventional compositional and instrumental technique with electronic experimentation in an original way, and I am intrigued to hear what I perceive as some of Dad's drama and orchestration technique in a fresh (for 1967) sonic setting. Enjoy or be outraged, but if you give it a little time, you'll hear some beautiful fragments in Omniphony.
Photo credit: WTillman451, All My Children Logo. 15 August 2018. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
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