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Orchestration of Thespis by Gilbert and Sullivan
Glasgow, Glasgow City, United Kingdom
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Aim
I will remake the lost orchestration of Thespis by Gilbert and Sullivan, to enable performances and preserve it for generations to come.
My plan is to recreate the orchestration of Thespis, a lost Gilbert and Sullivan opera, which was arranged by Garth Morton and Terence Rees. The original orchestration, as created by Gilbert and Sullivan, was lost over a century ago; since then, several partnerships have revived it in various forms, using works taken from lesser-known Gilbert and Sullivan works (as well as some of Sullivan’s own solo compositions) and setting them to the libretto text, which survived. Since Rees and Morton were given unprecedented access to the D’Oyly Carte archive, and used what they found to recreate Thespis, it is acknowledged amongst experts and authorities in the field that the Rees/Morton version is the most authentic and accurate reworking of the opera. After a run of successful performances of this version in the 1960s, this orchestration was sadly lost due to damp and poor storage conditions. My hope is that by remaking the orchestration (full score and parts) in digital form, this musically historical and cultural work will be resurrected and preserved.
(Excerpt 1 from the piano/vocal score, created by Pitch Perfect Music Services in 2019)
In 2019, Garth Morton contacted myself at Pitch Perfect Music Services to enquire about creating a typeset version of the piano and vocal score from his amended manuscript; this was successfully completed by myself and approved by Morton, however sadly in 2020, he passed away before a printed version was produced (his son Charles Morton has since overseen the final creation, which includes a tribute page to his father). Prior to his passing, he asked that if there was interest in putting on full-scale theatrical performances from this, I was to re-orchestrate it: now that there is indeed that interest that has come about from myself and Charles publicising the piano/vocal score (specifically, the Wolverton Gilbert and Sullivan Society has proposed a run of performances in 2026/2027), this is exactly what I am intending to do. To bring this lost work back to life, and make these (and future) performances a possibility, I plan to use recordings taken from a performance in 1969, combined with the music notation files I already have from creating the piano/vocal score, as well as scores from the British Library, to remake the orchestration and parts. This will be of great benefit to the English musical theatre world, in particular the Gilbert and Sullivan community, as I am aware that there is a lot of interest in this version of Thespis and in seeing it performed again.
(Excerpt 2)
Myself and Garth Morton had worked together to create a house style that most closely resembled the print style of existing Gilbert and Sullivan typeset music; by keeping this house style, and working directly from these recordings, I plan to ensure that Thespis will be able to live on in the most authentic way possible, and the most true to the wishes of both pairings of Garth Morton and Terence Rees, and Gilbert and Sullivan themselves.
(Excerpt 3)
Note: As things are, I am aware that there are some musical variations between the format of the piano/vocal score music as I created it under Garth Morton, and his/Terence Rees’s orchestral version they created in the 1960s: upon gaining the opinions of authority figures in the Gilbert and Sullivan world, I have decided to make alternative versions of the movements in question based on the original Rees/Morton format, so that in the future, a performing company may choose which version they wish to do - the one that was heard in the 1960s, or the one Morton amended in 2019.
(Excerpt 4)
Funding method
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