How One Becomes a Musician

Programme Note

"How One Becomes a Musician" was inspired by (and draws upon) the music and writings of Erik Satie, and attempts to capture the peculiar blend of eccentricity, whimsy and melancholy that characterised the great French composer. The piece is conceived for a Speaker giving a sort of after-dinner talk on the subject of Music, accompanied by some "furniture-music" (as Satie termed a kind of live instrumental Muzak) provided by a small band of musicians whom the Speaker periodically bosses about and ridicules.

Perfomers' Note

The Speaker can be "played" in a variety of ways. My vision is of a somewhat eccentric and possibly slightly tipsy gentleman, with a rather upper-class (and preferably bass-baritone) "colonel-ish" English accent. In writing the piece, the precise model I had in mind was the great Englishman Brian Blessed (without the swearing). However, there is no reason that the speaker's part could not be interpreted with a North American or other accent, or indeed in translation to another language altogether. In any case, a degree of "posh-ness" and eccentricity is probably necessary to bring the part off successfully.

The speaker's text is written in blocks at the approximate location that it should start. While the text's length is designed to fit comfortably between its own start point and that of the next block, there are "safety" re-alignment bars indicated which should be repeated until a specific bit of text is spoken, whereupon the band's leader cues the next bar.