Dover Score of Richard Strauss's Elektra
(Black background, white type, different beige and black graphical motifs running across the score above and below the text)
I was looking for my Elektra score yesterday, and panicked when it wasn't on the shelf where it should be, you know, with the score of Die Frau ohne Schatten. Also nowhere to be seen: the score of Salome, which I'd gotten used at the same time I bought the used Elektra score.
I did eventually figure out that they were on that shelf but tucked in at the very end invisible for various reasons (whew). I was reminded of a....dream? nightmare? I had a few years ago.
Somehow, I'd been pulled in at the last moment to conduct Elektra, and I was trying to figure out how to do this. The score I had was bizarre: two square volumes, maybe 10" x 10", in other words, nowhere near big enough to accommodate the opera's instrumentation. It calls for 111 instruments, the largest orchestra of any work in the standard operatic repertory. (Schoenberg's oratorio Gurrelieder calls for around 150!)
I was in a total panic – really – because I definitely don't know Elektra well enough to conduct it without, say, a year of study. On top of that, a friend was trying to talk to me about something completely different, and I was having to fend her off.
I think I woke up at that point.
2 comments:
I think Messiaen's St. Francois has an orchestra of comparable size. That orchestra, and this one, have the biggest orchestras I've ever played in, including Mahler symphonies or anything else. I'm playing in the flute section, where there are only four of us, as compared to 8 clarinets, 8 horns (plus four Wagner tubas) lots of extra brass and winds, oddities like heckelphone, bass trumpet, contrabass trombone. It's just massive, not only orchestrationally, but in every other way. Your dream sounds like the Lisa Hirsch version of the classic "elephant's nightmare" anxiety dream.
Heh, yes.
Matthew Shilvock posted a photo of the Elektra orchestra in the pit, taken from the audience-right box nearest the stage, and when I enlarged it....I did spot you among the flutes!
I saw the L.A. Phil Gurrelieder in December, 2024, and wow. Unbelievably huge orchestra. A friend who knows the score better than I do said they were short a couple of desks of violins. The four harps were at the front of the orchestra, and they have four RED harps, very striking.
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