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| had no piano in our hotel room in Paris, but set a few of the poems in my head to
write down later. More followed. One of her poems! didn’t set begins “Mine by the
right of the white election...” Election meant choice. Her white smock hangs today by
her bed in Amherst where she was born and died. White is the color of weddings
and burials. Her choice, | think, was a death marriage to the reverend Charles
Wadsworth of the Arch Street Church in Philadelphia. He was happily married. She
met him about three times in her life. ] would tell her story in 31 of her poems, one
in two different settings, in my cycle “The White Election.”
It was completed in 1981, and broadcast on National Public Radio two years later. It
seems to have made a good impression. Slava Rostropovich had kind words, and
invited me to write something for cello and orchestra that he could schedule on his
upcoming tour in Russia. Placido Domingo invited me to write a song for him.
Renata Scotto wanted me to choose five or so of the White Election songs that she
could include in her concerts. All were big opportunities. Somehow none happened.
Other stuff was coming out the pipeline.
That included my opera “Plump Jack.” Here I would tell the rise and fall of Falstaff in
Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth and Fifth. This was riskier. Now the
accompaniment would be orchestra, not piano, and | had no background in
orchestration. Composing and orchestrating are not the same. Composing is like
writing a play, and orchestration is like casting the play. There are composers that
don’t orchestrate, and orchestrators who don’t compose. Most of us do both. I
always did my own orchestration because no one else would know what I wanted. I
gradually learned from my mistakes. Now! can probably hold my own in
orchestration, although many do that better.
Plump Jack was completed scene by scene over some twenty years. I would think it
was finished, and then decide it wasn’t. My next two operas, each running about an
hour, would be composed much faster. I set “Usher House” to my earlier libretto
based on Poe’s story in about six weeks in 2008 and 2009. “The Canterville Ghost”,
on Wilde’s short story, took me about two weeks each, with two months between,
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