Musical Backgrounds

I FIRST STARTED READING memorial Web sites dedicated to Matt on Friday, October 23, 1998, about a week and half after his passing. One feature that helped to strengthen the emotional impact for me was the use of musical tracks on some of the pages.

Miller and Miller

Among the first tracks I remember hearing was Les Herrman's 1993 arrangement of "Let Peace Begin with Me" — lyrics and music by Jill Jackson Miller and Sy Miller. A fellow who contributed to the original message board, "Remembering Matthew Shepard," had added a simple tribute on his Web site — "A Page for Matthew" — which carried this track. I made a duplicate file of Herrman's arrangement so that I could pan the instrumental parts widely from left to right.

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Rodgers and Hammerstein

Soon after seeing this page, I came across a California author's memorial to Matt that used an arrangement of "You'll Never Walk Alone" — lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, music by Richard Rodgers, from Rodgers and Hammerstein's second musical play, Carousel (1945).

The R&H song would take a bit of re-scoring and re-panning on my part to give it the spacious sound I'd prefer. The MIDI file I downloaded didn't list the arranger's name. For now, I'm using instead an instrumental version of the song I found on You Tube. This presentation gives the lyrics on screen. My only regret is that it uses Hammerstein's original words — "Keep your chin up high." The words we usually hear these days — the ones used in the 1956 film version of the show — sound better in my opinion: "Hold your head up high."

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Verdi

As I mentioned on the home page, I knew, as early as November 1998, that I would like to build my own Web site in Matt's honor. Because of the emotional impact I felt from hearing musical selections on the early tribute sites, I wanted to add music to the memorial page of this site. One score that kept coming to my mind was Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlo, which I had studied a number of years earlier — a work that the composer and his librettists adapted from Friedrich von Schiller's tragedy. To my mind, several themes of this musical drama point to Matt's story — friendship, sacrifice, the quest for self-determination.

I decided to adapt portions of Acts IV and V -- selections that would convey sorrow, aspiration, bravery, and tranquillity — in that order. I also kept in mind that the musical tracks must not compete with the main focus of the page — the written message. Readers should be able to concentrate on the text and hear themselves think.

I have included most of the words of the final duet on the Poetry and Short Essays page. Following this number, the published score has 41 measures that lead up to the final curtain — too energetic and brilliant to sustain the dusky, tranquil mood. So I wrote the last three measures myself — similar to ones the composer wrote to end the Agnus Dei movement of his Requiem (1874) and the Act I preludes to Aïda (1871) and Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball, 1859).

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On June 2, 2009, I added a link, the fourth one below, to a performance on You Tube of Rodrigo's death scene, starting from "Felice ancor io son se abbraciar ti poss'io" ("I am content if I may embrace you once more"). The English subtitles are very good; but for those who don't know any Italian, I have translated this much, since the English for this line doesn't appear on screen. This file features baritone Piero Cappuccilli as Rodrigo and tenor José Carreras as Carlo.

J. H.

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