Morreale Monologues

Morreale Monologues – song cycle for soprano and piano, c.15:00

In the spring of 2020, I was searching collections of monologues for a new set of songs I wanted to compose for my University of Louisville School of Music faculty colleagues, soprano Emily Albrink. Morreale Monologues sets five short monologues from Vin Morreale’s 300 Monologues. I am drawn to setting monologues and especially Vin’s monologues for meaning of the same characterizations that Vin details in an essay introducing 300 Monologues:

“…monologues can be either inadvertently revealing or self-deceiving…”

“…may let the very foundations of our personality slip out, whether we want them to or not.”

“…quickly reveal more than the character intends, or even understands about his or her own beliefs.”

There are so many wonderful monologues in 300 Monologues that the challenge for me was to narrow my choices to a few. 300 Monologues is divided into two sections of monologues: 180 dramatic and 120 comedic. Based on length, personal impact on me, and whether the texts “sang” to me, I narrowed each category down to about a dozen each, then finally down to the five monologues in this work: three comedic and two dramatic.

The songs are arranged in an alternating pattern of comedic and dramatic, with the two dramatic songs being the second and fourth of the set. We start and end with humor.

The history of Morreale Monologues has a very unexpected twist. After I had purchased Vin’s 300 Monologues, I realized very quickly that I wanted to set some of them. At that point, I needed to contact the writer and/or publisher to see if I could get permission to set the texts. In researching Vin, I was shocked to discover that he had a Louisville connection with his acting teaching and was further shocked when I learned that he was living in a suburb of Louisville! I immediately met with Vin for a delightful afternoon of wide-ranging conversation and walking through his wooded property. I still can’t get over the synchronicity of this!

The texts as they appear in Morreale Monologues have been adjusted only slightly. In a couple of spots I have universalized the text, taking out a few specific references in the hope of allowing the pieces to speak to more listeners. In a couple of spots I dropped a conjunction or an article to allow the melodies to flow more freely. In a few places, I repeated snippets of text. All of these are trivial adjustments, really, and have no impact on the power of Vin’s words.

Performance Notes:

Throughout the score, tempi are not to be slavishly followed. They are given to provide a sense of context and relative pacing. They are more than suggestions but less than laws. The performers should feel free to inhabit the work.

Many cautionary accidentals are given, but they are not placed in parentheses. Often, the music quickly passes through harmonic regions, and the additional accidentals are intended to help.

The score contains the preferred order of the songs, but I am open to rearranging them, extracting them, or dropping them from the set.

Steve Rouse, October 2020