Jonathan Tunick: Star Orchestrator

Darryn King, The EGOT Winner Behind Sondheim’s Signature Sound, NYTimes, Jan. 10, 2023.

I enjoyed this article, though I’m not very familiar with Tunick’s work, which is mostly for Broadway musicals. He’s obviously very good, for he’s won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards (hence EGOT) for it.

“But what does he do?” you ask. “He orchestrates.” “Orchestrates?” “Orchestrates.”

A composer passes along a set of lyrics “along with some form of accompaniment. That accompaniment can be a basic chord sheet, a fully realized piano part or anything in between.” It’s the orchestrator’s job to come up with a set of parts for an orchestra to perform; that job includes determining the exact instrumental composition of the orchestra. Are we dealing with a more or less full symphonic complement or a somewhat reduced (and therefore cheaper, though the article says nothing about cost) complement? In the world of big jazz bands we’d say he’s an arranger. Given the radically different timbres of the instruments, whether in a full orchestra or a reduced one, and the possibilities inherent in coming up with accompanying figures and counter melodies, the orchestrator plays a major role in determining the sound of a musical.

Thus:

More than merely making the music sound pretty or palatable, a great orchestrator “is also a playwright, telling the story and reflecting character in orchestral sound,” said Michael Starobin, who orchestrated Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George” and “Assassins.”

As the “Being Alive” example above demonstrates, orchestration “can hint at unspoken secrets,” Tunick said. “Things that the characters don’t say, or don’t want to say, or don’t even know.”

And THAT’s why I’m writing a blog post about Tunick. He’s a collaborator. Along with the lyricist and the composer, he determines the musical substance to be performed in a musical, a substance realized by the musicians. Beyond that we’ve got set designers, costume designers, lighting, and whatever else is required for the complete theatrical presentation. Theatre is a collaborative art and, as such, is not well-served by an intellectual regime that remains dominated by the idea of individual genius. I suppose that’s one reason Leonard Bernstein is such an important figure, for he combined the roles of composer (responsible for the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic structure of the music) and orchestrator (everything else). As such musicals he’s worked on are more easily assimilated to the genius model.

I could go on and on about this tension, between the aesthetics of lone genius and the practical reality of collaborative art, but I won’t. But I won’t. Theater of any kind is collaborative and so are movies. We call know that, and in one way or another that collaborative nature is accommodated by critics, but they don’t like it and don’t know quite how to deal with it.

I won’t attempt to summarize King’s article. As the title indicates, it focuses on Tunick’s work with Sondheim, but mentions his work with others as well. But I will quote some bits about his background:

ONE PIECE OF MUSIC made a big impression on the young Jonathan Tunick: “Tubby the Tuba,” the 1945 children’s song, centers on a forlorn tuba who longs to play the melody instead of just the bass line. Much like “Peter and the Wolf,” the song highlighted the distinct characters of the individual instruments of the orchestra. “This idea penetrated my growing brain,” he said. “It developed into a lifelong obsession.”

“Tubby the Tuba” made a big impression on me as well, though I must confess that, at this point in my life, I only remember that I listened to the recording, but cannot recall the recording itself (the way I recall the sound of Burl Ives singing “Fiddle-De-Dee”).

And then:

While a student at what is now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, he started his own band and played in the school orchestra as well as in the All City High School Orchestra. He started writing music, majoring in composition at Bard College, before paying his way through Juilliard by performing with the school’s orchestra.

He was considerably more interested in what was happening at Birdland than on Broadway. “Musicals at the time were a little stodgy,” he said. “It was disposable popular entertainment. You’d throw it out like a used Kleenex. I was a little hipper than that.”

While in college, a girlfriend introduced him to Frank Sinatra — and the possibilities of orchestral arrangement. He was struck by the way Nelson Riddle’s arrangements on Sinatra’s breakup album “In the Wee Small Hours” provided commentary, color and context. “He was tone painting,” Tunick said.

And so he was influenced by the world of (big-band) jazz.

There’s more at the link.