nebroadwe | Filk: Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II (Reply)

My compatriots and I survived the Triduum again, though I didn't make enough programs for the enormous number of people who decided they had nothing better to do on a Saturday night than sit in church for two and a half hours. Memo to self: make more next year, when inevitably fewer people will show up. More important memo to self: remind fellow music slate selectors next year that the communion rite is longer than they think it is, so we don't end up inserting an instrumental verse between every sung verse of the chosen too-short hymn and then having a panicked discussion while receiving the sacrament about what we should do next (which turned out to be some ~~noodling~~ variations on a theme by by the pianist, anyway).

Off to dim sum now ... but first, the annual Triduum Shakespeare Filk! This year, by request, the front end of Romeo's famous soliloquy from R & J II.ii. It's shorter than I had planned because I didn't expect to be eating dim sum this morning, but maybe I can do the rest of the scene another year.

ROMEO enters the church, brooding like the angsty romantic tenor he is.

He jests at songs that never sang a note.

JULIET appears with her choir above. They sing.

But, soft! What din from yonder choir loft breaks?
Is it Händel or Bridge or Warner now?
Strike hard, o drum, and keep the choir in time
That is already picking up the pace,
Ignoring the conductor's flying hands.
Be not her foe, since she is exhausted,
Her deltoids and her biceps strained and sore,
And none but you do heed her; keep the time!
It is the postlude, O, it is the end!
O, that it truly were!
They fail to modulate, but what of that?
An they're in tune, then none will notice it.
I am too quick; indeed they modulate.
The most enduring earworm in the slate,
Having been practiced, doth remain in mind
To trip from off the tongue proficiently.
What if the tune, once sung, bides in the ear?
The chant of "Alleluia" lifts the heart
As zephyrs do the birds; the soul thus raised
May in the airy region meet its Lord
And join the angels in their sweet accord.
Hear the clear diction of their melic band.
O, that I were a member of that band,
Thus to enunciate!

ROMEO faints dead away from the wonderfulness of it all,
while JULIET and her companions sing on without noticing him.

Yep, diction problems, a piece sung unaccompanied by anything but percussion with a key change in the middle, and not one but two patented Steven C. Warner Ohrwürmer. Not quite as memorable as the year they smoked us with mesquite chips on the new fire, but still a pretty exciting time.