Work
Pasticcio espagnol
a song for voice and orchestra
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About
I had the most fantastic opportunity: a full-length orchestral concert with me as the comedic lead. I had plenty of musical comedy material, but I lacked a solid closer to the first half. This song didn’t quite get there since it’s overly long for a comedy song and dog willing it’s the longest I’ll ever write. That said, I’d dearly love to perform it in the Auckland Town Hall since it contains the following elements:
- a made-up story about my made-up great-great-great-grandfather settling in Auckland
- the juxtaposition of stodgy Anglo-Saxon hymnody and Spanish orchestral stylings
- a historically anachronistic reference to Auckland music shop Lewis Eady
- a pun in the title
- one true fact about spheroidal geography
- a gratuitously large number of voiceless dental fricatives (the ‘th’ sound)
- not one but two dance breaks, one with castanets
- a personal rant about orchestral programming in the English-speaking world
- throwing shade at some but not all composers named “Strauss”
- bald-faced self-promotion because I’d quite like to do another musical comedy orchestra gig.
Text note
text by the composer