Timon of Athens

supplement to
The Duke – Where and When
A Chronicle of Duke Ellington's Working Life and Travels

Background:

1963 was a busy year for Duke Ellington. From January 9 until mid-March, the orchestra toured Europe and Britain. Most returned home in early March, but Ellington and Strayhorn stayed in France. Ellington got sick and was hospitalized in Paris, finally going home March 15.

Near the end of May, the band began a month in Europe, touring U.S. military bases for a week, then Scandinavia, finishing June 23. In early September, off they went again, this time for the well-known tour of the near east and south Asia. Meanwhile, back at the ranch...:

In London (England) in January, the director of an upcoming Stratford Festival play saw Ellington perform part of Such Sweet Thunder and thought of asking him to compose the music for the play Timon of Athens. Wire stories announced the engagement as early as February 5.

Ellington was also hired to produce a one-hour musical revue (My People) for the American Negro Emancipation Centennial Authority, to be performed from August 16 to September 3. He was working both projects at the same time.

Timon of Athens:

This gloomy Shakespearean tragedy in modern costume was the one of four plays performed in rotation at the 1963 Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ont.'s Festival Theatre from July 29 to Sept. 13.

Stratford Festival archivist C. Schindler confirmed the closing date and advised Timon of Athens alternated with the other productions presented during the season, based on the 1963 season brochure, there were on average two performances per week and there were both matinee and evening performances.

---

• Initial reviews say Ellington wrote the incidental music, as well as a dance (Skillipoop), and a march for the banquet scene. THE BILL / SHAKESPEARE PROJECT says Duke composed twenty original songs for the show, and Franceschina says the play had 30 musical cues.
  
  
• Down Beat 1963-03-28 p.13

  'Duke Ellington has been commissioned to compose a score for Timon of Athens, which is to be presented at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Stratford, Ontario, on July 29. Director Peter Coe will stage this Shakespearean exposition of greed and ingratitude in ancient Greece in contemporary costumes and setting, the first time a work of the Bard has been so presented at the annual festival.'

  
  
• Timon of Athens' first director, Peter Coe, said he was attending an Ellington concert in London, England, in January when he thought of asking Ellington to compose the score. Arrangements may have been made in the early part of February, since the engagement was widely announced in wire stories as early as 1963-02-05.
• In mid-June, Coe was replaced by Michael Langham.
  
  
• Daniel Fischlin:

  'Michael Langham, artistic director at the Stratford Festival, developed a forceful and non-traditionalist view of performing and staging Shakespearean works...Timon of Athens...served as an inaugural lesson in production, directorial interpretation and interpellation, and adaptation at the conservative and traditionalist Stratford Festival... Langham's Timon of Athens was set in the roaring twenties and dirty thirties, where the cast wore modern dress, smoked cigarettes, carried briefcases, and held lavish parties at villas and mansions. In order to properly situate the setting, Duke Ellington, a modern jazz giant and a regular contributor to the Festival, composed twenty original songs, a score that enriched and cultivated the themes and contexts already established within the work as adapted by Langham.'

  
  
• Franceschina fully describes the play, its reception, the underlying events, the music and some critic's reviews.
  
  Franceschina:

  ...Even though Duke had worked with Coe on the project in England, when the change of directors was announced, he held up any further progress on the score until he could find out what Mr. Langham had in mind, ...or so he said to the Canadian press when he arrived in Stratford a mere two weeks before the production was set to open, without a note of the music on paper
  
  ...At his first meeting with Michael Langham,...without a note of the score on paper, Duke managed to fulfill the director's expectations by playing musical themes off the top of his head and altering them effortlessly, according to Langham's specifications
  
  ...In Music Is My Mistress, Ellington notes that Langham was his inspiration in directing My People in Chicago: In Stratford, while the orchestra was rehearsing the music for Timon, I would watch Michael Langham direct the actors, and when I went to Chicago I would stand in front of my cast, extend my arm as Michael did, and make like a heavy director".

  
  
• Ellington wrote for a 6-piece band on stage (trumpet, clarinet, french horn, bass, drums, guitar) and a 16-piece [sic] pit (flute, oboe, english horn, clarinet, 3 saxes, 2 trumpets, 2 French horns, trombone, guitar, cello, bass, 2 drummers). While that suggests 17 pit musicians, it seems likely at least one woodwind would have doubled.
  
  
• Franceschina describes 30 musical cues in the score, including (not in this order):
  • Angry
  • Banquet Music
  • Conscience
  • Counter Theme
  • Gold
  • Gossip
  • Impulsive Giving
  • Ocean
  • Overture
  • Regal Banquet
  • Revolutionary Music
  • Skillipoop
  • Smoldering
  • Storm
  • The Banquet Scene
  
  
• A CP wirephoto of Ellington flanked by two actresses appeared in The Hamilton Spectator 1963-07-02, which would suggest Ellington was in Stratford in late June or the beginning of July.
  
  
• Ellington went to Stratford briefly on July 13 to ensure his music fitted new director Langham's conception of the play.
  
  The Windsor Star, 1963-07-15:

  STRATFORD (CP)–DUKE ELLINGTON paid a quick visit here Saturday to discuss the progress he is making in composing the incidental music for "Timon of Athens" opening at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival July 29 with director MICHAEL LANGHAM.
    The score is the first the living legend of swinging jazz has been commissioned to write for a Shakespearean play anywhere.
    The Duke, who dedicated his "Such Sweet Thunder" suite to the festival in 1957, agreed to do the score even before he read the play. After all, he said during an interview, you can't ask anything more than to write for Shapespeare [sic].
    Ellington discussed the play in London, England, with PETER COE, the play's original director, but found it necessary to come to Stratford when Coe had to turn over direction to Langham.
    The Duke's score will have strains of the Oriental here, the South American there, but mainly it will be pure Ellington. When the action swings, the music will swing.
    One piece that won't swing is the "Queen" at the start of the performance. The Duke looked shocked when it was suggested he might be planning a jazz version of the National Anthem to blend with the play's score. I don't like the idea of messing around with the National Anthem.

  The more complete version of the same story appeared in Buffalo Courier-Express 1963-07-15, with the spelling corrected, adding

  The play as conceived by Coe and the play as conceived by Langham are two different plays, Ellington said, but the difference has affected the music only slightly.
  
  Seeks to Avoid Clash
  
  Ellington conferred here with Langham to ensure his music will conception [sic] of the play, he said, for the music should focus on the production.

  
  
• CP's wirestory review of the July 29 opening said it was unveiled in a chorus of bravos from audience and critics alike, the house was near-capacity and 81 drama, music, ballet and jazz critics and reviewers from throughout North America attended.
  
  
• Down Beat, 1963-09-12, p. 43:

  'Duke Ellington's score for Timon of Athens at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival offered a tantalizing combination of Latin American and Oriental music for a sumptuous banquet scene and a melancholy march that beautifully highlighted the dramatic action of the last act. For the rest of the play, the music receded gently into the background, but it was unmistakably Ellington. [....] The play can be seen at Stratford until its final performance on Sept. 13.'

  
  
• In 1964, Timon of Athens was presented at the Chichester festival in England with re-orchestrated music.
  
  
• The play was presented May 15, 17 and 18, 1964, at Milton College, Milton Junction, Wisc. with Ellington's permission, directed by Professor Ethel Rich, an international vicepresident of the Duke Ellington Society. This is said to be one reason the college awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humanities degree to Duke that June.
  
  
• Timon of Athens was presented again in 1991 at Stratford and in New York, with much of the music replaced by older Ellington compositions.
  

---