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Jul 7 2007

A Brief History of “Job”

“Job” started for me in 1986 when I was reading the book of Job in the Old Testament for what may have been the first time. I realized it was an epic poem and was struck by its complexity, beauty, and emotional intensity. I decided to see if I could rearrange some of its verses to put them into modern verse that could be sung. Plenty of people had done the same thing with many of the psalms, but I did not know if anyone had attempted to put “Job” to music.

I started at the beginning ( which is a very fine place to start)…
“A long time ago in the land of Uz
Lived a man named Job and righteous he was”

It had somewhat of a Dr. Suess-ish quality (not to mention being “Yoda-speak”), but it was a start.

I got a fairly good start on a set of lyrics, having written the opening, Lucifer’s meetings with God, and even some of the friends’ discourses, but then life intervened and “Job” languished in my computer files for almost 20 years. Then, early in 2006, I decided to see if I could do any more with it.

In a matter of weeks, I had what I believed was a workable libretto for a rock opera. I printed it out (it was about 30 pages of nothing but words) and showed it to my wife, saying, “I wrote an opera… but it needs music.”

She looked at me incredulously and said, “What are you telling me for?” She was none too keen on the idea of spending the amount of time she knew it would take to write that much music… not to mention the fact that neither of us had ever done anything like this before. We tried many times to enlist others to write the music, but no one ever came through.

In the meantime, Suzanne had read through most of the lyrics and started organizing some of them into separate songs.

Then the music started coming. At first we tried to work it where I would tell her how I thought the song should go and she’d attempt to make it the way I thought it should be. That wasn’t working at all, so she started writing what SHE was hearing for the songs.

I think “Windblown Leaf” was the first song Suzanne put to music. She wasn’t sure I would like it because it sounded nothing like how I told her it should be. When she played it for me, I literally wept. I had never heard anything more beautiful in my life and I had no idea the music for these words could be so moving.

More songs followed. I would sometimes wake up in the morning and realize that Suzanne, who is rarely an early riser, was not in bed. She was in the music room writing down the music that she eiher dreamed about or woke up hearing in her head. Most of the time she would not quit until she had it at least in a workable form that she could finish later.

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