My latest project, a sixty-minute retelling of the well known Biblical classic David and Goliath, has been in the works for about three years now.  As with all the stories I create, the music is as important to me as the text, character voices, vocal effects and pacing.

Imagine the opening scene: Young David, alone on the hillside, utters the words, "Let not this lion rend my flesh, oh Lord." The audience hears a whop-whop sound--his sling being swung--and some guitar music. This is just after the opening, a haunting, otherworldly motif for the presence of God.

The music emerges, rapidly moving scales, restless and somewhat threatening in order to charge the listener as best I can with the danger David is in.  The lioness approaches -- lamb clamped in her jaws. He hits her with his stone then stabs her with his blade twice until he's sure she is dead. (I use the same music later during the battle scene, with variations.) At that point, the music, which has been in a minor key, shifts to major.

David pulls the lamb from the lion's jaws and glares at the predator, saying, "This was not your lamb." and I, the narrator, come in for the first time and comment, "He always carried five stones. Although God usually gave him the wit to hit the lion with the first one, just in case the Lord had something more important to do than watch over him constantly, David always carried five stones."

And so the story opens.  The score for David and Goliath was composed and performed on a Taylor twelve-string guitar I had built prior to bringing this and other stories to Lincoln Center for an Off-Broadway run. It is a lovely instrument, with a cutaway under the neck at the twelfth position. The luthiers cut away part of the guitar's body to enable one to play high up on the neck like an electric guitar. It boasts an XL body, so it booms away and is by far my finest twelve-string.

I have been working on David's Theme for at least two years, longer than I've owned this guitar.  I found the extended B part to it this summer -- only a few months ago -- and intend to incorporate it into the recorded version and subsequent live performances.

David's is an American sounding theme, very open, almost country-like, or at least country-western like, because I've always thought of this story as the earliest version of High Noon, like a gunfighter's tale. The motif is very relaxing, full of love (and tenderness when it's reprised in a higher register).  I needed lots of tenderness in this score.

Later, when David is called to King Saul's tent, he is asked to play his harp. It is David's Theme, called back again, which is the music he purportedly plays for the weary warrior king. And Saul likes it. 

"That melody there. I like that. How did you learn?"

"God taught me, oh King."

"No earthly teacher?"

"I move my fingers and I know where to go next. God guides me."

"Hmmm. God guided me once, too."

All the while, this sweet music is gently effusing through Saul's tent, which is perched on the ridge top in the Valley of Elah, across the night-shrouded valley from the war fires of the Philistines.

Around one of those war fires sits a circle of men, listening to Goliath of Gath ruminate on whether men's lives have value. Goliath has a musical leitmotif, too. But it is not sweet. It is Middle Eastern, as are just about all the other major themes in David and Goliath.  It is very dark and earthy, but plaintive in places. Because although Goliath is a killer, he is also a freak whose only option in life has been to become a warrior.

"What can a man do, ten feet tall, seven hundred and fifty pounds, other than fight?  Where can a man like Goliath hide? Nowhere. Because he attracted attention everywhere he went. They would always find him."

Goliath's Theme, fused with the overall War Theme of the story, is very heavy, almost plodding in its rhythm.

King Saul is probably my favorite characterization in this new tale. He also has his own theme. It is a light, medium tempo, Klezmer-like melody using double stops up the neck in a minor key. It is sad and plaintive, at least to me. (And hopefully to listeners.)  It is filled with longing and indecision and regret, reminiscent of the Russian melody The Volga Boatman, only slightly faster.

Saul has been told by Samuel the Prophet that God no longer considers him worthy to be the King of Israel, and Saul is understandably depressed about this. There are other characters and other, lesser themes in the score. Jesse, David's father, somewhat of a social climber, has a comic theme. Samuel the Prophet's theme is incisive and a little scary. But then again, everyone ran when they saw him coming, so the music fits him.

David is too young to have written the Psalms yet, but, at sixteen or so, is trying very hard to compose "little poems" which he can't seem to finish. To illustrate this I have excerpted certain phrases from the Psalms of David, (which appear later in the Bible) and allowed David moments of reflection, alone on the steep slopes above Bethlehem tending his sheep.  During these moments he makes up his little poems to God.

"The Law of the Lord is Perfect. The Fear of the Lord is Clean."

There is a special musical signature for these moments, too. Airy and tentative, with harmonics sparkling the sound, the way the sun sparkles the grass crowns around the young hero.

Watch for David and Goliath.  I think it's my best story yet.

--Odds