From 2008:
Throughout the first few months of the writing of The Letter, I carried the bulk of the creative load, hammering out the first draft of the libretto and painstakingly revising it under the watchful eye of Paul Moravec, my musical collaborator. Now the ball is in Paul’s court: he’s orchestrating The Letter, a grueling task with which I have nothing to do beyond listening to a synthesized version of each scene on my iBook and commenting on the scoring.
Because I’m not only a writer but a musician with professional performing experience, I take for granted certain things about the making of an opera of which laymen know little or nothing. Hence it surprises me–or used to, anyway–that so few people outside the profession understand what it means to orchestrate a piece of classical music….
Read the whole thing here.
