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Un Béso, Béso, arranged for SATB From the musical “Giant” Song by Michael John LaChiusa Michael John LaChiusa is one of the very few writers for musical theater that is able to write the music, the lyrics, and the book, all those three all by himself. His choices of sources to turn into musicals are also unusual, including Greek mythology, Japanese short stories, and fantasies about First Ladies and Daughters of the United States. Christi Esterle (Diva from Musical Hell) puts it in regards to the man, “The composer of choice for people who thinks Stephen Sondheim is too mainstream.” I often read and heard that many find his scores too complex and cerebral with no hummable tunes to hook them, and his shows left them cold with no visceral, emotional reaction. (It took too long for me to remember the word ‘visceral’ when I was writing this, oh dear....)

I think his difficult scores are his natural response to the difficult subject matters for his musicals. It’s not like he writes complex and difficult music for the sake of being complex and difficult because he still writes music that is appropriate and true within the setting and period of the stories. Once I got used to the strangeness of his musicals and I got warm within his musical realms, his scores and his shows are really satisfying and rewarding to listen to.

Listening to the many shows that he wrote, LaChiusa seemed to have an affinity to Latin America and Spanish culture. He wrote rhythmic flamenco music when he musicalized the play “Bernarda Alba”, the story of which takes place in Spain, and he wrote the songs for the musical “Giant” which takes place in Texas and has Mexican characters and culture that come into play. I also liked the sounds and the rhythms of such music especially when the songs are lively, and “Un Béso, Béso” from “Giant” sounded so joyous and so much fun that I thought of arranging it.

So I was working on an arrangement for “Un Béso, Béso” before the request for “Brielle” came to me. I had to put “Un Béso, Béso” aside for the longest time as I was going through a lot of things in real life. But after I had finished arranging “Brielle”, and I miraculously met up a friend of a friend who helped me set up an interview for a job and, thank God, I finally got an offer for that, I felt like coming back to finish “Un Béso, Béso,” except I kinda lost steam and I was wondering whether to start from scratch or continue with I had written. I gave a listen to what I had at that point and tried changing a few notes here and there, and for a while, I wasn’t feeling it and I thought it wasn’t good enough. I thought maybe I would have to rewrite the whole thing, but I just let it sit for some time before I came back to it and gave it another listen. I don’t know why or how, but I felt different and I thought it was kind of okay, so I kept it, continued writing and finished the arrangement.

The thing about the song “Un Béso, Béso” is that in the show, there is other stuff that is happening on stage. The song is for a wedding party scene where a White boy kisses a Mexican girl after catching the bride’s bouquet, and the boy’s father sees him so we have this sub-scene in his mind before we come back to the party scene, which is then transitioned to another scene as tragedy befalls to one of the characters after he goes off to fight The War. So the folk song itself has these interruptions with no resolute ending, and at one point I finished an arrangement where there was only the folk song without other material from the scene, and it ended up being very short. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to leave it as it was or to add a little bit more to it. In the end, I decided to include a little section after the sub-scene into the arrangement, not only to lengthen the arrangement but also to avoid the awkward transitioning I had written into the final part of the song as there are several key changes happening through the course of the song.

Other than the key, the thing that changes in the song is the language. The folk song portion of “Un Béso, Béso” has Spanish lyrics with some English translations set as lyrics at the near-end of the song, but since the song doesn’t really finish in the show, there are no English lyrics to end the arrangement with. In the booklet for the musical’s cast album, there are literal translations given for the Spanish lyrics and I thought perhaps I could use them to complete the English lyrics for the song, but then I thought I probably couldn’t come up with good enough lyrics to match the other lyrics from LaChiusa, so I just kept it in Spanish for the ending.

When I finished arranging it and I gave it a listen, it went so fast, especially in the section after the sub-scene before the final part, that it was kinda giving me anxiety, so I set the tempo from the initial 160 BPM to 155 BPM. It might not have been the tempo used in the show, but without the other sections from the show that interrupt the song, I think the arrangement could be more chill and go a little slower. “Un Béso, Béso” is really joyous and fun to listen to, and I hope the arrangement captures the rhythm, the sounds, and the happier mood of the song, and in the end spreads a little sunshine for both the singers and the listeners.

Scenes from “Giant”: https://youtu.be/zbVIDRKIkA0 Link to score: https://musescore.com/user/4177086/scores/5552153

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