The following liner notes are reproduced from the original album.
The birth of this album grew out of the chance meeting of a handful of people - like different roads winding about for miles and then all coming together at one place - with each of us bringing a wealth of experience and know-how to the converging point.
I suppose the roots go all the way back to my childhood in Canada. I remember going to the theater, and how I was always thrilled by the overture. The first notes struck by the orchestra would send chills running all over me. I fell in love with musicals, all combinations of music and the human voice. So, in a real sense, my passion for this art form grew out of those early years when I was a wide-eyed kids living in dreams. Later, when I went to McGill University, I became very active in musical plays as a producer, actor, writer. So you see, music and I are old, familiar friends. Looking back in retrospect, I've always had a secret ambition to do something with the spoken word combined with the magic of music. This idea has followed me all the way from college to Broadway, to motion pictures, to television. And now the dream has become a reality.
The seed actually began to germinate when I met Cliff Ralke while working together on Star Trek. Between shootings we would often talk about music, about Shakespeare, about poetry. I discovered that Cliff was quite a gifted young man with a lot of creative ideas. He was managing a musical group, performing, producing records, writing television scripts. He's truly a remarkable and multi-faceted person. When the subject of conversation turned to putting Shakespeare to music, an idea I had been nourishing for a long time, it was Cliff's enthusiasm that helped get the ball rolling.
Then one day Cliff brought me a song, "Elegy For The Brave," and a poem, "Transformed Man," by Frank Davenport. As I read over the material, I felt an immediate identification. I knew that was the work of a truly gifted poet, a first-rate talent, and I wanted to do something with it. I learned that Frank is also a pianist and orchestrator, besides doing literary translations. He did a beautiful job on the translations of Cyrano and Spleen from the French, which I decided would be great for the album.
Then Cliff introduced me to his father, Don Ralke. Being somewhat unfamiliar with the recording world, I didn't realise at first how fortunate I was to cross paths with this man. I found out that he has produced many hit albums and single records, besides writing for television and motion pictures. Don can do it all - he's a composer, conductor, orchestrator, pianist, you name it. He immediately saw the possibilities of the project, and we went to work. He did all the orchestrations, and composed original music for Spleen and Cyrano, the three selections from Shakespeare, and "Transformed Man," So you see, everyone made a contribution in the selection of material and in the format of the album. Between the four of us the project was set in motion.
There are two more people I want to mention who played a vital role. One is Stan Ross, the recording engineer at Gold Star Recording Studios in Hollywood. I had never realized how important a part the engineer plays in the birth of a record until I saw Stan at work. He's a wizard in the art of blending sounds. I found him highly sensitive to everything we were trying to do, catching subtleties that we had overlooked, often making suggestions that greatly enhanced the project. Stan made a real contribution, and his enthusiasm kept us sparked all the time.
The other person I want to give credit to is Mr. Charles Bud Dant, artists and repertoire executive at Decca Records. When we previewed some of the material, he was instantly enthusiastic about the entire project - even though it was still in embryo form - and agreed to back it all the way. His broad artistic vision and confidence in us made this album possible.
The recording sessions were a tremendous thrill. The last evening we spent cutting, I had been working from 5:30 A.M. that morning to 6:30 P.M. that night on Star Trek, and Captain Kirk was really beat. I rushed down to Gold Star and went to work with Stan and Don, and we finally got everything done. Then we sat back to hear it from beginning to end. Now I've had some great thrills in my career, starring on Broadway for the first time in The World Of Susie Wong, playing in my first motion picture. The Brothers Karamazov, going on stage for the first time in Shakespeare's Henry The Fifth, but the thrill I got from hearing this album all the way through was deeper and more satisfying that anything I had ever experienced. The Three of us sat there alone in the studio transfixed until 2:00 A.M. I had a 5:30 A.M. call at Star Trek that morning. But I walked out of the studio on air and soared through the rest of the day. I was really in orbit!
- William Shatner, 1968
****
A Note From The Producer
"The idea of grouping the numbers together in pairs is to unfold multiple perspectives of the same subject, like the two sides of a coin, tension and resolution. For example, in King Henry The Fifth (track 1) the intense speech inciting the soldiers to battle is contrasted with the quiet and poignant aftermath of war in Elegy For The Brave. The other pairs follow a similar design:
Track 2: confident self-assurance - total psychopathic subservience
Track 3: a desire for death - the joy of living
Track 4: fresh love - intensity
Track 5: utter dejection - super elation
Transformed Man (track 6) stands alone because of its contrasting three-movement form; earthly unreality - transitional awareness - contact with divinity"
- Don Ralke
****
Track list
1. King Henry The Fifth - Elegy For The Brave
2. Theme From Cyrano - Mr. Tambourine Man
3. Hamlet - It Was A Very Good Year
4. Romeo And Juliet - How Insensitive (Insensatez)
5. Spleen - Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
6. The Transformed Man
Categories
