Pippin: Vocal Score

The "Pippin" Vocal/Conductor score, in manuscript, offers an excellent insight into working music, that is, music prepared for live stage performance. The instrumental portion of the score, condensed into basically a heavily annotated piano score, provides a quick glimpse into the essence of the music without getting bogged down in the details of a specific orchestration. This was especially useful for me because a theatre group with which I am associated wants to do "Pippin" with a more contemporary sound. Having this balance between the big-picture and crucial detail is invaluable for that. However, I don't know that I would actually want to conduct a live performance with this publication only because its reduced size (relative to commercially rented full performance scores) makes some things difficult to see especially with the limited light of the orchestra pit and the solid block back binding makes page navigation a bit more challenging. But this publication is proving to be an extremely helpful tool for building new arrangements while keeping a sense of familiarity. I would that more Broadway musicals were published in this format.

I just received the book and am very disappointed. It is literally useless for my purposes. While the actual written music and words might be identical with the original score, this book is all handwritten and the lyrics are very hard to read. The original edition of this music was not, it was printed clearly and legibly, notes and words.

This is a fantastic and daring show! Been wanting to sing selections from it and now I can. Not a fan of the manuscript writing, however.

Perfect