The Race of Life (Fine, Vivian)
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Sheet Music
Scores and Parts
Piano (original score)
*#245300 - 4.21MB, 28 pp. - (0) - !N/!N/!N - 102x⇩
PDF typeset by Paul Hawkins
rhymesandchymes (2012/8/4)
PDF typeset by Paul Hawkins
rhymesandchymes (2012/8/4)
Double bass
*#245303 - 0.87MB, 11 pp. - (0) - !N/!N/!N - 52x⇩
PDF typeset by Paul Hawkins
rhymesandchymes (2012/8/4)
Vivian Fine Estate
Performance Restricted Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 1.0 [tag/del]
However, the lawful copyright owner has generously released the file for distribution at IMSLP under one of the Creative Commons licenses or the IMSLP Performance Restricted License, which allow for the free distribution (with proper attribution) of the file with various levels of restriction with respect to the creation of derivative works, commercial usage, or public performances.
References to different instruments show that the piano score was later used as a rehearsal score to accompany the 1956 orchestral score.
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Arrangements and Transcriptions
For Orchestra (Composer)
Full Score
*#245301 - 23.92MB, 122 pp. - (0) - !N/!N/!N - 35x⇩
PDF typeset by Paul Hawkins
rhymesandchymes (2012/8/4)
Vivian Fine Estate
Performance Restricted Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 1.0 [tag/del]
However, the lawful copyright owner has generously released the file for distribution at IMSLP under one of the Creative Commons licenses or the IMSLP Performance Restricted License, which allow for the free distribution (with proper attribution) of the file with various levels of restriction with respect to the creation of derivative works, commercial usage, or public performances.
Orchestra: 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, strings
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General Information
| Work Title | The Race of Life |
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| Alternative Title | The Race of Life: Ballet for Doris Humphrey; choreography based on a series of drawings by James Thurber |
| Composer | Fine, Vivian |
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| Movements/Sections | 6 sections
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| Year/Date of Composition | 1937 |
| First Performance | 1938-01-23, Guild Theater, New York City; Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Jose Limon and Dance Company. Vivian Fine, piano (other musicians unidentified). Orchestral arrangement: 1956-04-27, Juilliard Dance Theater, New York City; Doris Humphrey and Dance Company, Juilliard Orchestra, Frederick Prausnitz conducting. |
| Average Duration | 22 minutes |
| Piece Style | Modern |
| Instrumentation | Piano, percussion, and double bass |
Misc. Comments
In 1956 Fine rescored The Race of Life for full orchestra. See First Performance info above for details. In 1961 it was performed by the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, Claude Monteux conducting, using slides of Thurber's drawings instead of dancers.
…it was quite a score and quite an experience. She [Fine] was a true collaborator in a field, that of composing for dance, which is so different from other kinds of program music that it calls for unique qualifications….My enthusiasm for James Thurber led me to select one of his series of drawings, at the time brand new, concerning the adventures of a middle class American Family called The Race of Life. Vivian and I both loved his dry and improbable humor…The scenes were all quite short, six of them, and had subject matter with a challenging range: The Beautiful Stranger, Night Creatures, Indians, Spring Song, culminating in the achievement of the goal, a mountain top covered with the heart’s desire—gold, jewels and money.
Vivian Fine met all these moods with imagination and a full awareness of their Thurberian gaucherie and humor. Even his Beautiful Stranger is no chic adolescent, but plainly bears the germ of the full-grown Thurber female, rather hard, aggressive and blowsy. To catch such a conception in music was a difficult feat. She treated the Indians with a very funny version of an authentic pseudo-Indian popular song. Both in the music and the dance our Indians were phony, gaudy cigar-store fixtures. Night Creatures was handled with grotesquerie, but still with a dreamlike delicacy. At this point she added to the all-piano score a Flexotone whose sliding eeriness exactly met the requirements of the weird scene. In its entirety it was a notable score—bright, humorous, expert.
….in all her undertakings in the dance field, she has an uncanny sense of what to choose as sound and that sine qua none for dance composers, a complete understanding of body rhythms and dramatic timing.
- —Doris Humphrey, American Composers Alliance Bulletin, 1958
Review
Vivian Fine’s music is miraculously right for the romping nonsense it accompanies.
- —Mary O’Donnell, The Dance Observer, March 1938
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