My Way — Orchestra Score

The auction lot was listed simply as: Lot 403 – Annotated orchestral score, “My Way” (arr. F. Marks). Provenance unknown. The starting bid was seventy-five dollars.

When the score arrived, she laid it on her baby grand piano, its pages smelling of mildew and old coffee. It was indeed an arrangement of Paul Anka’s “My Way,” the Frank Sinatra anthem of defiant self-eulogy. But the score had been… altered. my way orchestra score

Afterward, she returned the score to its cardboard box. But first, she opened the back cover. Beneath Leo’s tiny, apologetic violin, she added her own annotation in pencil. Her handwriting was wobbly, almost illegible. The auction lot was listed simply as: Lot

The original printed staves for a standard pit orchestra—reeds, brass, piano, bass, drums, and strings—were there. But overlaid on top of them, in a frantic, almost illegible hand, was a second orchestration. Red ink for added harmonies, blue ink for subtracted instruments, green ink for dynamic markings so extreme they bordered on the absurd ( pppppp next to fffff in the same bar). The margin was a jungle of arrows, circled figures, and desperate scrawls: “Not too fast. Ever.” and “Here, the brass must sound like regret.” Provenance unknown

To the casual browser, it was a relic of a bygone, slightly tacky era. The cover was a water-damaged beige cardstock, the title embossed in a fading, gold cursive that looked like it belonged on a lounge singer’s cocktail napkin. But to Lena, a first-chair violinist who had just been told her hand tremor was permanent, it was a puzzle box. She bought it for two hundred and ten dollars.