My version of this familiar story of Joseph, the devil, et al. is called The Devil’s Tale. Its inspiration comes from basically telling Ramuzʼs story backwards, in effect, as one giant palindrome.
This all began with imagining starting my story where Stravinskyʼs leaves off, with the somewhat ambiguous drum solo. (It is sometimes played with a crescendo, sometimes with a diminuendo.) It was this ambiguity which led me to realize that it could almost be the beginning to a piece as well.
I have had many dreams myself, where I am convinced that I hear the stroke of a drum, and am startled and awakened – only to realize, of course, that it was just a dream. That was the impetus for the starting-off point for my story – that the solo drum is all part of one giant dream. In fact, to take it a step further, that the whole Soldier’s Tale (it is a tale, after all) was just one giant dream of a present day Joseph, who is in actuality situated in Las Vegas, as a pit musician for a show. Once I knew that I would start with the percussion solo, and that it was a giant palindrome, I knew I needed to end with walking “down a hot and dusty road.” The task at hand was then to just fill in all of the blanks…
– James M. Stephenson