I am embarking on a new venture with a friend who sings. I need to get some experience of accompanying (piano) so we plan to get together and do a few songs. She has sung "I dreamed a dream" in the past (long before SuBo!) but doesn't have the music. I have been looking on Musicroom for downloadable versions, but the piano parts all look very simplistic and include the piano playing the tune. What I want is a version where the piano imitates the orchestral parts. Does anyone know of a good version like this? Perhaps I would be better buying one of the books which contain several songs from the show, and which list the difficulty as "intermediate". Is this a better plan?

Any advice would be very welcome - not just about this piece, but about getting music for vocal and piano generally.

Many thanks

morceau x

I'm not sure that what you want exists. I have the book of vocal selections and even in that the piano plays with the singer most of the time. The nearest you'll get will be the version in one of the musical theatre anthologies as these are supposed to be taken direct from the vocal scores...that said, I'm still pretty sure the piano plays the tune most of the way through. These days, when you get a version for voice and piano, it tends to be an arrangement, rather than the piano part being a reduction of the orchestral score.

I have this and will pm you.

Seer Green - thank you for your info. Up to now I have worked up my own version of accompaniments from the chords and listening to the original, so I'm quite disappointed to discover that the same thing doesn't exist in written form. I suppose it does help the singer if the pianist plays the tune as well though.

Oldnotes - I have replied to your PM. Thank you so much.

Agreed, but there are two vocal selection books available. The greyish one has a simplified arrangement that moves with the vocal line, but the accompaniments in the black one are more difficult and certainly don't.

I really do not see the problem here. This song is widely available in anthologies of songs that once one has learnt this song, singers would like to sing that as the song is in copyright, I'd just go out and buy an anthology.

Now maybe I'm being obtuse, but surely the purpose of learning singing and purchasing music is to increase repertoire, and therefore purchasing a decent anthology with similar repertoire is good thing rather than a bad thing.

The times I object is when I have a large collection of music and the only copy of music I can get is the vocal score of a work- fascinating if one wants to learn the whole piece, but lousy if one wants to learn one or two songs.

This is not the case with I Dream a Dream, but publishers take note musicians will pay, but the music needs to be readily available.

Hi Ann - on Musicroom there are two books with the "Les Mis" image on the front - one version grey and one black - are those the ones you mean? There are also some versions which say Broadway on the front and are published by Wise - and they are greyish.

thank you

Mine is also a Wise publication - black - ISBN number 0-7119-2141-5. Hope this helps.
Interestingly I've just come from a festival where three children sang Castle on a Cloud - two from the grey book and the accompaniment followed the vocal line, and my student who sang with the accompaniment from the black book, which was, (IMO), much nicer.

Oh thank you Ann, the ISBN number did the trick - and that was the one I had pin-pointed. Ironically, although you can "look inside" on Amazon - you can't see any music, only contents pages and background story to the show Brilliant - I think we will have a great time with this - and it's half price at the moment!!