Abstract
Since the film The Imitation Game was released in 2014, the story of Alan Turing’s life including his contributions to science, and work during World War II have been made widely known to people around the world. James McCarthy’s choral-orchestral work for mixed choir, soprano solo, and orchestra, Codebreaker: The Story of Alan Turing, aims to create a living musical depiction of Alan Turing and explores his life beyond his accomplishments in science and technology. This document is a conductor’s guide to James McCarthy’s Codebreaker which includes a biography of Alan Turing, which is essential to understanding the work, an integrated analysis of the libretto and the score, using Herford’s bar analysis with discussions of text sources and how the texts relate to Turing’s life and develop McCarthy’s narrative, and rehearsal considerations for performance based on the author’s own experience from performing Codebreaker with insights from conductor David Temple and the composer. Today, as attempts to silence the queer community are still daily occurrences, engaging with historical figures such as Turing can only continue to elevate the queer experience. Performances of a work like Codebreaker create opportunities for queer representation through choral music.