Style

An opera is something like "The Marriage of Figaro" : it has set pieces, where time stops and music is essential, connected by recitatives, where music is not too important, and the action develops. If it is "Figaro" , then it also has many wonderful scenes where music is essential, and the words are essential, and the action develops. But this situation may well be limited to "Figaro" and "Don Giovanni", and really not be expected when opera is mentioned.

Obviously, no realism is ever needed. The medium itself is non-realistic: who ever goes around singing instead af talking? Besides, good music projects strongly and nobly, even with silly words or sillier plots; no such artistic effect in real life. All forms of art serve as an antidote to reality, but opera passages with good music overriding bad librettos are as far from commonplace reality as you can get : you are seeing the fat lady singing, and hearing unintelligible claptrap, and feeling sublime.

Now, what if the libretto is by Shakespeare? Words must be paramount, always; set pieces with dacapo are rarely available; here and there there may be strophic songs, but a music that matches the text... or even fits the text... Technically, such a music will stay forever in iambic/trochaic rhythm, because such is the versification – may get quite boring. Then the complications of English stress rhythm (or sprung rhythm). How to force all this into musical phrases, answering to each other...

In any case, I do not want to avoid set pieces, rather use them whenever possible – a clear example, the Cauldron scene, which may be evidently turned into a song with refrains.

Of course, I am not really inspired. Although I might have some musical ideas, I cannot implement them, except as programs to generate scores. Vocal scores? It would be too wonderful, although even the simplest text-to-sound programs allow adding a tone to the spoken word or syllable. But just imagine how lost I am in vocal interpretation , plus the abilities of human voice vs the computer. So it will stay as purely conceptual art.

So, without inspiration, what could I do?

• formal composition
  • converting mechanically text to notes. This is a venerable tradition, dating at least from Guido d'Arezzo, who proposed converting the vowels of the text:

    A		FA/LA
    E		RE
    I	to	MI
    O		SOL
    U		UT

    Actually, quite clever, because every syllable must have at least a vowel, so you get your melody, reasonably moving about. Later on Bach, ABEGG, Shostakovich, etc., etc.
    If that could convert Shakespeare's gems, e.g. "foul and fair", "no man of woman born", into musical motifs...

  • using leitmotifs, for the various roles and situations. The real thing would be to save whatever music that appears for new leitmotifs, to be used later for the same roles in similar situations. Wagner did it, with lots of imitators, and I don't like any of them, mainly because they did away with the skeleton of opera: set pieces, da capo, etc. A Wagner opera, or Tosca for that matter, or even Otello, flows amoeba-like from nowhere to nowhere.

  • combining leitmotifs, using my very own technique!

• creative theft. Also a venerable tradition, e.g. in Handel and many contemporaries.

  • picking any tune that fits, to use as an "enigma" subject; let's see how many detect the plagiarism

  • combining any tune that fits with some short motif.

From:
«  vocal interpretation

I don't, in principle, like vocal music. Both word and music are potent artistic media, and in combination usually at each other's throat ( counterexamples : Non piu andrai , Sempre libera, Pres des remparts de Seville ) In general I cannot understand sung words, and when I do, what a disappointment it usually is!

Besides, voice actually carries feeling, while instruments don't (although instrumental music does, and how! How it does this is actually the crux of the matter, and if I got even an inch nearer to the answer, I would consider my life well spent) But anyway, I have no idea about interpretation on the equanimous instruments, and no idea about instrumental virtuosity, so what are the chances in the charged vocal medium?

From:
«  ... my musical ideas ... only as programs to generate scores.

This is exactly the problem. I cannot quickly experiment, by tinkling at the piano, or jotting down notes and hearing them in my mind (any?) The only way to experiment is by computer, so I can produce (actually very fast, once the program is ready) enough versions to select something I like.

However, I cannot combine midi, which I use for instrumental music, with text-to-sound, even less with text-to-sound in several voices. Who knows, maybe some Java monster... Or, maybe, had we but world enough and time, there will appear a sophisticated tool to encode and sound orchestra and singing at once ( it must also be freeware. )

From:
«  If that could convert Shakespeare's gems, e.g. "foul and fair", "no man of woman born", into musical motifs...

I should have said appropriate opera motifs , that is, somehow fitting the meaning of the words, and also memorable or at least recognizable. Of course, I have no idea how to do that. On the other hand, we were talking about formal compsition; "the notes repeat when the text repeats" is a very simple goal, which, alas, will pass unobserved by the audience.

From:
«  counterexamples : music actually enhances text

To me, the most outstanding is Che gelida manina:

Chi son? Son un poeta.
Che cosa faccio? Scrivo.
E come vivo? Vivo.

• verismo: too near real life for my taste
• no musical form , i.e. I cannot detect any evident motivic development
• no melody to take home and whistle (which is what a melody is). Must be sung by a professional singer, able to follow the pitch and timing, still with enough expression to project feeling, plus a big orchestra to support the non-melody.

Then, again, this is my opinion. I am curious if anybody agrees – I'll remain curious.

Techniques

• witch tonality

  Rapid changes, unprepared:

  C MAJ  →	b min  →	A MAJ  →	g min  →	F MAJ  →	e min  →	D MAJ  →
  c min →	B MAJ  →	a min  →	G MAJ  →	f min  →	E MAJ  →	d min  →
  C MAJ  →	b min  →	etc...

• choufleur

  Pick some ABCDEFGH theme and play again an again the theme notes, in different rhythms and chords, but changing key signatures.

  1. only the keys that change the theme. In this case, play only the theme notes.
  2. all the keys, supplying fillers between the notes of the theme, so there will be variety in tonality and tune.

• answering half-phrases

  Translate the letters to notes, in such a way that there will be a middle cadence and a stronger final cadence. e.g.:

     #####################   d o n a l b a i n   ################
     d o n a	l b a i n		grade 52		2741,cmaj
     2 5 7 0
     126	5;7;0	ROOT	5 7 9	CHORDS	5 9 0;7 11 2;9 0 4		DECEPTIVE   imperf 
     4 9 0 11 7
     130	0;11;7	ROOT	5 7 0	CHORDS	5 9 0;7 11 2 5;0 4 7		AUTHENTIC  
     

  which means:

  

  with cadences shown in semibreves and the other notes as quarter heads. The letters are arbitrarily assigned to notes:

  d	RE (D)
  o	FA (F)
  n	SOL (G)
  a	DO (C)
  l	MI (E)
  b	LA (A)
  i	SI (B)

  with the only constraint that identical letters will signify identical notes, producing the two cadences. The scheme above may be possibly realized as:

  

  This technique makes a much more "consistent" (i.e., non noodling then the BACH/DSCH/Guido results, tonal) melody – at least in a few examples that I tried. No automatic rhythm yet; on the other hand, marking the text for syllables, feet and weaker and stronger cadences might provide a complete translation of arbitrary text to score. And if we add a few leitmotifs, to be used even when not overtly in the text ...