Opera Trivia
Lloyd
From my very modest collection of complete operas, I can name the
following composers, from the first born, to the last one to die. They
are: Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Wagner, Verdi, J. Strauss,
Ponchielli, Bizet, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Mascagni and R. Strauss.
As you know, Bellini, Mozart and Bizet were in their thirties when they
died, while only Verdi and Mascagni lived to be 82 and 88 respectively.
It boggles my mind to hypothesize on what wonderful masterpieces might
have flowed from the geniuses of Bellini, Mozart and Bizet, had they
lived at least another 30 years or so!
I have often read about the similarities in compositions found in the
works of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, but does anyone agree that all
three must have been influenced by Mozart? Then, we have the undeniable
fact that Wagner composed some of the most glorious orchestral pieces
ever written, while Verdi, thanks to all those who preceeded him, plus,
of course, his own genius, earned the recognition of being the greatest
of all opera composers.
But the above opinions are the musings of one who has no professional
musical training, and, as noted, only a meager collection of complete
operas. In every field of human endeavour, I think it is important to
know as much as possible about the history of the individuals who
preceeded, the political machinations of the period. as well as other
factors that impact how and why people believed, acted and felt the way
they did. It seems to me, that since the deaths of Puccini and Mascagni,
there has been no composer who has written opera, that compares with
what the above 13 masters produced.
Does any of the above make any sense?
DLU
> From my very modest collection of complete operas, I can name the
> following composers, from the first born, to the last one to die. They
> are: Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Wagner, Verdi, J. Strauss,
> Ponchielli, Bizet, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Mascagni and R. Strauss.
>
> As you know, Bellini, Mozart and Bizet were in their thirties when they
> died, while only Verdi and Mascagni lived to be 82 and 88 respectively.
> It boggles my mind to hypothesize on what wonderful masterpieces might
> have flowed from the geniuses of Bellini, Mozart and Bizet, had they
> lived at least another 30 years or so!
>
> I have often read about the similarities in compositions found in the
> works of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, but does anyone agree that all
> three must have been influenced by Mozart? Then, we have the undeniable
> fact that Wagner composed some of the most glorious orchestral pieces
> ever written, while Verdi, thanks to all those who preceeded him, plus,
> of course, his own genius, earned the recognition of being the greatest
> of all opera composers.
I wonder about Rossini. Listen to the interludes on Guillaume Tell. To
me they sound like something Beethoven might have written.
His overtures are as good as many concerts. He does not seem to have
been a friend of Ludwig, or Brahms however. Yet he seems to have much
of their influence in his music.
>
Wagner composed what I call emotional music, but from my own point of
view he does not compare to Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky.
He was even known to deride Beethoven.
--
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Jon E. Szostak, Sr.
composer played at Bayreuth?
Wagner worshipped the genius of Beethoven...and Mozart I believe. Just
where was it you read Wagner 'deriding' Beethoven?
Jon E. Szostak, Sr.
"DLU" <da...@justthe.net> wrote in message
news:B%d4g.3745$DT5...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Mark D Lew
Szostak, Sr. <jszostaks...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Wagner worshipped the genius of Beethoven...and Mozart I believe. Just
> where was it you read Wagner 'deriding' Beethoven?
For an interesting perspective on Wagner's attitude toward Beethoven,
read his "A pilgrimage to Beethoven" story.
Like Merimee's Carmen or Nabokov's Lolita, the story is presented as if
it is an edited rendition of someone else's non-fiction diary. In
fact, it's purely a work of the "editor's" imagination.
The text is online here:
http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagpilg.htm
mdl
Mark D Lew
<lpis...@webtv.net> wrote:
> As you know, Bellini, Mozart and Bizet were in their thirties when they
> died, while only Verdi and Mascagni lived to be 82 and 88 respectively.
> It boggles my mind to hypothesize on what wonderful masterpieces might
> have flowed from the geniuses of Bellini, Mozart and Bizet, had they
> lived at least another 30 years or so!
Or to put it another way, it boggles the mind to think of all the
masterpieces that the world would have missed had Mascagni died at age
36 ... oh wait, no it doesn't.
I kid, but there's a lesson here. When a composer has a brilliant
start, it doesn't necessarily follow that his career will continue on
the trajectory toward greatness. I happen to like Mascagni, and I
don't agree with the critics who say he's an overrated blowhard, but
even so one has to admit that his output over his long life falls well
short of he promise of his youth.
(I would argue, in fact, that Mascagni would be heard a lot *more*
today if he had only died about 20 years earlier. He had the
misfortunate of being a stubborn old curmudgeon in the age of
Mussolini. Mascagni's refusal to turn against Mussolini irreparably
damaged his once glowing reputation as the dean of Italian opera (after
the death of Puccini), particularly in America, where operatic taste
was so strongly influenced by Toscanini.)
Rossini's career is similarly illustrative. Rossini lived to a ripe
old age, but he 38 when he retired from composing -- almost exactly the
midpoint of his life -- and for the next 38 year he wrote virtually
nothing. What art would have been lost to posterity if Rossini had
died at 40? Practically none.
> But the above opinions are the musings of one who has no professional
> musical training, and, as noted, only a meager collection of complete
> operas. In every field of human endeavour, I think it is important to
> know as much as possible about the history of the individuals who
> preceeded, the political machinations of the period. as well as other
> factors that impact how and why people believed, acted and felt the way
> they did.
I certainly agree with you about the importance of historical context.
As longtime readers of RMO know, it's one of my soapbox topics. The
development of French opera, in particular, is hard to fully appreciate
without the background of what is going on in the political and social
world of Paris. It's not a coincidence that 1830, 1848 and 1870 are
such significant dividing points in French opera.
> It seems to me, that since the deaths of Puccini and Mascagni,
> there has been no composer who has written opera, that compares with
> what the above 13 masters produced.
Pretty much everyone would agree with you on that. The change is not
so much that musical genius stopped being produced, but that it is now
drawn to other channels. Most of the greatest operas were written in
an age where opera had a central role in popular culture, or at least
elite popular culture. Since about 1920, it hasn't had that. Opera
today is appreciated primarily as an antique art. Much of the creative
talent that 150 years ago would have been drawn to opera is instead
drawn to today's dominant gesamtkunst medium, film.
mdl
Lloyd
David wonders about Rossini and makes a few important remarks about
Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner and Tchaikosvky. In my view, Rossini's
orchestral works are always highlights in any concert. I guess it is
fair to assume that even if various composers did not know other
composers personally, as long as it was possible to hear the
compositions of the others, there was every reason to further assume
that each would be influenced to some degree.
Rossini, 1792 - 1868, would certainly have heard the music of Beethoven
and Tchaikovsky, (1770- 1827 & 1840 - 1893 respectively), and probably
was more influenced by Beethoven.
Lloyd
DLU
> Really? And that...I suppose...is why Beethoven's 9th is the only other
> composer played at Bayreuth?
>
> Wagner worshipped the genius of Beethoven...and Mozart I believe. Just
> where was it you read Wagner 'deriding' Beethoven?
>
> Jon E. Szostak, Sr.
>
I has been many years now so I would have to research the source. But
as I recall, Wagner at some function or other, made fun of Beethoven and
danced to his music to show that Beethoven was not as good a composer as
he, Wagner was. Wagner considered himself the best of all composers and
was not above letting everyone know it.
Just one of those tidbits that I remember from long ago.
Silverfin
The earlier years of film soundtracks are quite interesting, when
composers appear to have been quite happy composing film music, often
alongside opera & ballet, without the implication that it was to be
taken less seriously. (I'm thinking Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Copland,
Vaughan Williams?)
At what point do you think film music began to be seen as less serious?
(Yes, I know that there are many excellent modern film scores worthy of
respect, but there still seems to me _generally_ to be a bias against
it).
Silverfin
Geoffrey Riggs
I also look forward to Mark Lew's response to this query. Strictly as a
guess, I imagine any falling off in film music's prestige was tied to a
sequence of various historical developments over time rather than one
discrete year, or even decade.
For instance, the coming of the "talkie" was a two-edged sword: On the
one hand, Chaplin had made it his business to write his own music for
his classic "silents", and luminaries like Honegger(sp.?) wrote scores
for Gance's "silent", Napoleon, and so on, so the coming of sound
arguably enhanced things in one way, since the new dialogue turned the
final "mix" reaching audiences' ears into something even more complex
and sophisticated, combining both drama and music; on the other, a
"live" orchestra at "silents" showings may have helped elevate the music
above and beyond the dialogue (present in written titles only, after
all), so, after sound, a demotion was effectively achieved for the music
-- in a way -- since the pre-recorded dialogue now put the actors' lines
into a more conspicuous "place" than before, and the music, being merely
recorded now, somehow wasn't as "present"(?) once it was a taped
"track", rather than being played by paid musicians in a silent movie
palace.
At the same time, the specific film music that actually grew more
celebrated after sound was the song-and-dance sequence (notwithstanding
certain anomalies such as the occasional title song like Chaplin's
"Smile"). Possibly the most celebrated film music of all, in fact, was
not the "mood" music sometimes recalled when one speaks of "movie
music", but instead, classic sung scores written specifically for the
cinema, like Irving Berlin's Top Hat and Follow the Fleet (both
deservedly viewed as classics, I feel). So movie music simply starts
moving in a different direction at this point. Granted, though, the
"classic" composers, when they write for the movies, still seem to
concentrate more on the "mood" music than on song-and-dance scores
(Leonard Bernstein being an exception, and even he did not, SFAIK,
compose any song-and-dance show specifically for the cinema, as Berlin
had, but instead retrofitted already composed stage shows like
Bernstein's West Side Story et al as a movie).
It has occurred to me that, after being divorced from each other for
about a century, opera and film may "marry" during this century (if
humanity gets through this century alive) in a big way: to wit, it's
just possible that a certain unprecedented genre may take on in a big
way, making the music video seem like the most primitive thing in the
world by comparison.......... To wit, that unprecedented genre may
consist of full-length and newly composed and highly complex opera
scores specially composed for and conceived as works to be sung and
performed only on film. And the musical idiom these works reflect may
be somewhat more tonal than we think of today as "the modern opera
sound". It would have _somewhat_ more accessible harmonies than we've
had this past century because it would have to pay its way through the
box office, after all. But it would still require full-fledged
classical vocal training and would have a recognizably "classic" style
in the sophisticated quality of its thematic development and its
orchestral harmonies. Hey, if Berlin could compose Top Hat specifically
for the cinema, then why can't the surprisingly tonal Catan of today,
say, compose a full-fledged classic opera keyed entirely to the fluid
dramatic structure of the well-made film. An opera composed as a film.
A film created to be an opera. It could really reinvigorate both art
forms.
My two cents,
Geoffrey Riggs
David Melnick
>>
>>At what point do you think film music began to be seen as less serious?
>>(Yes, I know that there are many excellent modern film scores worthy of
>>respect, but there still seems to me _generally_ to be a bias against
>>it).
>
>
> I also look forward to Mark Lew's response to this query. Strictly as a
> guess, I imagine any falling off in film music's prestige was tied to a
> sequence of various historical developments over time rather than one
> discrete year, or even decade.
I'm sure there are volumes and volumes written about it, but
speaking only from memory & as a fan, I believe the end of
prominence for background music began -- a whole generation
after some early sound films experimented with silence in
the background -- with the French New Wave filmmakers, who,
taking their cue from one strain in Italian neorealism, made
some entire films without a background music soundtrack.
Hollywood caught on sometime in the 1960s, which coincided
with the retirements or deaths of the established Hollywood
composers: Steinberg, Tiomkin, Waxman, Newman, Hermann,
Rosza, Korngold, et al.
(As a sidenote, Hollywood provided employment for some of
the best orchestral musicians in the U.S. and abroad in
the 1930s, '40s and '50s, including ex-first desk players
from Berlin, as well as NY.)
There are still some films with heavily orchestrated sound
backgrounds, e.g., John Williams's, but the link to the
silents, i.e., that music accompany the entire film, has
been broken.
However, I think Mark's original answer was that people
interested in making a total artwork do not become composers
at all but rather filmmakers. However I'm happy to be
corrected if that (or anything I've written) is not the
case.
dav
David Melnick
> Hollywood caught on sometime in the 1960s, which coincided
> with the retirements or deaths of the established Hollywood
> composers: Steinberg,
I meant Steiner, natch!
And sorry for all those "howevers."
Mark D Lew
Silverfin <silve...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> At what point do you think film music began to be seen as less serious?
> (Yes, I know that there are many excellent modern film scores worthy of
> respect, but there still seems to me _generally_ to be a bias against
> it).
Well, at the risk of disappointing Geof, I don't think film music ever
diminished. You say it seems to you that there's a general bias
against it. Really? I don't.
If there is such a perception, I would think it's only because a
certain old-fashioned sort of thinking presumes that if a composer
never writes a symphony or opera he's somehow now really a serious
composer. So when film was new and the composers were crossovers like
Prokofiev and Korngold, we could say, "Wow, they're 'real' composers
and they write film music, too." But then when a generation passes and
it's Bernard Hermann and Max Steiner, or heaven forbid, Michel Legrand
and John Williams, then those guys must not be "real" composers because
all they do is write film music and songs.
But of course they are. I don't think there's any doubt that the
greatest music being written now is written for films, and that's been
true for decades. I love Catan, but he's really an exception.
The new medium that I find interesting is music for video games. Back
in the days when I played video games this was just beep-beep-boop, and
maybe play a little tune between rounds, but now it's a serious art.
Composing straight to digital has been common for many years now. Video
games today have become so sophisticated that creating a score for a
game is a lot like creating a score for a film. As with film (and
opera) the purpose of the music is to illustrate the story.
The difference -- and it's truly a profound difference -- is that a
work of music is no longer one-dimensional in time. For centuries music
composition has been tied to a time structure where there is a
beginning and an end and only one strand leading from the one to the
other. Now, a composer creates a "score" in which different actions,
events and regions in the game's world have their own themes. The
complete work must integrate these so that the music flows seamlessly
and continues to tell the story, no matter what sequence or combination
of events is thrown at it. It requires a completely different way of
looking at composition.
mdl
Jon E. Szostak, Sr.
statement...wasn't he?
Odd you should mention video games. There's one I bought to try to make
some sense of it all...'Myst II'. Offhand, I forget the composer's
name...but he really did create an extraordinary and thought provoking 'New
Age' score for that game. There are a few others I've heard that are
catchy...but this one is in its own category.
Jon E. Szostak, Sr.
"Mark D Lew" <mark...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:280420062137372406%mark...@earthlink.net...
Silverfin
Mark D Lew wrote:
> In article <1146246728....@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> Silverfin <silve...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > At what point do you think film music began to be seen as less serious?
> > (Yes, I know that there are many excellent modern film scores worthy of
> > respect, but there still seems to me _generally_ to be a bias against
> > it).
>
> Well, at the risk of disappointing Geof, I don't think film music ever
> diminished. You say it seems to you that there's a general bias
> against it. Really? I don't.
I have gained that impression from many people I have talked to. I'm
not saying I agree with them.
> If there is such a perception, I would think it's only because a
> certain old-fashioned sort of thinking presumes that if a composer
> never writes a symphony or opera he's somehow now really a serious
> composer. So when film was new and the composers were crossovers like
> Prokofiev and Korngold, we could say, "Wow, they're 'real' composers
> and they write film music, too." But then when a generation passes and
> it's Bernard Hermann and Max Steiner, or heaven forbid, Michel Legrand
> and John Williams, then those guys must not be "real" composers because
> all they do is write film music and songs.
This is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of.
> But of course they are. I don't think there's any doubt that the
> greatest music being written now is written for films, and that's been
> true for decades. I love Catan, but he's really an exception.
>
> The new medium that I find interesting is music for video games. Back
> in the days when I played video games this was just beep-beep-boop, and
> maybe play a little tune between rounds, but now it's a serious art.
> Composing straight to digital has been common for many years now. Video
> games today have become so sophisticated that creating a score for a
> game is a lot like creating a score for a film. As with film (and
> opera) the purpose of the music is to illustrate the story.
An interesting fact is that a startling number of the early computer
games (early to mid 80s) took pieces of 'traditional' classical music
for their soundtracks - admittedly played on bleepy computer-generated
tones. As they became more popular and mainstream, the music began to
be more reflective of current fashion, i.e. racing games with banging
dance tracks.
I don't play computer games myself, but I gather than with increasing
sophistication the music has improved along with the stories and
graphics.
> The difference -- and it's truly a profound difference -- is that a
> work of music is no longer one-dimensional in time. For centuries music
> composition has been tied to a time structure where there is a
> beginning and an end and only one strand leading from the one to the
> other. Now, a composer creates a "score" in which different actions,
> events and regions in the game's world have their own themes. The
> complete work must integrate these so that the music flows seamlessly
> and continues to tell the story, no matter what sequence or combination
> of events is thrown at it. It requires a completely different way of
> looking at composition.
>
That's not really a recent idea, though, is it? If I remember rightly,
aleatory composition has been around for 50 years or so, and much
minimalist music was specifically designed to give no indication of
traditional/classical structure. Or is that the period you're talking
about, comparing the latter half of the 20th century with previous
centuries?
Btw, if it's not clear from my nitpicking, I am basically agreeing with
you.
Silverfin
REG
lot of talent has been drawn in other directions, though I'm not as sure as
you that it's been drawn to film music. For one thing, I don't accept that
everyone who might have composed music (or libretti) to operas is still
involved in music - to some extent, talent, if not genius, is transferable
from one medium to another, and my guess is that a lot of talent goes into
things like video and even computer 'art' that might have found its way to
opera in another age.
Part of what seems obvious to me is that as late as the 20s, opera libretti
would be made out of contemporary dramatic works - lots of Verdi and the bel
canto composers drew from dramas that were hot off the stage - the music
enhanced the 'message' of the plays. Today, there's litle if anny impetus
for opera composers to work from existing stage plays - it's kind of the
blind leading the blind in terms of audience interest...,you'll find some
plays and musicals transfered to film, often times 'opened up' in the sense
that somethings' added to the original, even if it's not music.
My reservation about considering film music the equal of traditional music
overall is that there's less need for extended structure in film music, and
less of an ability to compose, I think, in a challenging way - I think lots
of contemporary film music is fungible, and, frankly, the music comes AFTER
the film is shot - it's a secondary accompaniment in many cases, and even
the choice of composer may be left for the substantial completion of the
film - it's music, perhaps, the the sense that music to accompany Egmont is
music, but I don't think it can stand on its own with the major art forms,
much less opera.
Mark D Lew wrote, iun part
Stephen Jay-Taylor
Well yes. At least some of it, as performed in Paris in the 1830s. Of
course, by that time Beethoven was dead, and Rossini written out, so not
much room for musical cause-and-effect there. They met in Vienna, famously,
in about 1818, when the German master is reputed to have advised the
26-year-old Italian "Write more Barbers. Only Barbers."
and Tchaikovsky, (1770- 1827 & 1840 - 1893 respectively)
O dear me no. Not at all. Tchaikovsky was a late-starter as composers go,
and barring some unpublished songs and chamber works, absolutely nothing of
his could have been heard by Rossini in Paris before his death. Even the
first symphony, written in 1866, isn't performed there for another decade,
and not one of Tchaikovsky's most famous and characteristic works - 1812,
the B-flat minor piano concerto, any of the ballets, all the operas except
the unperformed "Voyevoda", the violin concerto and even Romeo and Juliet -
are written until after Rossini's death in 1868.
As for all this nonsense that opera came to a grinding halt with the death
of Puccini, and the oft-expressed canard that no work has entered the
international repertory post-"Turandot" [ i.e. 1926 ] let me just interject
a few titles : "Arabella", "Capriccio", "Lulu", "The Makropoulos Case",
"From the House of the Dead", "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk", "Peter Grimes",
"Billy Budd", "The Rake's Progress" and "Dialogues des Carmélites", great
works that have done the rounds of all the world's major houses and are
revived frequently in most of them.
SJT
Lloyd
SJT, am again indebted to you for providing such lucid historical
informationon on composers and their works.
Of course, one has to ackowledge the operas you listed that were
composed after "Tourandot". However, IMHO, not one of these compares
with the ones that preceeded.
Lloyd
Mark D Lew
Silverfin <silve...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> That's not really a recent idea, though, is it? If I remember rightly,
> aleatory composition has been around for 50 years or so, and much
> minimalist music was specifically designed to give no indication of
> traditional/classical structure. Or is that the period you're talking
> about, comparing the latter half of the 20th century with previous
> centuries?
But it's not aleatory. It's always specified; it's just specified for
a network of circumstances which isn't just linear.
mdl
Mark D Lew
<Rich...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I agree that there are more immediate cultural media than opera, and that a
> lot of talent has been drawn in other directions, though I'm not as sure as
> you that it's been drawn to film music. For one thing, I don't accept that
> everyone who might have composed music (or libretti) to operas is still
> involved in music - to some extent, talent, if not genius, is transferable
> from one medium to another, and my guess is that a lot of talent goes into
> things like video and even computer 'art' that might have found its way to
> opera in another age.
I agree that genius is (partially transferrable). Verdi and Puccini,
as well as obviously Wagner and plenty of other opera composers, were
interested in the entire stage work, not just the music.
I do think that film has dominated culture for the past 50-75 years,
but you're probably right that it's beginning to be eclipsed now.
> Part of what seems obvious to me is that as late as the 20s, opera libretti
> would be made out of contemporary dramatic works - lots of Verdi and the bel
> canto composers drew from dramas that were hot off the stage - the music
> enhanced the 'message' of the plays. Today, there's litle if anny impetus
> for opera composers to work from existing stage plays - it's kind of the
> blind leading the blind in terms of audience interest...,you'll find some
> plays and musicals transfered to film, often times 'opened up' in the sense
> that somethings' added to the original, even if it's not music.
While not as petrified as opera, plays haven't exactly been the center
of the cultural universe for the past 50 years either. I think the
analogy here is popular books being turned into films, which is
rampant.
> My reservation about considering film music the equal of traditional music
> overall is that there's less need for extended structure in film music, and
> less of an ability to compose, I think, in a challenging way - I think lots
> of contemporary film music is fungible, and, frankly, the music comes AFTER
> the film is shot - it's a secondary accompaniment in many cases, and even
> the choice of composer may be left for the substantial completion of the
> film - it's music, perhaps, the the sense that music to accompany Egmont is
> music, but I don't think it can stand on its own with the major art forms,
> much less opera.
I think your comparing apples and apple slices here. You excise film
music from the film and say it doesn't stand alone; then you compare it
to opera intact.
mdl
Silverfin
I'm a bit rusty on this, but as I see it...
If a music is composed for a game with different sections for
locations, characters, etc. and the order these sections are played in,
or even superimposed on eachother is determined not by the composer but
by the player (performer), would that not be partially aleatory, in the
same way as Riley's 'In C' is? Of course, much of it _is_ specified by
the composer, but rather than music being either aleatory or not, I
would suggest there is a sliding scale for the degree of
chance/choice-determined element, stretching from those pieces where
the performer only gets to choose the order of movements (like Mahler
songs!) up to those where all pitches, durations and dynamics are
randomly assigned. So in the same way that one could say there is a
sliding scale for the degree of serial music (i.e. loose use of tone
rows - total serialism).
Silverfin
REG
correctly, you seem to be saying that it's only the whole, that is the
finished film, that can be compared to an opera, and that it's arbitrary to
take slices of the ultimate film product (in this case, the music) out of
context. If that's what you're saying, then I think that you have to change
your own frame of reference a little - if the film is the only legitimate
'work of art', then we're kind of talking about a film as if it were a
cathedral, in which the individual artisan's work matter much less than the
work and design of the overall builder. That may not be untrue, but then we
can't really consider the film composer an individual artist anymore, and
then there's clearly no way to analogize an opera composer to a film maker
(that is, the director/producer).
"Mark D Lew" <mark...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:010520062251300393%mark...@earthlink.net...
>> My reservation about considering film music the equal of traditional
>> music
>> overall is that there's less need for extended structure in film music,
>> and
>> less of an ability to compose, I think, in a challenging way - I think
>> lots
>> of contemporary film music is fungible, and, frankly, the music comes
>> AFTER
>> the film is shot - it's a secondary accompaniment in many cases, and even
>> the choice of composer may be left for the substantial completion of the
>> film - it's music, perhaps, the the sense that music to accompany Egmont
>> is
>> music, but I don't think it can stand on its own with the major art
>> forms,
>> much less opera. [from REG]
>
> I think your comparing apples and apple slices here. You excise film
> music from the film and say it doesn't stand alone; then you compare it
> to opera intact. [Mark's response]
>
> mdl
Mark D Lew
Silverfin <silve...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I'm a bit rusty on this, but as I see it...
>
> If a music is composed for a game with different sections for
> locations, characters, etc. and the order these sections are played in,
> or even superimposed on eachother is determined not by the composer but
> by the player (performer), would that not be partially aleatory, in the
> same way as Riley's 'In C' is?
I suppose it's just semantics. I see the element of chance as the
essential part of "aleatory". Maybe I'm unduly influenced by the Latin
alea=dice (as in "jacta alea est")? Come to think of it, I don't know
for certain how the term is used in musicology.
Anyway, the video game music wouldn't be aleatory. The input would be
from the user, not from chance.
mdl
Mark D Lew
<Rich...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I am not sure of the focus of your criticism here. If I understand you
> correctly, you seem to be saying that it's only the whole, that is the
> finished film, that can be compared to an opera, and that it's arbitrary to
> take slices of the ultimate film product (in this case, the music) out of
> context. If that's what you're saying, then I think that you have to change
> your own frame of reference a little - if the film is the only legitimate
> 'work of art', then we're kind of talking about a film as if it were a
> cathedral, in which the individual artisan's work matter much less than the
> work and design of the overall builder. That may not be untrue, but then we
> can't really consider the film composer an individual artist anymore, and
> then there's clearly no way to analogize an opera composer to a film maker
> (that is, the director/producer).
Right. I think the issue here is that I don't think of opera as just
music, as some here seem to. Nor do I see it as the work solely of the
composer. Unless the composer happens to be librettist and stage
director, too, which does happen occasionally.
mdl
Silverfin
Yes, as I said, I think we are hair-splitting over the details and
essentially agree.
My definition would include factors that may not be strictly random,
but are out of the control of the composer so might as well be.
(I did study musicology, but it was in the early 90s, and I have a
notoriously bad memory.)
SIlverfin
Silverfin
I see the main problem in trying to compare the two in the fact that a
film, when finished, is 'set in stone' and unchanging. The direction,
acting, production, sets, etc. have all been done and will stay that
way forever*. With opera, it is expected that each production will be
different, and the score is more of a framework for future
interpretation; even if performances are recorded, you will end up with
a selection of massively different films.
I imagine this makes for a completely different mindset in the
compositional process.
Silverfin
* Yes, I know. Remakes. Philip Glass or Pet Shop Boys writing new
contemporary scores for silent films.
REG
also talking about the libretto. Staged opera is obviously an endeavor of
lots of people, including musicians, etc. But I don't see how you can even
compare a fully staged opera to a film - not only does the music (and
lyrics) exist outside of the staged performance, but the individual
contributions are to some degree secondary to the opera score and libretto.
That's what comes 'first', and what most artists are subservient to. A film
composer comes last, works at the direction of others, and is more like, I
think, the person who does the subtitles, it they are specially
commissioned.
"Mark D Lew" <mark...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:040520060107051293%mark...@earthlink.net...