Just heard a trailer for a programme on r3 tomorrow quite late (in fact the
series started last week so I'll have to try to catch up before tomorrow's)
all about opera composers and emotion and how they manage to conjure it up.
Shall listen attentively. And I'll get annoyed if they try to suggest that
these skills are particularly applied to opera: I don't think it's true.
Opera is multi-layered and really depends for its effect on things like the
plot, characterisation, staging etc.

Kate B?

We used to listen on the radio every week but I'd often go off the boil and
be doing something else, particularly if it was an opera I didn't know: it
NEEDS the staging and movement, even if it's minimal. We went to see Peter
Grimes at the proms one year and it was "just" a concert performance, but
absolutely masterful - minimal movement, modern dress but modified for the
characters: "Auntie" dressed not as your blowsy pub landlady but
short-cropped hair and masculine clothes, and her two nieces, moving
listlessly except when they were having to be flirtatious which had clearly
been drummed into them - switched it on and switched it off again - and
both holding teddy bears, which was quite chilling. Clearly two very
damaged and exploited girls. That was obviously the producer's spin on it.
But wonderful though it is, it wasn't the music that produced the emotional
effect.

But emotion in music - Robin could have told you about the state I was
getting into during our first two months when I was singing VW's Dona Nobis
Pacem with Hoylake Choral Soc; he rang me and was alarmed to find me
sobbing almost incoherently as he'd caught me while going over the tenor
part on the piano (I'm sure singing tenor in the choir was one of the
things that helped do for my larynx) of the Dirge for Two Veterans (Walt
Whitman); I'd been wondering how I was ever going to get through the
performance. Next time I saw him, I think a few days later, he had bought
me a CD of that piece. His second ever present to me (his first was the
book Fermat's Last Theorem - no diamond bracelets or pink teddybears for
this essentially cerebral couple 😁)

At the end of my second year at university, a friend recommended a book
called The Language of Music by Deryck Cooke. One of the most important
books I've ever read. It goes into tiny detail about how the various
elements of music combine for emotional or dramatic effect, with a long
section on melodic and harmonic intervals and their different effects. It's
never left me. In the few compositions I've ever done, I tried to use what
I learned there.

I think it's film composers who are the masters of manipulating emotions.
Not opera. If you ever see 1984, the John Hurt version, Dominic Muldowney's
music for the national anthem of Oceania, floating out after the Two
Minutes Hate, is the perfect example of this: almost every interval in the
tune, and every chord progression (why are secondary sevenths SO
simple-but-powerful?) is meticulously calculated.

I can't do the catching up this evening, though: Puccini's Il Trittico is
on. Having said I'm not always enthralled by radio opera, I shall be living
every moment of Gianni Schicchi, as I have both sung in it (La Ciesca in
Somerset some time in the 80s) and made what I think is a pretty good
translation of it (performed in Chester in about 1998). Sadly I suspect
it's an "illicit" translation, as although Puccini was out of copyright,
his librettist didn't die till 1970 so the Italian libretto won't be out of
copyright till 2040. It's a debatable point whether or not I was infringing
copyright there, since I think I could make a case for claiming an opera
"translation" is not really a translation. However, at this point I'm not
sure I can even publish it on Score Exchange.

It will remain to be seen whether my attention is gripped by the other two
when there's only the sound. It would take a lot more to make me like Suor
Angelica at the best of times.

--
Linda ff

Linda Fox <linda.ff@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> Just heard a trailer for a programme on r3 tomorrow quite late (in fact the
> series started last week so I'll have to try to catch up before tomorrow's)
> all about opera composers and emotion and how they manage to conjure it up.
> Shall listen attentively. And I'll get annoyed if they try to suggest that
> these skills are particularly applied to opera: I don't think it's true.
> Opera is multi-layered and really depends for its effect on things like the
> plot, characterisation, staging etc.
>
> Kate B?
>
> We used to listen on the radio every week but I'd often go off the boil and
> be doing something else, particularly if it was an opera I didn't know: it
> NEEDS the staging and movement, even if it's minimal. We went to see Peter
> Grimes at the proms one year and it was "just" a concert performance, but
> absolutely masterful - minimal movement, modern dress but modified for the
> characters: "Auntie" dressed not as your blowsy pub landlady but
> short-cropped hair and masculine clothes, and her two nieces, moving
> listlessly except when they were having to be flirtatious which had clearly
> been drummed into them - switched it on and switched it off again - and
> both holding teddy bears, which was quite chilling. Clearly two very
> damaged and exploited girls. That was obviously the producer's spin on it.
> But wonderful though it is, it wasn't the music that produced the emotional
> effect.
>
> But emotion in music - Robin could have told you about the state I was
> getting into during our first two months when I was singing VW's Dona Nobis
> Pacem with Hoylake Choral Soc; he rang me and was alarmed to find me
> sobbing almost incoherently as he'd caught me while going over the tenor
> part on the piano (I'm sure singing tenor in the choir was one of the
> things that helped do for my larynx) of the Dirge for Two Veterans (Walt
> Whitman); I'd been wondering how I was ever going to get through the
> performance. Next time I saw him, I think a few days later, he had bought
> me a CD of that piece. His second ever present to me (his first was the
> book Fermat's Last Theorem - no diamond bracelets or pink teddybears for
> this essentially cerebral couple 😁)
>
> At the end of my second year at university, a friend recommended a book
> called The Language of Music by Deryck Cooke. One of the most important
> books I've ever read. It goes into tiny detail about how the various
> elements of music combine for emotional or dramatic effect, with a long
> section on melodic and harmonic intervals and their different effects. It's
> never left me. In the few compositions I've ever done, I tried to use what
> I learned there.
>
> I think it's film composers who are the masters of manipulating emotions.
> Not opera. If you ever see 1984, the John Hurt version, Dominic Muldowney's
> music for the national anthem of Oceania, floating out after the Two
> Minutes Hate, is the perfect example of this: almost every interval in the
> tune, and every chord progression (why are secondary sevenths SO
> simple-but-powerful?) is meticulously calculated.
>
> I can't do the catching up this evening, though: Puccini's Il Trittico is
> on. Having said I'm not always enthralled by radio opera, I shall be living
> every moment of Gianni Schicchi, as I have both sung in it (La Ciesca in
> Somerset some time in the 80s) and made what I think is a pretty good
> translation of it (performed in Chester in about 1998). Sadly I suspect
> it's an "illicit" translation, as although Puccini was out of copyright,
> his librettist didn't die till 1970 so the Italian libretto won't be out of
> copyright till 2040. It's a debatable point whether or not I was infringing
> copyright there, since I think I could make a case for claiming an opera
> "translation" is not really a translation. However, at this point I'm not
> sure I can even publish it on Score Exchange.
>
> It will remain to be seen whether my attention is gripped by the other two
> when there's only the sound. It would take a lot more to make me like Suor
> Angelica at the best of times.
>

:). Thanks LFF. I did a Uni of Oxford course on Puccini some years ago.

Mrs McT

Chris <chris.mcmillan@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Linda Fox <linda.ff@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>
>> Just heard a trailer for a programme on r3 tomorrow quite late (in fact the
>> series started last week so I'll have to try to catch up before tomorrow's)
>> all about opera composers and emotion and how they manage to conjure it up.
>> Shall listen attentively. And I'll get annoyed if they try to suggest that
>> these skills are particularly applied to opera: I don't think it's true.
>> Opera is multi-layered and really depends for its effect on things like the
>> plot, characterisation, staging etc.
>>
>> Kate B?
>>
>> We used to listen on the radio every week but I'd often go off the boil and
>> be doing something else, particularly if it was an opera I didn't know: it
>> NEEDS the staging and movement, even if it's minimal. We went to see Peter
>> Grimes at the proms one year and it was "just" a concert performance, but
>> absolutely masterful - minimal movement, modern dress but modified for the
>> characters: "Auntie" dressed not as your blowsy pub landlady but
>> short-cropped hair and masculine clothes, and her two nieces, moving
>> listlessly except when they were having to be flirtatious which had clearly
>> been drummed into them - switched it on and switched it off again - and
>> both holding teddy bears, which was quite chilling. Clearly two very
>> damaged and exploited girls. That was obviously the producer's spin on it.
>> But wonderful though it is, it wasn't the music that produced the emotional
>> effect.
>>
>> But emotion in music - Robin could have told you about the state I was
>> getting into during our first two months when I was singing VW's Dona Nobis
>> Pacem with Hoylake Choral Soc; he rang me and was alarmed to find me
>> sobbing almost incoherently as he'd caught me while going over the tenor
>> part on the piano (I'm sure singing tenor in the choir was one of the
>> things that helped do for my larynx) of the Dirge for Two Veterans (Walt
>> Whitman); I'd been wondering how I was ever going to get through the
>> performance. Next time I saw him, I think a few days later, he had bought
>> me a CD of that piece. His second ever present to me (his first was the
>> book Fermat's Last Theorem - no diamond bracelets or pink teddybears for
>> this essentially cerebral couple 😁)
>>
>> At the end of my second year at university, a friend recommended a book
>> called The Language of Music by Deryck Cooke. One of the most important
>> books I've ever read. It goes into tiny detail about how the various
>> elements of music combine for emotional or dramatic effect, with a long
>> section on melodic and harmonic intervals and their different effects. It's
>> never left me. In the few compositions I've ever done, I tried to use what
>> I learned there.
>>
>> I think it's film composers who are the masters of manipulating emotions.
>> Not opera. If you ever see 1984, the John Hurt version, Dominic Muldowney's
>> music for the national anthem of Oceania, floating out after the Two
>> Minutes Hate, is the perfect example of this: almost every interval in the
>> tune, and every chord progression (why are secondary sevenths SO
>> simple-but-powerful?) is meticulously calculated.
>>
>> I can't do the catching up this evening, though: Puccini's Il Trittico is
>> on. Having said I'm not always enthralled by radio opera, I shall be living
>> every moment of Gianni Schicchi, as I have both sung in it (La Ciesca in
>> Somerset some time in the 80s) and made what I think is a pretty good
>> translation of it (performed in Chester in about 1998). Sadly I suspect
>> it's an "illicit" translation, as although Puccini was out of copyright,
>> his librettist didn't die till 1970 so the Italian libretto won't be out of
>> copyright till 2040. It's a debatable point whether or not I was infringing
>> copyright there, since I think I could make a case for claiming an opera
>> "translation" is not really a translation. However, at this point I'm not
>> sure I can even publish it on Score Exchange.
>>
>> It will remain to be seen whether my attention is gripped by the other two
>> when there's only the sound. It would take a lot more to make me like Suor
>> Angelica at the best of times.
>>
>
> :). Thanks LFF. I did a Uni of Oxford course on Puccini some years ago.
>
> Mrs McT
>
I think he was brilliant. Most people probably only know him through the
big hit arias - your tiny hand is frozen, one fine day, o mii babbino Caro
etc - but the real meat is not in those pieces, which I find rather
unremarkable, but in the ensembles, the sung dialogues (I wouldn't call
them recitatives) and the music that conveys action.

Tonight's programme contained a brilliant selection of pieces, I'll give
them that. Great to hear the Peter Grimes mad scene - I pretty well grew up
with that music.

--
Linda ff

On 14/11/2022 00:48, Linda Fox wrote:
> Chris <chris.mcmillan@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> Linda Fox <linda.ff@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Just heard a trailer for a programme on r3 tomorrow quite late (in fact the
>>> series started last week so I'll have to try to catch up before tomorrow's)
>>> all about opera composers and emotion and how they manage to conjure it up.
>>> Shall listen attentively. And I'll get annoyed if they try to suggest that
>>> these skills are particularly applied to opera: I don't think it's true.
>>> Opera is multi-layered and really depends for its effect on things like the
>>> plot, characterisation, staging etc.
>>>
>>> Kate B?
>>>
>>> We used to listen on the radio every week but I'd often go off the boil and
>>> be doing something else, particularly if it was an opera I didn't know: it
>>> NEEDS the staging and movement, even if it's minimal. We went to see Peter
>>> Grimes at the proms one year and it was "just" a concert performance, but
>>> absolutely masterful - minimal movement, modern dress but modified for the
>>> characters: "Auntie" dressed not as your blowsy pub landlady but
>>> short-cropped hair and masculine clothes, and her two nieces, moving
>>> listlessly except when they were having to be flirtatious which had clearly
>>> been drummed into them - switched it on and switched it off again - and
>>> both holding teddy bears, which was quite chilling. Clearly two very
>>> damaged and exploited girls. That was obviously the producer's spin on it.
>>> But wonderful though it is, it wasn't the music that produced the emotional
>>> effect.
>>>
>>> But emotion in music - Robin could have told you about the state I was
>>> getting into during our first two months when I was singing VW's Dona Nobis
>>> Pacem with Hoylake Choral Soc; he rang me and was alarmed to find me
>>> sobbing almost incoherently as he'd caught me while going over the tenor
>>> part on the piano (I'm sure singing tenor in the choir was one of the
>>> things that helped do for my larynx) of the Dirge for Two Veterans (Walt
>>> Whitman); I'd been wondering how I was ever going to get through the
>>> performance. Next time I saw him, I think a few days later, he had bought
>>> me a CD of that piece. His second ever present to me (his first was the
>>> book Fermat's Last Theorem - no diamond bracelets or pink teddybears for
>>> this essentially cerebral couple 😁)
>>>
>>> At the end of my second year at university, a friend recommended a book
>>> called The Language of Music by Deryck Cooke. One of the most important
>>> books I've ever read. It goes into tiny detail about how the various
>>> elements of music combine for emotional or dramatic effect, with a long
>>> section on melodic and harmonic intervals and their different effects. It's
>>> never left me. In the few compositions I've ever done, I tried to use what
>>> I learned there.
>>>
>>> I think it's film composers who are the masters of manipulating emotions.
>>> Not opera. If you ever see 1984, the John Hurt version, Dominic Muldowney's
>>> music for the national anthem of Oceania, floating out after the Two
>>> Minutes Hate, is the perfect example of this: almost every interval in the
>>> tune, and every chord progression (why are secondary sevenths SO
>>> simple-but-powerful?) is meticulously calculated.
>>>
>>> I can't do the catching up this evening, though: Puccini's Il Trittico is
>>> on. Having said I'm not always enthralled by radio opera, I shall be living
>>> every moment of Gianni Schicchi, as I have both sung in it (La Ciesca in
>>> Somerset some time in the 80s) and made what I think is a pretty good
>>> translation of it (performed in Chester in about 1998). Sadly I suspect
>>> it's an "illicit" translation, as although Puccini was out of copyright,
>>> his librettist didn't die till 1970 so the Italian libretto won't be out of
>>> copyright till 2040. It's a debatable point whether or not I was infringing
>>> copyright there, since I think I could make a case for claiming an opera
>>> "translation" is not really a translation. However, at this point I'm not
>>> sure I can even publish it on Score Exchange.
>>>
>>> It will remain to be seen whether my attention is gripped by the other two
>>> when there's only the sound. It would take a lot more to make me like Suor
>>> Angelica at the best of times.
>>>
>>
>> :). Thanks LFF. I did a Uni of Oxford course on Puccini some years ago.
>>
>> Mrs McT
>>
> I think he was brilliant. Most people probably only know him through the
> big hit arias - your tiny hand is frozen, one fine day, o mii babbino Caro
> etc - but the real meat is not in those pieces, which I find rather
> unremarkable, but in the ensembles, the sung dialogues (I wouldn't call
> them recitatives) and the music that conveys action.
>
> Tonight's programme contained a brilliant selection of pieces, I'll give
> them that. Great to hear the Peter Grimes mad scene - I pretty well grew up
> with that music.
>
Am a bit behind with all of this, but will catch up as soon as I can. Am
currently researching affect and expression in 17th and 18th C music, so
will be interested to hear what their take on emotion in music is.

And I agree wholeheartedly that 'concert' performances of opera can be
every bit as stunning as the full monty in a theatre - I went to a
performance of Salome at the Usher Hall in the summer that was utterly
devastating. It's also true that all those singing had done it in
theatres and were clearly distilling everything they had experienced
through weeks of physical rehearsal - and the success of concert
performances is emphatically not a justification of the latest Arts
Council massacre.

--
Kate B

Linda Fox <linda.ff@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Chris <chris.mcmillan@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> Linda Fox <linda.ff@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Just heard a trailer for a programme on r3 tomorrow quite late (in fact the
>>> series started last week so I'll have to try to catch up before tomorrow's)
>>> all about opera composers and emotion and how they manage to conjure it up.
>>> Shall listen attentively. And I'll get annoyed if they try to suggest that
>>> these skills are particularly applied to opera: I don't think it's true.
>>> Opera is multi-layered and really depends for its effect on things like the
>>> plot, characterisation, staging etc.
>>>
>>> Kate B?
>>>
>>> We used to listen on the radio every week but I'd often go off the boil and
>>> be doing something else, particularly if it was an opera I didn't know: it
>>> NEEDS the staging and movement, even if it's minimal. We went to see Peter
>>> Grimes at the proms one year and it was "just" a concert performance, but
>>> absolutely masterful - minimal movement, modern dress but modified for the
>>> characters: "Auntie" dressed not as your blowsy pub landlady but
>>> short-cropped hair and masculine clothes, and her two nieces, moving
>>> listlessly except when they were having to be flirtatious which had clearly
>>> been drummed into them - switched it on and switched it off again - and
>>> both holding teddy bears, which was quite chilling. Clearly two very
>>> damaged and exploited girls. That was obviously the producer's spin on it.
>>> But wonderful though it is, it wasn't the music that produced the emotional
>>> effect.
>>>
>>> But emotion in music - Robin could have told you about the state I was
>>> getting into during our first two months when I was singing VW's Dona Nobis
>>> Pacem with Hoylake Choral Soc; he rang me and was alarmed to find me
>>> sobbing almost incoherently as he'd caught me while going over the tenor
>>> part on the piano (I'm sure singing tenor in the choir was one of the
>>> things that helped do for my larynx) of the Dirge for Two Veterans (Walt
>>> Whitman); I'd been wondering how I was ever going to get through the
>>> performance. Next time I saw him, I think a few days later, he had bought
>>> me a CD of that piece. His second ever present to me (his first was the
>>> book Fermat's Last Theorem - no diamond bracelets or pink teddybears for
>>> this essentially cerebral couple 😁)
>>>
>>> At the end of my second year at university, a friend recommended a book
>>> called The Language of Music by Deryck Cooke. One of the most important
>>> books I've ever read. It goes into tiny detail about how the various
>>> elements of music combine for emotional or dramatic effect, with a long
>>> section on melodic and harmonic intervals and their different effects. It's
>>> never left me. In the few compositions I've ever done, I tried to use what
>>> I learned there.
>>>
>>> I think it's film composers who are the masters of manipulating emotions.
>>> Not opera. If you ever see 1984, the John Hurt version, Dominic Muldowney's
>>> music for the national anthem of Oceania, floating out after the Two
>>> Minutes Hate, is the perfect example of this: almost every interval in the
>>> tune, and every chord progression (why are secondary sevenths SO
>>> simple-but-powerful?) is meticulously calculated.
>>>
>>> I can't do the catching up this evening, though: Puccini's Il Trittico is
>>> on. Having said I'm not always enthralled by radio opera, I shall be living
>>> every moment of Gianni Schicchi, as I have both sung in it (La Ciesca in
>>> Somerset some time in the 80s) and made what I think is a pretty good
>>> translation of it (performed in Chester in about 1998). Sadly I suspect
>>> it's an "illicit" translation, as although Puccini was out of copyright,
>>> his librettist didn't die till 1970 so the Italian libretto won't be out of
>>> copyright till 2040. It's a debatable point whether or not I was infringing
>>> copyright there, since I think I could make a case for claiming an opera
>>> "translation" is not really a translation. However, at this point I'm not
>>> sure I can even publish it on Score Exchange.
>>>
>>> It will remain to be seen whether my attention is gripped by the other two
>>> when there's only the sound. It would take a lot more to make me like Suor
>>> Angelica at the best of times.
>>>
>>
>> :). Thanks LFF. I did a Uni of Oxford course on Puccini some years ago.
>>
>> Mrs McT
>>
> I think he was brilliant. Most people probably only know him through the
> big hit arias - your tiny hand is frozen, one fine day, o mii babbino Caro
> etc - but the real meat is not in those pieces, which I find rather
> unremarkable, but in the ensembles, the sung dialogues (I wouldn't call
> them recitatives) and the music that conveys action.
>
> Tonight's programme contained a brilliant selection of pieces, I'll give
> them that. Great to hear the Peter Grimes mad scene - I pretty well grew up
> with that music.
>

I only knew the big arias but I’d been doing these music courses for a
number of years with a number of excellent tutors : plus it was only at the
top of this road and everything (even The Ring) became interesting. In the
end it was a decision to move the adult ed to main campus snd push the
price up to the sort of prices only those earning degree course salaries
that stopped me doing it. Although it was adult ed we were actually
studying at first year degree level without having to write anything to
prove it. The chap didn’t believe in loading us with it but he invented
just enough small things to prove we understood what we learnt and he got
paid. Over a decade or so I got to grips with a number of composers: not
always opera either.

Mrs McT