mikebarb@n... wrote:
> Oh yes. I took a performance seminar and music history from an guitarist. He
> believed that music was itself a language. (Of course, instrumentalists
would, I
> think, have no trouble believing that concept.) In music history, he had us
> listen to a piano piece (which?) that Beethoven had written after he had an
> argument with the woman in his life (name?). He illustrated how you could
hear
> the argument could be heard and followed in the music even though there were
no
> words used. My professor used it to illustrate his thesis that some people
seem
> to think in music rather than verbally.
I think this is rather far-fetched, I'm afraid. Yes, you could well say
you can hear a quarrel in a piece of music. Particularly _after_ you
have been told there is a quarrel there! But if you tried to go into the
details of the quarrel ("Why didn't you let me know you were going to be
late?" "You don't trust me!" "And with good reason after the way you
lied last time" etc) without having already been told them, I would say
you were being fanciful; ten sensitive musicians, invited to write down
the minutiae of the quarrel in the music, (after complaining that this
was not really sensible) would come up with ten different scenarios.
For pure instrumental music, this is fine. The details of the quarrel
are not necessary for you to get the feeling, the anger, the bitterness,
the resolution, and so on. This is the language that is conveyed in
music, the feeling, the expression. But opera needs more than this. I
feel Lloyd has been rather backed into a corner to defend his position,
and has taken a rather more extreme line than he may have done
otherwise. There are many times in opera where the minutiae _are_
important.
Of course there are places where not being able to hear the words
doesn't detract from the effect. In an aria, for instance, where the
plot has stopped moving and the words are repeated several times anyway,
it is the music that carries the emotion and the characterisation. But
it is still necessary to understand the plot, sometimes in detail: play
a recording of Che Faro to someone who has never heard it, and who
doesn't understand Italian, and I'd challenge you to find someone who
comes even remotely close to explaining the feeling behind it. I'd even
go so far as to suggest this is true of Porgi Amor - and remember,
you've never heard it before, and you don't know what the words mean.
That's a hard job, but I've just tried it. Taken on its own, this
serene, all-major-key aria could be expressing any one of half a dozen
things. What the music does is to _enhance_ the messages sent by other
means: the words, the stage position, the body language, the story so
far.
It seems we have strayed an awful long way from the ideals behind the
origins of opera. Caio is quite right, it _is_ a sung play. With music
used to enhance the drama a hundredfold. Opera is and always has been a
synthesis of so many arts.
I went to a performance of Rigoletto, sung in Italian with no surtitles.
Fortunately I know the plot in fairly intimate detail; it was well acted
and sung, but I couldn't have followed it from that alone _or_ from the
expression in the music. During the interval after act 2, I overheard a
woman say to her friend, "oh, yes, it's beautiful. Yes, of course I can
follow it. At the end of that last act there was at least one, maybe two
dead bodies on the stage" (what she could see was mattresses which had
been thrown out of Gilda's window!) I would maintain that there is _no
way_ in which the music, without prior knowledge of the plot, could help
someone understand Rigoletto if they could not understand the words,
except perhaps the sort of extreme physical "signalling" which Lloyd was
critical of recently.
>
> In the performance seminar, he helped me with "How Beautiful are the Feet of
> Them" from the Messiah. He showed me that feeling the pulse "of those feet
> walking," gives that piece life. I adore Heather Harper singing this piece
> (actually all the solos in the Messiah), for she understands the music and it
> works. Likewise, I've heard a professional singer locally that can with sing
> "Rejoice..." with abandon, but who can't make "How the feet of them..."
really
> work. Music itself, all alone, unadorned by any words, is a language too.
Oh dear. I think this, again, was reading messages into the music after
they are already known - and I _really_ don't go along with the walking
image in this aria anyway, sorry. I'm not even sure of the sense of the
text before it was translated.
> Vocalists have a hard time sometimes reconciling performing while using two
> languages at the same time. However when they work together the result is
> powerful. At least that is how I understand it.
Exactly - when they work together. Which I _think_ rather contradicts
your previous paragraph, though others may disagree (feel free :o) )
I am surprised that some people involved with singing seem so anxious
not to corrupt the musical line that they would prefer not to have to
worry about clarity of words at all. I can't understand why these people
haven't become instrumentalists instead ;) though in a way, I think
they're trying to.
provokingly yours,
Linda
|
