12.20.2018, rev. 1.28.2019
Thesis: I don’t have one yet, we will see where this goes.
Over the past two months, I have performed an inordinate number or “texted” works—a fitting rebuttal to my last post. Excerpts from operas by Verdi, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Rossini, Massenet, Puccini, and Bizet; songs of Mahler and Bernstein; Britten’s The Turn of the Screw; and a workshop of Laura Kaminsky’s newest opera, Postville: Hometown to the World have all been on the docket.
side note: for those of you that were hoping this was somehow about SMS music, that’s a great idea. Sorry to disappoint.
For all of these artworks, it seems likely that the text (or at the very least, the story/plot) was established before the music was written. Similar to films, the music component of the final work is subservient to at least one other facet of the work. Does it have to be this way? Certainly not. Is it a problem that it is? Also no, but it is at least worth considering what the alternatives could be.
Billy Joel claims to write his music before his lyrics. Several years ago I saw an interview with him where he said that he begins with the music then kind of sang along with what vowels seemed to feel right and then added the lyrics. I would argue that this is a vast oversimplification (and clearly not the case for We Didn’t Start the Fire) but it is an interesting diversion from the norm. Starting with the music, could the chained major seventh chords in Scenes from an Italian Restaurant be anything other than one of Dr. Terrence Milligan’s “passageways”, a montage of passing seasons before we return to the less distant past? Could the smoky jazz piano of New York State of Mind lead to anything other than reminiscing about the place of his youth?
David Bruce (a London-based contemporary composer) and his current librettist decide on a story and then work independently. He details this process in this video. Certainly there is some back and forth between composer and librettist and the plot is the driving force for both, but is that so different than writing music to a specific form? Writing music for characters and a plot is not completely removed from writing themes in a specific order and series of keys. And “formal” music is certainly a large portion of the western canon and the basis for large swaths of the music theory most commonly taught and learned (but those are other discussions).
This past week, I was playing with the Cincinnati Opera as they workshopped Postville: Hometown to the World (Laura Kaminsky, composer; Kim Reed, librettist). The opera follows fictional residents of Postville, Iowa after the ICE raid in 2008. Normally when working with an opera or musical, I come in rather late in the process and everything is fleshed out. With this being a workshop, I joined at the beginning along with everyone else. It was interesting to be part of the process of the singers and conductor fleshing out the ideas of the characters and their motivations. Being able to speak directly with the composer and librettist about how the text and music interact and exactly what message is meant to be conveyed at any given moment was a new experience. Not that it is unique to opera, but it was very clear that every moment is in some way serving the whole and working to strengthen or propel the story. Another new aspect to the workshop was that there were constant revisions and edits being made to what was being performed. Often, the composer and librettist would explain their motivations for adapting what had previously been written and how they sought to clarify the moment and help the audience understand what is being said and expressed in any given scene. Being part of this writing and revision process for a texted work was a new process for me and it was eye-opening at times.