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In the years sixteen seventy eight sent every mon said Opera is a bizarre affair of poetry and music in which the poet and the musician each equally obstructed by the other give themselves no end of trouble to produce a wretched result. On the other hand a hundred years later Mozart said the best thing of all is when a good composer who understands the stage meets an able poet. In that case no fear as need be entertained as to the applause even of the ignorant Riverside radio w while they are in New York City. Presents opera the battleground of the arts in this series of half hour programmes Borys gold ASCII discusses some of the problems that beset operators and those who create and produce them. The programmes are produced in association with the gold of ski opera Institute for National Educational radio under a grant from the National Home Library Foundation. What is called ASCII is nationally known as an intermission commentator for broadcast at the
Metropolitan Opera and as an opera producer possibly through the productions of The God of ski Opera Theatre which have been presented in about 400 communities from coast to coast. And now here is Mr. Gold ASCII. Last time we covered in broad outline the scope of the series of programs and now we must begin dealing with specific details. Our topic this time is the dominance of the singer. Men began to write operas because they were convinced that singing would enhance the words of the play. They thought that the expressive power of music would heighten and intensify dramatic emotion. The early composers were careful to make their music correspond to the accents and it donations of the words as they would be spoken on stage. They wrote in a freely changing rhythm and within the company meant of simple chords. Many a composer since has followed these early men in their search for a par Lando or declamatory style that would also be musical. Especially when setting the narrative portions of the
text where the most important thing is for the words to be heard and their meaning made clear to the audience. There is no denying however that incessant power Lando leaves the listener unsatisfied. The singer is performing but there is no Jude and the pleasure and excitement that one expects of music are missing when Reedy doesn't want to listen to a great deal of this sort of thing to be defeated What do you mean by that. I don't because I don't even know what to think about unable to debate what company the damn Democrats are going to get it from and I think you just said it must suck. Composers don't have to write that kind of power land anymore. Nowadays the voice parts that merely copy verbal inflections can be made more tolerable because an eloquent orchestra and the resources of modern harmony keep musical interest alive for example. What 17th century composers didn't have Richard Strauss's instrumental means to live in the
parlance of sections of their works they could relieve the monotony of our London only by the melody and rhythm of song. And they did this whenever the language of the drama itself became more emotional and consequently more lyrical. Now in these moments when Melody or enforce this feeling words and their specific meanings are no longer the most important element the emotion is more important and here Music comes into its own. The words are carry their way into song. For if it is to be expressive in its own unique way music must supersede the rules and conditions of literal verbal accentuation. Opera has to have all kinds of composition first Bailando for narrative passages in which the audience must understand every word in order to know what is happening on stage and second song for those passages in which communication of the emotions through musical means is more important than the actual words being sung. Early composers of opera alternated these two styles of setting words and they demanded that their librettists give them
texts constructed so as to allow a contrast between present narrative and the lyrical expression of emotion between power and for the narrative sections of their operas the early composers invented that Steve to enable their singers to express the Italian language as faithfully as musical notation would allow recitative gives the singer short phrases of conventional musical figures punctuated by instrumental chords instrumental punctuation was originally given by haps a chord with perhaps a bit of reinforcement by the string bass. Very soon other instruments were added to the harpsichord and the bass which resulted in the rich at the top or instrument atrocity. The makeup
the types of ferocity that they were sometimes found in the same opera. Basically I see that the form and concept have proved extremely adaptable to other languages and to why do differing styles of composition. Thus we can say that every opera composer since the early Venetians has adopted the form and molded it to his own personal manner. Let's hear a few examples of how various composers have written their thought that the judge himself. Said. This was in the third act of Mozart's magic.
Commenting on the duplicity of the girl whom he is planning to seduce. And now let us listen to an example from Beethoven. The introductory resi that the Folio enormous famous Aria wherein Flora stands devoted wife expresses her did the station the villain the. Moon. Once freed from the necessity to get all of the words across in natural accents the lyrical passages
of opera took on a musical form and shape of their own. These set speeches or soliloquy is where emotion rises to a higher pitch became separate musical numbers and out of them came the operatic aria words or whole lines might have to be repeated versification could be distorted diction might be lost in the sweep of a melodic phrase no matter as long as that phrase spoke eloquently to the listener and became memorable. The Aria became the highlight of the opera performance. Ultimately its entire result death or it was the means by which a singer could win public acclaim and success over his rivals in artistic matters the criteria of one generation are seldom those of the next. The enthusiastic connoisseur of singing who is always heard lamenting that decline of the art that he has witnessed in his time was evidently as familiar to our forefathers as he is to us. Yet on the evidence that we have we must conclude that in the art of Bel Canto the great singers of the 18th
century excelled all who came before or after them. The term bel canto by the way means simply beautiful song and refers to a type of singing in which beauty of tone and perfection of execution made the effect as opposed to more of a climate or a style developed in the nineteenth century in which dramatic force was looked for. The eighteenth century masters excelled both in Slocum tabular passages and in the execution of florid vocalisation and the art of Bel Canto was cultivated and brought to perfection where the male Sopranos or castor art or singers who came into fashion when the Roman law prohibited women from appearing on the stage. Boys Voices even in church music were considered too immature to deficient in technique and expressive ability for the public of those days. On the other hand the castrati possessed clear bright sun or voices that reached to the heights of the soprano register with great power. In addition they were very well trained musicians. The class tried to influence the composition as well as the performance of music for more than a century by their virtuoso
performance of music written especially to student vigil gifts and special talents. The art of the class tragedy was not limited to singing nor to sit down by the composer. Traditionally they were expected to invent and perform vocal variations and condensers of great complexity. They were supposed to substitute brilliantly executed scale on a page of passages for the play notes of a melody. According to contemporary accounts their invention often included skips so wide that one would suppose they'd been imagine for the flute or violin because they were so difficult to execute. The custard also had to know numerous rules that govern the use of ornaments proper tourist turns mordant and drills of every kind. The composer normally left these embellishments to the judgment and taste of the singer. Indeed the study were very touchy about such matters in a book published in 1723. The renowned singer and teacher Pierre Francesco tows he gave his opinion of composers who presume to write out ornaments in their scores as if the singer himself did
not know well enough where and how they should be applied those erode to these modern composers think they understand singing better than the singers themselves. Poor Italy. Oh injurious insult to you. Modern singers who submit to instruction fit for children have our singers forgotten how to embellish a melody. Let us imitate the foreign nationals in those things only wherein they excel. We don't precisely know how the great singers of the time sounded or what their short Pisgah dances were like. It is possible however to do some educated guessing. Michael Kelly the Irish tenor to whose reminiscences we all so much information about the bloody procedures of the 18th century describes a very involved couldn't say introduced by the cuss throughout the Marchese who was at the time a leading male soprano of the lake or an opera house. This garden so consisted seemingly of a
series of Octave jumps proceeding up the scale and culminating in a sustained high tone which thrilled the audience. This entire display of vocal pyrotechnics became known as Mark Bumba. You curiously enough there is a passage in an eon from menial that closely resembles the description we have of Mark is born but it also consists of Octave jumps. And focuses. Now here is how this passage sounds when sung in the opera. Let me make clear that I don't claim that this passage is the same as Mark is the celebrated the bomba
or even that I was trying to imitate it but from the descriptions we have of what the custody did do this strikes me as the closest thing we now have to an example of there are in the days of the caste droughty before excesses crept in and it wasn't just the technical ability required to perform Ari's that fascinated the public. Audiences were attracted also because it was a powerful means of emotional expression both in pathetic and in joyful situations. If we find this surprising we must remember that at that time the modern orchestra with its capacity for storing our deepest feelings lay beyond anyone's imagination at that time the human voice was music's most expressive medium as it still is for many people today and we may be sure I think that the costs are to lack nothing we could teach them about moving an audience's feelings. And so the importance of the aria grew out of all proportion to the other elements that go to make an opera. The original purpose of the creators of opera may have been to make music enhanced the drama.
But now with the rise of the aria the singers forced the composers to make apparatus into nothing but eagles for vocal display. The less attention composers paid to principles of dramatic truth the better. The very text of operas were affected by conventions that had much less to do with good dramatic construction than with a rivalry with mean singers. As a young man they tell important playwright Carlo Goldoni was once eager to have one of his plays set to music. He went to see a certain count prata who was the director of the opera and Milan among other things can Prada said to go there only let me point out to you a few of those immutable rules of opera that you do not appear to know. You have to give the principal singers five Arias each. They are distributed as follows. 2 in the first act two in the second and one in the third. The two secondary characters
have three Arias apiece. One in each act and the smaller parts have to be content with one aria or two at the most. They may be in whichever act you choose. The librettist must provide the composer with opportunities for musical contrast and so arrange matters that two pathetic Arias do not follow in succession above all. He must not give the effective Bravo Arias to secondary characters. They must be kept for the principal singers. That was in 1732. You can see how far the thing I had taken command of matters operatic in the course of one hundred years the aria as it flourished in the eighteenth century is to be seen at its best in the opera scores of Handel. There we find the various forms it took in the conventions that surrounded it. There we also find examples of the
total disregard for dramatic fitness that was the inevitable consequence of treating opera as a purely musical entertainment. Here for instance is an aria from Handel's Julius Caesar where the protagonist compares himself to a hunter stalking his prey. The idea of a hunt evokes the musical notion of a hunting horn. And this in turn leads to a spirited contest between the singer and the horn player. It was nevertheless the age of reason and so theorists appear to declare that their return to first principles was needed to rid oper of all that was in Congress. But radical changes in music are carried out by composers
not by theorists. And so in due course two composers appeared to look to reform the aria. The other Mozart to transform it. Both were men gifted with sensitive dramatic insight and they made the aria a means of the picking character and situation on stage. Krist of luck abolished effects that were not appropriate to the person represented in the drama and he strove to make his music a perfectly natural expression of the text. The money festivals that proclaim his principles of reform are well known rather than repeat them here. I'd like you to hear something Brooke wrote in a letter to you. He's the breath is for a few night tours coming now to the audio at the end of the Act during the funeral ceremonies. I'd like to have an area in which the words interpret both the action and the music. The music should always coincide with the end of the line not the beginning
nor the middle of the next line in Arias that is a very important point to remember although it's of no use in recitative. Therein lies the difference. And then the idea is more readily fitted to a flowing melody. How different these observations of blokes are from the recipe that count Brock gave to Goldoni a few minutes ago. That is listen to an excerpt from the aria look was worrying about when he wrote to and observe how intimately the nuances of the vocal melody followed the meaning and inflection of the words of the text. Their fair. Share. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. The second of the two composers who succeeded in reconciling the conflicting tendencies of singing and drama was worth going on but there was Mozart also proceeded by instinct rather than from logical reasoning. And he succeeded in portraying and sublime music every shade of human feeling the voice part in a motor the aria is expressive enough in itself but then again still more color poetry and significance from the company meant that supports it. It isn't a competition that matches the singer in every subtle dynamic nuance qualifying and characterizing each phrase through harmonies and regulations whose secret modes of the law new it is this combination of vocal and musical qualities that brings Mozart's operatic arias so much nearer to our own day than anything in the work of his contemporaries. Take for example care of
you knows what is a paper from the second act of The Marriage of Figaro. It begins her formal offering in the speech of the raids before his beloved found the song. Music music when I write. But the tone changes. It becomes more personal more passionate. There will be no sings I feel a longing filled with desire. One moment of this pleasure the next moment torture and pain.
And if he mentions torture and pain the orchestra began chanting with trembling now he's full of flame. Turn it into little. Little Little remember little one I don't know them until the end really very well becomes a confession of all his youthful hopes and then all of a sudden he realizes the impropriety of telling this so openly to the compass he catches himself.
Good heavens he was supposed to be performing a middling personal song. We can almost hear his embarrassment as he takes hold of himself to the strains of his. There are everywhere everywhere. By the end of Mozart's career the language of music was rapidly growing and expanding. The orchestra learnt to sing on a did it and began to give its own virtuoso performances. As this happened composers became more and more concerned with the expression of literary and dramatic
ideas connoisseurs of the art of singing indeed had cause to regret these more intellectual considerations that were drawing the singer's attention away from the pursuit of pure beauty in tone and phrasing and the effect so brilliant executive in the 19th century the aria took on new attributes it expressed the drama as well as emotion and feeling. The company abandoned the old fashioned guitar like strumming and now became an integral part of the song constantly inflecting a vocal line that no longer tolerated embellishments or variations. The succession of Giuseppe Verdi operas through his long career illustrates this transformation very well. Let us listen to an example from one of the earliest earliest works now book where we can still notice the composer strong indebtedness to his predecessors. Oh.
Oh. Oh. Yeah. Oh oh. Oh. And here's an excerpt from video showing a much more dramatic treatment of the accompany men. They can be. Done. What. Sort. Of story. When he. Was sitting beside him.
Were you. Going to. Say and you're finally is the ending. Ford's monologue from Falstaff an example of a most sophisticated integration of orchestral and vocal subtleties. Of Paris. Yes. Yes yes yes.
I know. Why not. In this program we have considered the aria the first of the elements that for a time
at least dominated opera and were treated as the end rather than the means of operatic composition and performance. This mania for vocal virtuosity was eventually overturned by the orchestra which became so powerfully expressive in the hands of the composer of the 19th century that it in turn came to be as great a temptation towards concertizing in the theatre as were the vocal abilities of the Custer arty in their time. And that provides us with the subject for our next program. You've been listening to opera the battleground of the arts with Boris gold off nationally known operatic commentator producer and scholar. Opera of the battleground of the arts is produced in association with the gold of ski opera Institute by W. R. They are the noncommercial cultural and information station all the Riverside Church New York City. Producer Walter Shepherd production assistants and technical operations Matthew
Bieber feld and Peter Feldman the special musical illustrations on this week's program were recorded by Nancy Williams mezzo soprano of the Metropolitan Opera Association. The readers were ahead of Jane's Donal pace and James Prescott all members of the barnet college theatre company a grant from the National Home Library Foundation as made possible the production of this program for a national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.
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Series
Negro music in America
Episode Number
12
Producing Organization
WSIU 8 (Television station : Carbondale, Ill.)
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-rf5kfj80
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Description
Episode Description
This program, the twelfth of thirty nine parts, presents various examples of African-American folk and jazz music.
Series Description
This series focuses on music created and performed by African-Americans, including folk, and jazz styles. This series is hosted by Anton Luckenbach of Carbondale, Illinois, who also gathered interviews in New Orleans for this series.
Broadcast Date
1967-02-20
Topics
Music
Race and Ethnicity
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:35
Credits
Host: Luckenbach, Anton
Producing Organization: WSIU 8 (Television station : Carbondale, Ill.)
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 67-1-12 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:14:10
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Citations
Chicago: “Negro music in America; 12,” 1967-02-20, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-rf5kfj80.
MLA: “Negro music in America; 12.” 1967-02-20. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-rf5kfj80>.
APA: Negro music in America; 12. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-rf5kfj80