Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]>: >>Concerning melody: aren't some leitmotive glorious melodies?. > >Of course. Has anyone claimed that they weren't? Chris can speak for >himself, but what I'm saying is that the symphonic opera is easier to fake. >It takes less effort to write a bad one. It's truly difficult to come up >with a good melody, unless you're Gershwin or Berlin. Agree. Surely Kurt Weill's production costed a lot of work to its author.... >George Bernard Shaw, however, advanced the theory that Verdi was no longer >capable of writing a power-hit like "La donna mobile" and so turned to this >new method. I respectfully disagree. So does I. Something near to that theory was held also by Stravinsky. >I think that Verdi was influenced by Boito's understanding of Wagner, >that Verdi had great respect for Boito's judgement, and that the idea of >absorbing some of Wagner's method into his own excited him intellectually. It's possible. However, I find very little Wagner at "Falstaff" etc. and, by the way, at Boito's own production. Perhaps it's a failure of my ears. >>Concerning formal coherence: some entire acts in wagnerian operas are >>globally builded from schemes like AAB, etc. They are not divided in >>numbers, each of them with a formal unity, but they have indeed a global >>form. > >Yes, but it's not song form and it hasn't the limits of song. Stravinsky >once said (and I paraphrase from rotten memory) that art is a matter of >finding limits -- or definition, if you will. The shapeless becomes a >clear shape. I admire Strawinsky's ideas about composition (his entire poietike), however, I suspect that he overreacted a little about Wagner, and that he accused his music of being much more "shapeless" than it really was. (Not surprising: after all, everybody has a father to kill). >>I would guess that the greatest difficulty at the "symphonic" model >>is to drive the music coherently during a large period, precisely because >>you don't have much formal boundaries or "milestones" that can help you. >>It takes a great musical maturity to write more than 25 minutes >>of coherent undivided music. > >Well, as long as you include "coherent," I agree. But I assure you that 25 >minutes of noodling around ain't all that difficult. What it mainly takes >is time, paper, and a sharp pencil. Sure. Churchill said once something like: "I need three hours to prepare a 5 minute speech, but for a 3 hour speech, I can start right now, because nobody needs any preparation in order to talk so much time". Pablo Massa [log in to unmask]