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
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