My librettist, who goes by the nom de plume Jonathan Clift, does not read music, and was frustrated by the audio samples I had been releasing on Facebook of music from our opera. Quite frankly, he wanted to see his words as he listened to my music! In my vocal works I repeat words less often than most composers. (In one song cycle I don’t do this at all.) I encouraged him to follow his libretto as he listened, where the rhythm of NotePerformer’s sung oohs would help him keep his place (most of the time, at least), but what he really wanted was a scrolling score video. I rolled up my sleeves and figured out just how to go about this, aware that such a resource would be of even greater utility to singers and staff than the audio I had been issuing up to this point.
The first of these to appear was for what was then the latest written music, Act I, Scene 4. I tidied the score up to the point that others besides myself could actually follow it; I would say that the percentage of the total engraving (which I finally finished a few days ago) was about 35. Many people told me they liked being able to see my libretto setting as well as read the stage directions scrolling by in the video. From then on that’s all I did, although the extra time it took to always do that 35% engraving and video prep meant that my Facebook entries became fewer and farther between. And of course, I also had to write the very music that was being so effectively spotlighted!
I just scrolled down to the original Facebook posting and replaced the old video with this brand new one, with its score now fully engraved and with improvements to the NotePerformer audio realization, utilizing a few tricks I have meanwhile tucked under my belt.
https://vimeo.com/852123842
When I was still limiting myself to audio samples, I had tried to make up for the lack of a visual element with what I called timed synopses. “At 02:32, a character slips on a banana peel, which accounts for the slide whistle followed by bump in bass drum in my score.” These had become supererogatory, although I obviously had great fun writing them up! Now on what Vimeo calls Chapters, I highlight instead certain turning points in the narrative, and one simply clicks straight to that moment in the video. It goes without saying, this will prove enormously useful for performers learning the music.
I am working intermittently on the Chapter index for the newly engraved Act I, Scene 4 as we speak. As you can guess, there are analogies between this and the timed synopsis I described above. Essentially I am paring down the latter so as to yield the former! But there are certain nuances in the unincorporated material I would miss if I couldn’t just preserve them here instead. Each synopsis was designed for real-time use during audio playback. I thus felt free to be that much more more elaborate when describing longer musical passages.
Following are two observations from the Act I, Scene 4 synopsis which alas! ended up on the cutting room floor (with respect to the current Chapter index), but which I feel merit our interest nonetheless.
The first refers back to an earlier synopsis found in “Entry VIII.” I used this method to keep track separately of the opera-related postings amid all the usual Facebook cat pictures or whatever. I confess not to know how many, if any, of the medieval musical developments in Europe ever made their way to Armenia, but I found myself invoking a few of them anyway as the music was emerging! “In my notes below for Entry VIII, I spoke of the medievalism of placing our tenor [Avedis] into a texture between clarinet and bassoon. There he had the melody, as the word tenor itself originally indicated. In later developments on the European continent, the melody passed instead up to the top voice or instrument. That happens now here, where Avedis and bassoon have countermelodies to the clarinet’s tune. (Another reason the music actually sounds somewhat medieval is its use of hemiola, wherein six beats, divided as 2×3, get regularly superimposed on 3×2.)” The foregoing relates to the present Chapter 15 on today’s video.
The other, having formed part of what is now Chapter 17 in the new index, involves a borderline-extreme vocal technique which I indulged in for dramatic effect. “Broken octaves are easy to play on certain instruments (like the piano) but are difficult on winds and all but treacherous for the human voice. Still I assign them to the lovers here, to express the overflow of passion that obtains between them.” Well, at least I made the most difficult octave pair optional! But I live in fear of protracted litigation, notwithstanding.
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