Opera features

• justified

  The whole idea of justification is the need to give an answer to :

  • Why did you write this phrase here?

  • Why did you pick this particular harmony?

  • Why did you set these words to this music?.

  The answer is very seldom: "Because it sounds good (to me)" or "Because the words fit the music". Alas, they don't; I have neither the feeling for setting text, nor the inspiration to produce beautiful music. What I can easily do is produce formal music, solving in an artificial way the problem of correlating text and melody, or the problem of melodic creativity.

• mostly atonal

  • "letter to tone" produces atonal music – there are 26 letters and at most 12 tones, so it is hard to stay in a 7-note or 9-note (e.g. melodic minor) tonality

  • I am using the Messiaen 9 notes mode – which is unique – in honor of the triple Hecate (in her form of nine Muses; this should be music after all)

  • I have nothing against tonality, but I have no feeling for modulation, or absolute pitch, or unequal temperament. I cannot understand for the life of me why one would compose in D♭ major for the piano (which has practically no range limitation) or even for voice. Could just as well be C major, with very small change for those instruments that do have range limitations. I think C major is easier for everybody, although this may be just an ignoramus' prejudice (Mozart, on the other hand, might have agreed; he wanted to sell his music, so did not use more than 3 sharps or flats in any "official" key, e.g. A major sonata, C minor piano concerto. Then the C minor piano concerto plays all the 12 dodecaphonic tones within two or three measures somewhere in the development)

    Finally, I cannot distinguish timbre, and cannot experiment – MIDI sounds too bad. So all my music is in equal temperament, and all transpositions are perfectly equivalent. Feel free to transpose, if needed for a particular voice or instrument.

• cadential

  Even atonal pieces usually end in very tame tonal cadences, and cadences are also used to mark the end of verses and sentences. The programs recognize and implement cadences, but not tonality. Purely orchestral pieces may have "adventitious" cadences, e.g. if the chords V-I (of some tonality) appear because of the counterpoint.

  Quite unlike Wagner, where a final cadence is equivalent to the completion of the opera.

• consonant

  • optimizing for consonance

    "Consonance" is used very conservatively: thirds and perfect intervals are consonant, anything else isn't – even more primitively, intervals of 0,3,4,5 semitones are consonant and intervals of 6,2,1 are increasingly dissonant, in this order. Also, since my programs do not usually worry about register, the inversion of a consonant interval is consonant (no distinction between fifths and fourth). For more complex chords, all major and minor triads are consonant, V7 is consonant, and all the others more or less dissonant, according to the intervals they contain. It turns out that "letter to tone" produces a great deal of harsh dissonances, e.g. E♭-E-F.

  • reduce dissonance using trills

    An ad-hoc method to lessen dissonance (i.e. chords containing intervals of 1 or 2 semitones):

    	becomes
    	becomes

    With a lot of good will, the trills may be considered a stylistic or virtuoso element.

• contrapunctal

  A new melody is created as being consonant with pre-existing material, which itself usually is a contrapunctal combination of motives.

  This is not the usual method of development, by fragmenting melodies, sequencing, changing rhythm, filling gaps etc. I think that I use counterpoint in order to keep the motives recognizable. With bonus side-effects:

  • unexpected transpositions – so I can start all my tunes in C major, as befits my musical ability

  • the motives are recognizable, but not too obvious if deep inside the counterpoint

  • built in harmonization

• mostly recitative, because words are paramount

  So is, IMHO, the Tetralogy, which contains beautiful – or wonderful – orchestral moments, but very little song. Wagner, of course, also had a very high opinion of the text...

• motivic

  • my own motives

    These are bonafide leitmotifs, music that "happens" by significant words or actions, and then is to be associated with them by the perfect memory and high musicality of the audience. And, as bonafide leitmotifs, they are neither suggestive nor memorable.

  • quotes

    This is music that I shamelessly lifted from all kind of sources on the internet. E.g., I neeed "madness" for the sleepwalking scene, and how do you express that musically, short of playing the Grosse Fuge? So I took bits and pieces from Lucia di Lammermoor, and Ophelia from Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet, and counterpointed.

    Notice that even these are not particularly suggestive. Only the association with the well-known situation in the libretto – not in the music – has anything to do with madness.

• techniques

  • libretto to score

    qv, in nauseating detail; besides, doesn't work

    • letter to tone
    • clevercad

  • libretto to chords

    like the libretto to score, but without attempting to assign rhythms. The chords get some arbitrary durations, "by ear".

  • weaving motifs

  • adding vocal part
    • text with rhythm specified
    • ground specified as multiple parts
    • add one vocal part singing text

  • rosalia

  • "inspired" music

From:
«  This is not the usual method of development,

I have tried to program this kind of development, including a brilliant invention of my own. I use sequencing here and there, either as rosalia, since the music is atonal, or with tonal transposition in Hecate tonality. Since my motifs are usually neither memorable nor expressive, most changes immediately make them unrecognizable. So eventually I use them unchanged, just transposed for counterpoint.

As for motif multiplication, it will work only on very short tunes. But I believe a motif should have some size to it; say, seven notes (if two pieces have a seven-note tune in common, it may be claimed that one is a plagiarism/quotation/paraphrase of the other)

From:
«  my tunes in C major, as befits my musical ability

They say that Archbishop Colloredo had a predilection for C-Major, plus many other strict principles about music, which annoyed Mozart no end. Anyway, the Masses written for Colloredo are all in C-Major – did the Archbishop sing himself? The priest is supposed to intone the Sacred Service, but singing symphonically?

Others say Colloredo was musical, and at least could play the violin ... again a contention bone with Mozart, who was a virtuoso, as papa had taught him.

From:
«  .... as bonafide leitmotifs, they are neither suggestive nor memorable.

For instance, one of the most recognizable motifs, "Loge's magic fire", what would it suggest as pure (orchestral) music, which it is? Why not "Ondelettes du Rhin?"

Or consider: