Quote:
Originally Posted by SSC
First off, I just picked this piece up on a whim and I don't know what the context is, or if it's part of anything. So, with that said, I think musically it's very nice. But what turns me off are certain motives in the voice part, which kind of, dunno, seem weird in contrast to the piano figures.
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I mean, I can tell your harmony has to do with the text and I think it fits rather nice though it has a quasi-musical air to it. [...]
Another thing is a technical deal with the voice. This seems like it's written for Mezzo, which is all fine but I'm not really sure about that measure with the G, it's not that well prepared and I'm thinking that at that speed you'll not get a really nice sound out of that G unless you get a really good singer to prepare it plenty well.
Otherwise, there's a bunch of jumps which are all doable but I get this feeling that you wrote the voice as if it were an instrument rather than writing something that fits comfortably or is more idiomatic for voice. I mean, it's just an impression I get.
Overall, I like it, it sounds nice, but I'd check to see how some of the details I mentioned work out in practice.
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This was written in a musical-theater style - for a specific soprano - and musical theater soprano lines tend to sit in the lower ends of the range. It's more about timbre than register.
I've already sung through this myself (both as I was writing it, and after), as well as with the soprano who it's written for, and the melodic line is easily manageable, despite the chromaticism and leaps. Vocal lines, contrary to intuition, are actually MORE comfortable for singers when they change registers. The general "order of preference" is:
1) Changing registers
2) Sitting in the low register
3) Sitting in the high register
4) Sitting in the passaggio
I appreciate your thoughts on the motivic interconnectedness of the vocal/piano lines. To gain some more context into this song-set (it is a song set), I'd recommend looking at the others in it. Links are at the bottom of my signature:
Self-Sufficience, Hoping, After All.