One, an opera in one scene

Hi all! This is my newest piece, a 15 minute opera scene I've been writing in collaboration with singers and directors from the opera department at my school. Opera Etudes is the name of the program, where a group of composers work closely with singers and through early-on improvisation sessions and lots of work, eventually put on an opera scene. This year there are 6 composers, and I'm one of them. Our overall topic this year is 'epiphanies', so each one of our scenes has something to do with an epiphany.

My scene is about one woman's struggle to deal with her emotions about an abusive relationship. She has repressed her feelings so much that she has created a physical manifestation of them, who starts the scene and eventually gets the woman to face her true self, which ends in death.

If you follow along with the score, hopefully how I've constructed the piece will be clear. Listening to it, I hope one gets a feeling of gradual growing dissonance, just as the story parallels that idea with its complexity and emotional tension. But on the more technical side, it clearly does get more dissonant, as I add more tonal centers on top of one another and shift rhythms more frequently. The whole piece is based off of a 5-note chord: in F: A-Bb-C-Eb-F (major chord with b7 and 4th thrown in). The beginning starts with the chord switching between two keys - Ab and F, using Eb and C as common tones. As the tension grows, I add, one at a time, different chords and have them cycle through in order, almost like as one would use a 12-tone row. This helped the composition of the piece, like I was almost following a predetermined harmonic path. Towards the end there are 7 or 8 chords being alternated between, creating harmonic ambiguity and a great amount of tension.

We are currently in rehearsals. The Opera Etudes performance of all six new opera scenes will be April 29th at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, MD. If you are nearby, come see it - it's free! My piece has been picked out of the six to be put on Peabody's 150th anniversary Gala event on April 26th, which is quite an honor and it will hopefully open up other opportunities to me in the near future.

I have attached a pdf of the score, a MIDI, and a copy of the libretto. Everything is copyright 2008 by myself.

Please enjoy and as always, I will greatly appreciate any comments! Thanks.

ONE.mid

ONEmar22.pdf

Well this is a nice piece of work.

Very compelling, and shows you've a knack both for natural setting of text (the conversational bits work well), and for drama.

Your 2nd-y chords do a good job - the chords instantly set the mood upon my listening days after I first heard it.... so they've obviously stuck in my head.

Your melodic and chordal choices throughout are distinctive - which is good.

You might want to watch that you don't thicken the texture too much (at places like pages 15-18, and the place just before the marking CC). Too many, and too thick clusters begin to tire the ear out.

The rhythmic variation and control throughout was good.

I thought it might have been nice to end on a unison, given the subject matter, but oh well! The whole last 'singing in harmony' section was very nice.

Well balanced - I like it, and congratulations on your being chosen for performance!

Thanks Daniel! I agree - I thickened it up a bit too much a little too early! But I don't see a good way of changing it right now. I want to eventually orchestrate it, so that will be a great help to shape the piece more gradually.

Thanks for listening, and the comments!

will there be a recording of this? ;)

You aren't inspired by Stephen Sondheim by any chance are you? (Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd)

I really enjoyed this piece of music. I have nothing to say except 'frig that would be hard to perform'...but man, what a delight. I love how random it is, but yet it isnt?

Kind of strange storyline, but yea...i got it in the end (i didnt read your blurb until after haha). I hope you get it recorded, whether in video or mp3. would totally love to hear it without cheap midi :P

I really enjoyed it!

Oops! Sorry it's taken me so long to respond.

To drumultima - no, not yet. Hopefully there will be a DVD of it coming shortly. I should be able to get just an audio version of it soon.

To goodridge - thanks for listening! Stephen Sondheim actually IS one of my inspirations. It's those suspended chords, isn't it? Thanks for your comments!

So, the performances went really well. Everything went smoothly and I couldn't have asked for better performers. (except that damn vibraphone player! ;) ) I'll put up an mp3 or something once I get it!

Haha, yes...the suspended chords...and nonsensical (but seemingly, sensical) lyrics.

Good job.

Fantastic. I take it you like minimalism and/or Messiaen?

I don't know what I'd do to change it. In fact I wouldn't. The dramatic intensity is perfect and text setting shows me exactly what your insight into the libretto is. Good work. I'll look forward to the orchestration. I suppose (and hope) that you'll keep the vibe part prominent in it.

Wow. I loved the moment the vibraphone quavers in 4/4 on C came back in after she stabbed her, it sent shivers down my spine - as if it was giving new, urgent and confused meaning to the motif we'd heard many times before. Would love to hear a real performance, and especially an orchestrated version.

Very Nice. I really liked it. You have very good emotional transitions in the music. The vocals are also written very well to help convey the text. Great job! The only criticism I have is sometimes, you seem to emphasis a word that is not as important as others in the sentence. For example, sometimes words like "is, the, of" etc. seem to get the biggest emphasis. The only other advice is maybe have your vibraphone go to other mallet instruments for different timbres/character personifications via instrumentation. If this is possible, of course, for a performance.

Keep in mind, this is very minor. In the end, the music kept me as the listener interested and it was well executed! Great job.

This was fantastic! I loved the story, the music, the vibraphone part, the piano writing.

Sometimes, the piano part got a little too cumbersome. Even though it gets so in quite appropriate places.

Two thumbs up and I can't wait to listen to the recording!

Thanks to everyone for the comments! I'm glad this piece is getting a warm reception from fellow composers.

Reese: Minimalism is pretty much at the heart of all my music, or at least that's how I see it. I see this piece being minimal because I only used ONE chord throughout, transposing it up or down. The transposition of the chord also follows a minimalistic technique of addition - as I explained before, the 'bank' of chords it switches between grows as the scene grows more intense. This is an idea taken from many hours of listening to Reich, Glass, and John Adams.

Kukes: My text setting usually is the first thing I think of when writing for a singer (obviously), but I occasionally get caught up in the music and put it secondary to a melodic line or melodic motion. I think that's when I sometimes forget to destress or stress certain words... But nothing really stuck out too blatantly for me, although I don't have the score handy right now to check.

The recording will be up as soon as I get back to Baltimore to check it out of the library. Thanks for listening, everyone!

Need to hear the MP3!! This is amazing! Love both the story and the music. The piano writing is awesome too =P

Thanks, Steve! I'm returning to Baltimore in August - that's the soonest I'll be able to get a recording, as long as it's in the library. They have this stupid thing where concerts are recorded by the recording department here at my school, but they don't really respond well to people asking for cds. They put all the cds of concerts in the music library, and I'm not even sure if we're allowed to check them out. I guess I'll have to bring my laptop and rip it there!

WOW... So inspiring!!! I just feel like doing something this good now!!!!

Haven't listened to the whole thing. Hope there's be a recording, though. Some parts sound very Sondheimian... some more LaChiusa-esque.

I can definitely see Sondheim's influence. I also liked who you repeated some themes from the beginning and middle in unfamiliar contexts toward the end. It reminded me a little of Wozzeck, in a weird way.

Fantastic! If there is a live recording in the library, I may have to give it a listen as well. I loved the the writing for all three instruments/voices. Did you have problems with the vibraphonist? That's too bad - I would have loved to have played it.

This reminded me a lot of the John Adams opera Nixon and China. I'm sure you listened to it a lot in preparation (as well as a lot of others too). The dramatic works of Reich and Adams can be clearly heard as an inspiration for this. Wonderful! I'll be looking forward to hearing more of your music.

Oh wow! I haven't checked this thread in too long... But thanks to everyone for their comments, and for listening in the first place!

SOON I will have a recording, and I will put it up here as soon as I do. The recording department here at my school is L-A-Z-Y and they haven't gotten back to me yet. I hate them.

Anyway, recording to come!

There are a lot of good ideas in this piece! Sometimes I just don't know why did you write those notes, which you wrote. :)

Anyway, didn't you think about the orchestration yet?

There are a lot of good ideas in this piece! Sometimes I just don't know why did you write those notes, which you wrote. :)

Anyway, didn't you think about the orchestration yet?

Why not write the notes? Sometimes an artist doesn't need reason.

it look like broadway music

cool music

dark-bigeyes

Hey everybody! oingo86's internet isn't working very well right now so it will be ME, his loveable percussable roommate who will upload the recording. I'm playing vibraphone on it, so I take full responsibility for the screw ups in the beginning ._. The singers are two senior vocalists here at Peabody.

https://jshare.johnshopkins.edu/dperry9/01%20One.mp3

enjoy!

Man, after hearing the live recording, it sounds awesome. Great job. I really liked it all, especially the harmony at the end. Wish the audience would have waited til the notes sounded for as long as they were written, but that's just me. Again, great job, hope to hear it orchestrated, like you said, someday.

Oh Lord.... one of the best Operas in one scene I have ever heard. Wonderful job!