Be to her, Persephone

hi,

i wrote this just as a simple song, or so i thought - but then i realized that the range is quite large. i have culled it back quite a bit from the notes i would like to be there - there was a high c. i rewrote that part down a bit, to make the song more singable.

i'm not sure what i was trying to accomplish her, the singer is somewhat manic - illustrated perhaps by the use of sprechtissme and the singer yelling certain notes. this will hopefully be part of a bigger piece... a staged oratorio - which makes it not an oratorio i guess. the text is by edna st. vincent millay and it comes from a set of poems 'memorial to dc' so i'm thinking of writing the rest of the set for various other voicings and choral settings, etc.

any comments would be appreciated, i am only beginning but hope that there is some understanding of harmony within the piece.

i'd appreciate honest comments about whether or not it would be embarassing to put this piece on a stage or not, as i may have the opportunity to do so.

many thanks,

matthew

and a midi: http://www.box.net/shared/j9x824fhgu

pdf: http://www.box.net/shared/nzbonx4z2m

persephone.sib

and, as i realized after posting - that score is MUCH too small to see. my apologies to the non sibelius users.

post a midi. everyone can use that

If you get this to work, you could enter it in the greek mythology competition (I'm assuming Persephone is the greek goddess Demeter's daughter?) as long as it wasn't worked on before this month.

Check the competitions section! Also, I can't read the scores, and don't have sibelius.

impresario: it definitely was worked on before this month, this has been a long time off and on thing - so i'll have to back out. i'm not sure if millay is talking about embodying the characteristics of persephone or if she is talking about the actual myth, but since not all are able to view the score i'll post the text:

e to her, Persephone,

All the things I might not be;

Take her head upon your knee.

She that was so proud and wild,

Flippant, arrogant and free,

She that had no need of me,

Is a little lonely child

Lost in Hell,—Persephone,

Take her head upon your knee;

Say to her, “My dear, my dear,

It is not so dreadful here.”

i was reluctant to post a midi file because of all the sprechtissme and scoops in the voice, however, here it is: persephone.mid - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

Is there a reason why you can't create a .pdf of the score?

and a pdf, thanks to christopher dunn-rankin for the help :)

persephone.pdf - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

I can definitely see your reluctance to post a MIDI of this piece. You do a good job developing small ideas into a fuller piece of music. The introduction of the sprechtstimme feels forced in some way - having it show up initially as that yell. I also feel like it moves too fast on the whole, though I know you have these tempo alterations throughout. You have these gorgeous harmonies - and they don't come through because they speed by so quickly. In general, I'd like to hear more of the harmony in the piece - and this may be a way to introduce the sprectstimme earlier as well, by using extended slow harmony under a faster-moving vocal speaking-line.

I think one of the things that might be holding this piece back is the prosody of the wild parts... If you sing, "Your knee" over and over again, for example, the way you have it, the emphasis becomes "your" rather than "knee" and the word sounds like "yornee" whatever that means. If you alter the rhythm slightly to create a stress on "knee' it sounds a lot better to me.

who's dc?

Thank you for the compliments, Christopher Dunn-Rankin, and cj7music for you helpful comments.

Christopher: I will be sure to reconsider the introduction of the sprech..it is used to help the characterization of the woman singing this text, but also as a bit of a novelty I guess. So perhaps there is too much focus put on the latter and not enough on the former! Thank you for complimenting the harmonies, i rather like them myself.

When you say it moves too fast, do you mean measurewise - in your head it should have more measures - more length? Or do you mean more along the lines of harmonic rhythm?

I'll explore fluctuations/contrasts between the speeds of the rhythms in the vocal line and the piano line for sure, at the beginning the vocal sings what the piano plays at the end and vice versa..

c7music: you have your speculations i believe, as we discussed in a pm as to who DC was - so thank you for enlightening me. apparnetly a fellow colleague of millay's at vassar.

i've been toying with different rhythms for that part of the song and i think i can ix it by moving it 1/2 beat. [one eighth note]...i feel very strongly that the rhythm should be constant for that - not varied.

thanks for the suggestions :)

I mean the harmonies themselves move more quickly than my ear wants to follow - specifically those at bar 52 - and they don't occur frequently enough for me to establish them without a slower iteration. It's my preference, I suppose, that I want to hear the pretty harmonies for a long time. :P