There’s an invitation you can’t refuse, right?
Actually, Wozzeck is a truly great opera, and it remains surprisingly relevant, despite the fact that it was written in the 1920s, and the play on which it is based dates from 100 years before that. Short version: it’s about how social class and poverty warp our understandings of virtue and morality. It ends with a murder-suicide. And all that good stuff. Bob and I were lucky enough to get to see the play in New York a couple of weeks ago. You can read Bob’s review here.
As for the opera, Charley and I are both singing in a concert performance of it this Saturday tonight; I’m Wozzeck, and Charley is doubling up, singing both the insane Captain and Wozzeck’s friend Andres. The opera is written in German, but we’re performing it in English translation. Wes, by the way, can tell you more about atonal music and how an opera like Wozzeck is put together than anyone else in the blogosphere.
Come join us. Saturday night Tonight, 8 pm, the Tsai Center at BU. Wozzeck is outside just about everyone’s comfort zone, for one reason or another. Everyone needs to go there, every once in a while.
A truly fine idea. Anyone who has a bit of interest in opera will find this one compelling. What must have seemed outlandish 80+ years ago is much less so today. And the acoustics at BU’s Tsai Center are pretty good (I remember attending mass lectures in Biology 101 there, when it was a barn). The real challenge for Alban Berg–or anyone using the serial system–is to write an opera on the theme “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” using the technique. But go! Experience! Hark! The wind is blowing from the South-North!
should be aware that the term “atonal music” is an oxymoron. Besides, this IS a liberal site and I’m sure that Berg, Schonberg, Weber et al would feel much more empowered if they were referred to as being “differently tonal.”
<
p>
Seriously, though, this is a really riveting piece of work. I’ve loved “Wozzeck” ever since my dad first played it on the stereo for me when I was nine or ten years old. He narrated the whole story, then made me listen to the entire last act with all the living room lights turned off. It scared the crap out of me and I’ve been hooked ever since.
<
p>
I’ll be there.
What I will do is post the link to the review… here and there.
<
p>
Deb
it depends on how you define tonal. I was oftentimes bewildered on how unsatisfactory the definitions I have encountered over the years of the term “Music Theory”. I have come to my own definition… that it is the study of the natural tendencies of tones.
<
p>
Acknoledging that tones can have natural tendencies has implications for how you write music. I have often said that because there are natural tendencies that composition is often like sailing in that you need to acknoledge and use the wind to get where you want to go. As such, most atonal techniques try to reinvent the tendencies in such a way that they can be defined by the composer. I liken this to motorboting… travle using means that can ignore the wind and that must succumb to the drivers will. These atonal structures put the weight and tendencies of given tones in much more (almost total) control of the composer.
<
p>
With this in mind, shat is meant by the term is probably better described by a word like synthetonal.
to most atonal techniques as employed typically employed by composers… but thats the topic of a dissertaion (that I may have written had I continued along my original career track before being violently confronted with a rent addtiction).
<
p>
But I’ll say this for Wozzeck…. one of the biggest V-I statements in all of music. (actually I think its V-i… really something like V(13)-i(9) or something like that. I’ll have to buy a score someday.
Wozzeck is truly a masterpiece. The part of the Captain seems like it should be a lot of fun.
<
p>
I spent an entire year in the thrall of Berg’s other opera, Lulu.
Heh. You’ll have to check in with Charley about that one!
Have you been catching up on your reading?
is there any chance of publishing the program notes on this thread in a comment?
Britten is about as far down that path as I’m willing to go, and that ain’t far. I am afraid that the ‘comfort zone’ will include the music….
I’ll be at Alcina tonight. I subscribed to the Emmanuel’s presentation of Handel’s Ariosto operas this year, and since Charley was in one of the earlier ones, I trust I’ll be forgiven. đŸ™‚