Lessons in Love and Violence : Opera in Two Parts
- Submitting institution
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King's College London
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 112454513
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- A full-length opera is, famously, an enormously time consuming and substantial task. To reflect the growth of the drama with sufficient intensity and diversity of invention, while maintaining unity of tone - these are huge challenges, particularly in an age lacking a functional vernacular. With a work on this scale, every aspect of musical composition is tested to the limit. Scored for a large orchestra, the sheer number of bars and pages involved is daunting in itself – as is the number of years required to bring such an endeavour to completion.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This work tackles challenges modern opera has faced for decades, first and foremost narrative. Many modern operas by-pass narrative, but I have tried to reassess how sung and played music interface with story-telling. It tells a simple and direct story but it is far from naturalistic and its formal rigour is mirrored in my compositional approach.
Furthermore, the aftermath of serialism led to clichéd “zig-zag” vocal writing, ill-suited beyond an expressionistic idiom – and with excessive harmonic density in the pit, vocal lines can also seem marooned or isolated onstage. These have not been simple issues to address, as they involve the reassessment of the very core of the compositional language.
The resultant harmonic idiom is neither traditionally tonal, nor atonal. Sung lines may be displaced in phrase structure from the orchestral continuum, but they are embedded in pitch and a perceptible integration into the harmonic texture is maintained from the first note to the last.
The score is underpinned by substructures which focus choice on the largest and smallest scale. Isorhythmic streams of missing notes with their own logic, direction and shape underpin much of the harmonic and polyrhythmic invention. These assist continuity and musical discourse, and are of particular use where the drama involves multiple perspectives (see fig. 113-130 in Part One, or 29-39 in Part Two).
Throughout the opera I have aimed for transparency and clarity in texture, so that the voices (and words) can be heard and understood. But I have employed a wide instrumental palette, contributing to the diversity that theatre demands. The full power of the orchestra (which includes instruments rarely employed in an operatic pit) is reserved for moments of extreme intensity, partly because rarity increases their power and partly because in this way they contribute to structural definition on the largest scale.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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