Some years ago, I went to a conference on this and related matters at
Warwick, though memory details have fled; where David Harsent, speaking of
his collaboration with Birtwhistle, said – I hope I quote him fairly – that
the poet must expect his work to be altered by the compose because.the
composers' needs have priority
I have no trouble him thinking that for himself and HB, consenting adults
and all that, but was put out by the idea that a pecking order might exist
for all of us with composers always on top....
I'd been thinking about this quite a bit, though my notes, if I still have
them, are packed away. Two things such as they are I remember
I am more or less appalled by Vaughan Williams treatment of On Wenlock
Edge. Housman was a rather midling poet; but he deserved better
and Purcell's Dido's Lament, and Purcell's treatment in general of Nahum
Tate makes, to adapt a supposed remark of Beecham on Wagner, Tate sound a
lot better than he would sound on his own.
L
On 2 October 2015 at 12:47, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Hi Roger in my very umble umble experience there are levels of setting
> -sometimes a swish of drum/guitar gentle accompaniment helps this aged
> performer at my local music club
> cheers P most ancient also I like the work of aslak vaalkapa (spelling? )
> aha Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, where nature is incorporated
> but I suppose we can enter into libretti (spelling ?0 end of thought -off
> to cafe for lunch feast!
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Roger Day
> Sent: Friday, October 2, 2015 12:26 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Lyrics etc
>
> Interesting note abt the Classical people.
>
> Looking at the scores of, say, Frank Bridge or Stravinski - or even the
> wilder shores of avante-garde composers - there's no reason why "classical"
> composers could not produce a decent fit for any set of words they wanted
> to set to music without, as you say, torturing the syntax.
>
> I wrote my own words this time, and I had to do a little dance fitting the
> words to music and vice versa.
>
> Currently I'm adding phrasing, articulation and dynamics. I will produce
> the proper article before Christmas.
>
> On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 12:09 PM, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> Roger - from my humble experience, I can tell you a tale relating to yr
>> question.
>>
>> Over the years, both jazz composers/singers and classical composers have
>> set some of my work to music. The jazz people stuck to the words and the
>> structure of the poems, simply hearing the existing rhythms and cadence,
>> and adding notes to them. However, the classical people wrote their own
>> music and squeezed my lines in to fit, torturing my syntax and making
>> little sense of my structure to overlay theirs. Grrrr ... I wasn't happy.
>>
>> The happiest I've been is for a ballad I wrote as a poem which has been
>> sung and recorded by a couple of folksinger/songwriter people. But that
>> was
>> an instance where I actually wrote a strict structure, very traditional
>> and
>> complete.
>>
>> If it turns out well and highlights the true values already in the poem,
>> nobody should object. But if you wiggle the words around to make it fit,
>> then they'd have cause for complaint.
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>> On 1 October 2015 at 20:48, Roger Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I have de-lurked from my silence in order to ask a question.
>> >
>> > In my middle-aged madness, I have embarked on a career of composing
>> music.
>> > For my first piece, I have written some verses and composed some lines -
>> > much in the manner of Schubert.
>> >
>> > I was reading up on Schubert and Goethe, and it appears that the latter
>> > deliberately composed poetry to be modified that it could be set to
>> music.
>> >
>> > The question I have is, modulo any copyright concerns, are any modern
>> poets
>> > out there who would be amenable to such a strategy?
>> >
>> > How might, say, someone like Prynne react if I did set his poetry to
>> music
>> > but, along the way, managed to make the poetry serve the music?
>> >
>> >
>> > Is this impossible with modern poets and poetry?
>> >
>> > Regards Roger
>> >
>>
>>
--
If you have received from me a bogus email offering passworded files, I do
apologise. It was not I; but I am sorry.
Just delete the horrid thing, please.
And please let me know if it happens again.
It shouldn't happen again but then it shouldn't have happened the first
time.
L
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