I have to admit I haven’t had too much experience in this, Once a jazz composer wanted to work with my poetry, but told me that the rhythms of my poems were already too musical, or strong. I then wrote some simpler ‘song’-like lyrics for him, & he was working on them when he died suddenly.
I was trying for a simpler line in the pieces I wrote for the project, but never heard the results.
I admit I am not that interested in most classical settings for poems in English, which I can understand, as opposed, say, to some of the great song cycles in other languages where I hear the voice simply as an instrument…
Doug
On Oct 2, 2015, at 6:11 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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
Douglas Barbour
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Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Done in by creation itself.
I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
Robert Kroetsch.
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