wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

My last comment and this one are meant as a response to John Schaefer's blog entry asking if the story or tunefulness should be first in an opera.

Tunefulness and advancement of the plot are not what is at odds here. Doctor Atomic contains arias which slow the action down just as an aria in a pre-1930's opera would. What you are talking about is the difference in formats of songs: tunefulness vs. lack-of-tunefulness.

You should instead ask your audience if they would prefer that modern composers be constrained to the ABA format I mentioned in my previous comment or if they should be encouraged to find a new voice. I think it's obvious which I advocate, my reasoning follows.

We would not expect modern painters to mimick the Dutch school, nor to imitate the impressionists. We would not expect modern writers to fall into a Shakespearean voice nor modern poets to follow the prose of Byron. In fact, they would be condemned by art critics for not seeking a unique and new voice/style.

Why, then, do you seek to trap composers into the glorious past? The past masters were innovators themselves, breaking from their traditions. History forgets imitators and favors the experimental.

Instead, please change the way you think about what music should be. Open your mind to different sounds and don't condemn modern composers for not holding on to the past.

The reason opera composers aren't writing "tuneful melodies," by which I believe you mean songs that repeat the same phrase over again, is not that they are afraid to do so, but because that is not their goal. Modern opera composers should be searching for a new sound and not be in the business of mimicking the past.

Tunefulness is when a composer takes one phrase or a series of phrases and repeats them, usually with a contrasting section in the middle. It is the same format that pop-songs, rock songs, and a million other styles of music use. Opera-listeners have 400 years of operas filled with songs that conform to this definition of "tuneful-ness."

Opera-goers and opera composers are already familiar with this format, we hear operas written in this format and enjoy them, every season. A majority of the operas which we see contain "tuneful melodies" in the songs.

BUT, when we commission new operas from modern composers, we are not looking for a repeat of the past. We want that composer to give us something new; something that speaks more of our own times and reflects a modern sensibility. We are looking for a sound and an opera that astounds us by identifing our own fears, hopes, conflicts, in the context of our own time. Not the time of Bach, of Mozart, of Verdi, of Wagner, or Puccini, (though we appreciate how these works remind us that we are not so different from our forefathers), but of OUR time.

That is what Doctor Atomic does.