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  • [SOUND] Stanford University.

  • >> So I fit the stereotype, I'm Italian, I write operas, I attend operas.

  • So I'm the perfect stereotype to give this lecture today.

  • Though what you're going to hear, so if you're expecting me to talk about opera,

  • you name it, you will be a little bit disappointed.

  • I wanna give you a different angle to what opera is.

  • In fact, the title of this speech is Why the Opera Changed the Course of Music?

  • So let's focus on that.

  • So the opera is not just these things that we enjoyed, sorry, I see so

  • many friends, and to people that have been in my classes and I've been teaching so

  • it's great to see them.

  • I would like to take this approach.

  • This is like a composition class.

  • You are composers.

  • You're very good composers.

  • You know everything about music theory.

  • You're an expert musician.

  • You study music.

  • So, we're gonna have a conversation among colleagues.

  • And I'm gonna try to make in a way, that what I say,

  • it's understood by everyone, okay?

  • So, I'm going to go into the details of music, into the, if you like,

  • the grammar of music, and see how music works and

  • how and why music changed because of the opera.

  • What we listen today, most of the music that we're listening to today

  • is the way it is because someone in the past thought,

  • well we should write music in this way because it's gonna serve this purpose.

  • The purpose of the opera.

  • That's what we're gonna talk about.

  • And then at the end, I was going to play some music, but

  • Sonya here, who's sitting right here in front, she approached me.

  • She is a singer, she is an alum, contacted me and said,

  • why instead of playing music, we don't get to perform it live?

  • Sonya and I will be performing a couple of

  • areas from the standard repertoire of the opera.

  • Okay?

  • So the first concept we need to understand that music is a language, all right?

  • Nothing else but a language.

  • So, like a language,

  • there are rules that in the course of history that been changed.

  • Music is a language that develops through time.

  • It moves through times.

  • This is a concept that it needs to be clear since the beginning.

  • If we go back into the ancient Greeks, they divided the arts into two categories.

  • The categories of the arts that moved that develop into space,

  • like architecture, paintings, and sculpture.

  • So a sculpture needs space.

  • It's this big, all right, or it's this big.

  • A building needs space.

  • And then they would categorize arts that would develop in time.

  • Meaning, music needs time.

  • Music is not a meter tall.

  • Music, it's five minutes long.

  • Music develops through time.

  • Music has motions, and I will demonstrate that, what I mean with that.

  • Same we can say with words, with poetry.

  • And also the same has to do with dancing.

  • So all these arts, they move through time.

  • What do I mean?

  • Let's say, if I say, yesterday, at 7:30.

  • What?

  • All right, so I create that motion.

  • I create something that needs, in time, needs to move ahead.

  • Yesterday at 7:30 something, we need something.

  • In music it happens exactly the same.

  • if I play, let's say this.

  • [MUSIC]

  • Can I stop there? No.

  • [LAUGH] No.

  • [MUSIC]

  • If I stop there everyone will be disappointed.

  • All right.

  • So we need.

  • [MUSIC]

  • [NOISE] It has to resolve.

  • We say, this music is like, yesterday at 7:30, something.

  • That chord, it creates some tensions, and

  • that tension needs to be released into something else.

  • That's what I mean when I say music moves through time.

  • Music is nothing but tensions that is created by melodies,

  • it's created by rhythm, it's created by chord progressions,

  • and when you have tensions it moves the music forward.

  • And why?

  • What happened?

  • Why?

  • What happens inside the music world,

  • into the grammar of music that makes that motions?

  • Music, yet again, is about motion.

  • What happens?

  • Let's say there's two way to see music.

  • If I play something like this.

  • [MUSIC]

  • So what we hear is mostly block of sounds, right?

  • I hear the sound, and this block of sound.

  • In music, we call them chords.

  • So this is in music, the chord progression is what makes the music move forward.

  • But

  • if I play something,

  • let's say, something like this.

  • [MUSIC]

  • You know, this is different, right?

  • How it's different?

  • It's not a block of sound and another block of sound.

  • It's more a melody interacting with another melody.

  • Here I have one melody here.

  • [MUSIC]

  • And then I added one more.

  • [MUSIC]

  • And then and I added one more.

  • [MUSIC]

  • Now I have four.

  • [MUSIC]

  • And so forth. So basically what's happening in this

  • second piece that I'm playing, I have this melody here and

  • there's another melody and there is another one and then it's another one.

  • So what happens the music develops, creates that motion

  • because there is the interaction of all these different melodies.

  • So, in some historical periods that's what governed the music,

  • it was the interaction of melody and composers were very concerned.

  • I'd say this melody goes up and then goes down and

  • the other one how does it interact?

  • It follows the same pattern, they move or we say, in parallel motions, or

  • they might say, this is moving, this one is not.

  • Or they're going in opposite direction.

  • >> And do you say, what do I care about that?

  • >> Okay.

  • >> Well, actually that was something very important.

  • This is what we call in music, if somebody,

  • if there were some musicians here.

  • We call it counterpoint.

  • How the musical lines are interacting.

  • So the counterpoint is not a disease.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> We'll say, what'd you have?

  • I have a little bit of counterpoint, I don't feel good.

  • The counterpoint is something that studies how two different

  • musical lines are interacting.

  • And basically, what it says, if this is moving up and that one is moving down,

  • what happens?

  • Well, this is what happens.

  • If this is moving and the other one stays in the same notes, what happen?

  • Well, this is what happens.

  • In composition for at the conservatory, we study counterpoints for years.

  • It's something actually very complicated.

  • So how is the interactions?

  • So, and I'll take questions at the end.

  • So how are these things interacting?

  • What makes it the music to move forward, to go to the next level, to have

  • that beautiful sense of motion that we all enjoy while we listen to music?

  • It's two things.

  • This block of sound or the interactions of melodies.

  • So let's have this example.

  • If I say, I have one melody.

  • So this melody goes like that.

  • [SOUND] Beautiful.

  • Then this is gonna be my melody, I'm gonna write another one here.

  • So this is my second melody.

  • [SOUND] If I put them together, this is what happens.

  • [SOUND] We're gonna add one more, because we're good composers,

  • we can handle at least three.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> So I'm gonna write it here,

  • I'm gonna do something like this.

  • Now we have three lines, one, two and three.

  • So the last one, it goes like this.

  • [SOUND] So three melodies.

  • If I play them all together, you'll see they generate.

  • [MUSIC]

  • So the first one was.

  • [MUSIC]

  • The second.

  • [MUSIC]

  • And the last one.

  • [MUSIC]

  • Now this three melodies, if I look at them say,

  • how is this melody moving?

  • It goes up and then it kinda jumps up.

  • This is moving more like that.

  • This is definitely jumps down and then it moves down.

  • So composers were very concerned on how these things were interacting,

  • but there is one other way to look at it.

  • Let's say, so now, we're looking in that direction.

  • So now, we're gonna see what happens here in a more vertical sense.

  • We'll say, what happened?

  • This is a block of sound.

  • The block of sound is this one [SOUND] and

  • that is a music we call a chord.

  • So if you know something about music, you would call this is a C major.

  • So here's a C major chord or you can call it, it's a block of sound.

  • It's a combination of three sounds.

  • Now, what happens here?

  • There is another chord.

  • We call it that half major.

  • And what happens here?

  • We go back to the initial chord slightly different.

  • We're not gonna go into the details of that chord being in first inversion.

  • First inversion, we don't have to talk about that.

  • So now I see, we have three blocks of sound or three melodies, which is?

  • Which is the one?

  • What's the most important?

  • So you're the composer, where would you start?

  • By saying, I have three chords and

  • these three chords are generating three melodies or you can say, no, no, no, no.

  • I had three melodies that have generated three different chords.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> The chords.

  • So some music is generated by chord progressions,

  • others are generated by this interaction of melodies.

  • And sometimes, it's a combination of both.

  • And that interaction of how chord they progress and the motion of the melodies,

  • one going up and other going down.

  • All of that, it creates these motions that we're looking for.

  • Let's say in the 15th century, composers.

  • Oh, it's clear that lets say, if I'm adding one more melody to three

  • to make it four, thing they get more complicated.

  • Every time we're adding something,

  • the problems are solving it becomes like solving a problem.

  • The problems of interacting this melody, they multiply.

  • So if I have four voices, a counterpoint with two voices is relatively simple.

  • Three, gets complicated.

  • Four, it's hard.

  • More than that, things get very hard.

  • In the 15th century, composers were so good and making these lines to interact.

  • That they were capable of writing songs that had 4 voices,

  • 8 voices, 16 voices, 30 voices.

  • We are example of polyphony.

  • That polyphony means more than 1 line of 40,

  • 42 different lines interacting.

  • Imagine what probably today would need a very good advance computer

  • to make sure this line are interacting in a way that creates motion and

  • at the same time is sort of follow the rules of counterpoint.

  • So one thing that is very important to remember and

  • I'll get to the opera, eventually.

  • I warned you before.

  • One thing that it's important to understand is that all these lines of

  • the music, working together, they were all equal.

  • It's not like the top line is more important.

  • It's not like the middle line is less important or the bottom line is more or

  • less important.

  • Have you ever sung in a choir?

  • Raise your hand.

  • Oh, most of you.

  • Good.

  • So you know that I'm a soprano, I get the good line.

  • [LAUGH] >> I'm an alto.

  • Oh, alto lines are so boring and reflects on the people.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> They are boring, as well in their life.

  • They become boring, because they see these boring lines.

  • Well, if you were an alto, let's say in the renaissance,

  • in the 15th century or 16th century that was not true.

  • All the lines were good.

  • All the lines were interesting.

  • All the lines were one word that is crucial, equal.

  • It's not like the soprano was more important.

  • All the lines were equal.

  • The equality of these lines involves the interaction of this counterpoint.

  • Again, that what makes the music to develop the way we know it

  • The fact that all these lines were interacting though created

  • especially when you put 8, 16, 20, you name it.

  • It created a big problem.

  • Let's not forget that most of the music back then was vocal.

  • Vocal music.

  • It's not like the instrumental music didn't exist, but

  • most of the music that they were composing was vocal music.

  • And vocal music, there is a text involved in the vocal music.

  • As you know, when we sing, we go to the opera, right?

  • And then, it's hard to understand what they're saying.

  • Even if they sing in English.

  • If they sing in German and Italian, forget it.

  • You need those super.

  • It's hard to understand with just one vocal line.

  • Imagine, a choir singing, all these line interacting together.

  • That was a problem, so the text kind of was second, it was not so important.

  • They were so into the music.

  • Well that was a problem for the church.

  • Church is certain place that.

  • Look, you're coming here.

  • You're singing all these beautiful songs.

  • But we don't understand a damn thing you're saying.

  • All right?

  • That's not good.

  • So somehow.

  • In the following century, the 16th century,

  • now in the Renaissance, the church said, no more of that.

  • Music needs to go back, needs to have a step back.

  • We need to have some kind of polyphony that it's a little bit clearer.

  • It's somehow simpler.

  • The text needs to be understood.

  • The Catholic church had the Council of Trent.

  • Do you know what the Council of Trent is?

  • Is when all these bishops, all these cardinals they get together and

  • discuss about things.

  • That was for

  • the first time, from all over the world, they gather in Rome to talk about things.

  • By the way, number 2 was about 500 years later.

  • So when they get together, if they get together once every 500 years,

  • it must be important, right?

  • The second one was in 1963 or 64.

  • It lasted for a few years.

  • In this Council of Trent, they discuss a lot of things among that music.

  • And one of the problem was look you really, we composer you really need to go

  • back to some kind of music that is a little bit more clearer.

  • It cannot be complicated.

  • The interaction of all these lines it needs to go back to some kind of purity.

  • It needs to go back into a way that is easier to understand.

  • At the same time, that problem came up in Florence

  • among a group of philosopher, a group of poets.

  • A group of musicians, a group of artists.

  • They will get together and talk about music,

  • talk about art, and talk about you name it.

  • That was called [FOREIGN] so it was a group of people.

  • They will gather and will talk about things, mostly art.

  • And also, they had that problem.

  • Also for

  • them, the fact that the text wasn't understood was a problem in the music.

  • They wanted to go back to some kind of music that had again some purity.

  • All these line interacting, no more.

  • Plus they had in mind, they wanted to go back to the Greek tragedy.

  • So they were interested into the classics.

  • They were interested again.

  • They wanted to rediscover that purity of the drama in the theater.

  • But not only that, they were interested on the fact that these show now.

  • The show of the drama, of the tragedy,

  • of the Greek tragedy needed to have some kind of music.

  • Say, why don't we insert some music?

  • So this drama, we want some music not just spoken words, and

  • in order to do that, the drama, the tests, it needs to be understood.

  • So, that polyphony, all these line movings, interacting.

  • It was not good enough.

  • They needed to have maybe one line that was,

  • I don't like to use this word, simple but clear, okay.

  • Music that is simple it doesn't mean that it's bad, by the way.

  • Things that are simple, they are not necessarily bad.

  • So, they wanted o go back into some kind of music that was simpler and

  • melodically that it was easy to understand, easy to follow.

  • But the most important things.

  • Not all the lines.

  • Not all the lines underneath.

  • They needed to be equal.

  • So, this top line, that top line needed to be more important.

  • The top line needed to be the melody and everything else underneath.

  • Needed to be what today we call the accompaniment.

  • Okay.

  • So that interaction of light, no more.

  • Polyphony, counterpoint, the way it was intended for

  • a century, didn't work anymore.

  • They really had this idea,

  • they were changing the way composers needed to think about music.

  • We needed to have a drama with a melody.

  • We needed to have a melodrama.

  • That's when the opera was born.

  • The opera was born with the intent, also, to change the way music was composed.

  • No more of these.

  • [MUSIC]

  • And maybe we have a melody.

  • [MUSIC]

  • So you go home and this is what you're going to sing.

  • [MUSIC]

  • Do not go home and sing this.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> Right, so

  • that means that these two elements in music, they're not equal.

  • The top line is more important.

  • It seems like a dumb thing because today after that,

  • the first opera was written in the year 1600.

  • So about 400 years, 400 and something years has gone by,

  • it seems easy for us to go, oh sure.

  • Well that's how music it is.

  • Because all the songs that you hear, you probably go home and

  • you listen to the tonality.

  • You go to the opera and you sing soprana.

  • You're not going to go home and sing the second bassoon part, do you?

  • With all the respect for the second bassoon.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> All right, so

  • these music lines, they're not equal, they're not meant to be equal.

  • They're all necessary, that you all need that.

  • But, there is something that carries more weight.

  • And that idea, the melody and

  • that idea that music needs to be written with a top melody and some accompaniment.

  • Is because, this composer that wanted to, they invented a new show.

  • And this new show was called the opera.

  • As simple as that.

  • Where'd that happen?

  • Well, that happened in Florence, all right?

  • So, the first opera was written in Florence in the year 1600.

  • It was called [FOREIGN] the music was by

  • composer [FOREIGN] In the [FOREIGN].

  • It was preformed in Florence exactly in the year of 1600.

  • And if you listen to this opera, the early opera,

  • really what you hear is this pure melody.

  • As far as they're concerned, they're almost as pure as the Gregorian chant.

  • If you know anything about the Gregorian chant, the top things about the Gregorian

  • chant was that these melody, they were so pure, okay?

  • So pure in fact they didn't need any accompaniment.

  • They were monophonic.

  • So Ulma, they could've gone back to that, but

  • that music by then, it couldn't be monophonic anymore.

  • All right?

  • So this melody needed to be as pure almost as that with a little bit

  • of accompaniment underneath, and that's how the first operas were.

  • All of this there were a few instruments accompanying

  • this gorgeous yet very simple melody of the early opera.

  • That idea that the text needed to be understood, it didn't last very long.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> Because that idea of having

  • this pure melody, it lasted very little.

  • Have you ever heard some opera written in the baroque time?

  • So we don't think of the baroque era as a time for operas, right?

  • Well, Vivaldi wrote about 46 operas.

  • Have you ever heard any of them?

  • I'm going to lower my voice because they are not very good.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> And what happens in the Baroque time,

  • the music became almost a show off for the singers.

  • These musical lines as we talk, they needed to be so

  • pure, so nice, so understandable.

  • That disappeared right away.

  • It was a show off, they were so virtuoso like so it will show off for the singers.

  • And the text, they could have sung anything, it didn't matter.

  • What was important was the fact that they could

  • do all these great coloratura you name it,

  • all this great virtuoso singing that we hear in those kind of operas.

  • In the 19th century, things got back a little bit to normal.

  • Composers like [FOREIGN], Verdi, certainly Puccini, [FOREIGN].

  • So things were a little bit in between, the text,

  • the drama, gained back some importance.

  • Puccini was very concerned to make sure that his musical lines

  • were understood by the audience.

  • They were very concerned about that.

  • What's the opera?

  • The opera basically is the conflict of love,

  • passion, hate, and sex and blood, all right?

  • The common character of the opera is the woman in love, is the man that is in love,

  • there is the tyrant, there is the father.

  • It's that.

  • The libretto, I wouldn't say a if

  • I say who wrote La Boheme?

  • Oh everybody knows, oh I know that.

  • Who wrote the libretto?

  • I'm sure that everybody knows here who wrote La Boheme.

  • But the Libretto, if we do a survey probably, who wrote?

  • Verdi, who write?

  • I don't know.

  • Anyone?

  • >> No.

  • I'll leave it to you for you to research.

  • Okay? >> [LAUGH]

  • >> See?

  • That's a sign.

  • That's a sign that the music always carried a little bit more importance.

  • And that was not the intent of this first composer.

  • That was not the intent of La Camerata DiVardi.

  • Okay?

  • So, I'm going to move on to the next phase of this lecture and

  • I'm going to have some help here from Sonia.

  • We're going to sing two beautiful arias from two different operas.

  • And that is the demonstrations, those are typical example

  • of how music is constructed by these top melodies,

  • these memorable melodies, that will be remembered forever.

  • And that you go to the opera, you enjoy because the composer knew how to

  • write them, they knew how to get your attention.

  • So composer like Verdi, composer like Puccini, they were so

  • good at writing these melody with that accompaniment underneath.

  • They took,again, that tradition from the beginning of the opera.

  • They were so good.

  • Puccini could manipulate.

  • He was a man that breeded it inside the theatre.

  • He was a man that could manipulate everyone.

  • The singers, he could manipulate the orchestra, the audience, everyone.

  • He was in charge, he knew exactly how to do it.

  • He knew how to write this melody with that accompaniment that you go and enjoy and

  • you go home and you sing them for the rest of the week once you go to those operas.

  • No composer were able to do that.

  • Composers such Verdi, Puccini, of course Don Ozzetti,

  • Rossini mostly those Italian composers.

  • The Germans were more into the block of sounds, all right?

  • You go, I'm gonna lower my voice again,

  • just in case somebody hears that, you go to these German operas.

  • You sit there for two or three hours, you kinda got tired.

  • You go home, and you don't remember a damn thing.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> In Italian operas,

  • you get your money's worth in.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> You go to this opera,

  • you listen to this melody, they're repeated, they're beautiful,

  • they stick in your mind, you go home and you take them with you.

  • It's this melodies, this idea of that line, that beautiful line that is on top.

  • Most of the music that we hear today is like that.

  • I heard a saying, in the 20 and 21st century, composers,

  • they tried other systems.

  • Today things are getting a little bit out of hand with modern music.

  • So we do some crazy things, the electronic music, so this idea of melody and

  • accompaniment, it's been challenged, I say, by modern composer.

  • Modern music today does a lot of crazy things.

  • If you are here, we have, even at Stanford,

  • we're very avant garde for as far as composition.

  • I don't think none of my colleagues will say, oh, what did you write today?

  • Oh, I wrote a beautiful melody with the accompaniment underneath.

  • Probably no one does that anymore.

  • Especially we have this computer center of CCRMA,

  • we call it, C-C-R-M-A, Computer Center Research Music and Acoustics,

  • where the idea of composition is taken to the next level.

  • For good or for bad, it's not up to me to say.

  • History will tell.

  • All right, let's move to the next level.

  • And I have Sonya that she will say a few words on the,

  • The higher that we are going to sing.

  • >> The first piece is O Mio Babbino Caro from Gianni Schicchi by Puccini.

  • In a nutshell, Lauretta is pleading with her father Gianni Schicchi that she wants

  • to marry Rinuccio, I believe, who's supposed to inherit a lot of money.

  • But that point is not certain.

  • But it's a plea.

  • The second aria is from La Boheme,

  • Musetta's Waltz as it's more commonly known or [FOREIGN].

  • And Musetta has arrived back in town and she wants to rekindle her love

  • affair with Marcello who at first resists but then capitulates.

  • So, >> We always capitulate don't we?

  • >> [LAUGH] >> [INAUDIBLE]?

  • >> Sorry?

  • >> He asked why do we?

  • >> I don't know, I don't know.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> Okay.

  • O Mio Babbino Caro, this is a famous Aria.

  • I'm sure most of you have heard it before.

  • It's from [FOREIGN].

  • [MUSIC]

  • >> [FOREIGN]

  • >> [APPLAUSE]

  • >> [MUSIC]

  • >> [FOREIGN]

  • >> [APPLAUSE]

  • >> For more,

  • please visit us at stanford.edu.

[SOUND] Stanford University.

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