So there have been a lot of changes in the month and a half I haven't been posting here. I am well on my way to finishing 8 of the 10 songs, which is pretty exciting! I cut one completely because I did not like the words or the premise. I have also revised the text, quite a bit MORE.
Linda had me go through each song and pick out the message I want to get across through the text and the music. Here is the downlow on a bunch of the songs:
Desert is the new title for Hagar's song. Because it is about desertion, and takes place in, you guessed it, a desert! It's an alto solo, and I'm attempting to cause the music to spiral downward into depression. Here are the revised lyrics:
Desert
Bread and water, bread and water
Would that I had borne a daughter
So you wouldn't send me away
Sent us to parch in the desert sun
Now after all that you have done
Do you think I would take you back?
I'm not a poet, but I'll deal in metaphor
You are the lamest of asses
You have not two, but five faces
Run to the hills for my life and my child
To think, to think, you smiled and smiled
To me you are forever a villain
If there is no water, if there is no well
I will have no story to tell
I don't want to watch my son die
I am awake but not really awake
The angel stopped my knife to say,
"If you suicide, no one will take you seriously!"
The next piece, the one about Psyche's Sister (which is called "Psyche's Sister" because I am so gosh-darned imaginative) is all about the cruelty of the gods through love. I didn't change the text too much since my last edit, because it is pretty clear, but I have been working on it! The "Arrows" refrain is in canon, and I totally wrote a canon using Nadia Boulanger's "Box Method" which is pretty neat. I have CUT guitar from my chamber orchestra: I don't know how to write for it, and this project is ambitious enough as is.
The piece about Sati, called "Tandava/Lasya" I edited a whole bunch! I have removed entirely the voice of Shiva, so it has become a song about inner conflict, that feeling of being trapped where Sati just can't make everyone happy, so she basically explodes from the pressure. Explodes into FLAME, that is. Man.
I have written this bouncy, dance-like bassline and melody which are totally at odds with the rather depressing moral of the song, but which I like anyway.
Revised text:
Tandava/Lasya
I get down, so down, 'cause my parents can be cruel
Then, then, the endless duel
'tween self and the other
My husband is intangible, ascetic, four-armed
Does not meet approval with my father or my mother.
My father is angry
And anger's a hell of a drug
The fire like an oil lamp, a stranger in my head
The colour of space, the colour of dread, oh
If I am dead to you, I truly shall be dead!
"Song of the Drekavac" is turning into this gorgeous, spooky, dissonant choral piece with shifting, quiet, low brass chords and something moving in the dark. The text is the same. The message is "fear of being forgotten and abandoned," Linda called it "a nursery rhyme for the dead" which is sort of interesting.
"Do You Miss the Sea?" also hasn't suffered too many edits! I cut out one or two bits, but the point comes across! More indecision, but instead of Sati's trapped place, it's "wavering" between two loves: the selkie has more of a choice. I've set it up so that there is a moving eighth note pattern, shifting between two notes, and the whole piece sits in this one sonority which changes by inversion only.
Aso's song, "Here Is How" hasn't changed much yet, but I haven't worked on it too much.
Azrael's story got a new title to explain it, because it is so abstract! It's now called "The Angel of Death Feels Pity for a Hapless World" which sums up exactly what I am trying to get across. It's blues! Linda has been getting me to listen to New Orleans funeral music, which is pretty incredible stuff. I am trying to maintain the simplicity of the blues form, but stretch it in strange directions and undercut it with non-blues sounds and rhythms in the orchestration. I have to find a low, low alto for it, too, because it goes down to a low E or D or something. SUPER low.
"Clementine" is much the same as it was, lyric-wise. I have been listening to Gavin Bryar's "Jesus' Blood" and Berio's "Folksongs" for inspiration, and I am pretty excited for how it is going to turn out. We decided the message in it is one of Betrayal and Regret.
I can't figure out what to do with "Dunyazade"! We got the message--it's about Secrets and the Shadow Sister--but I can't figure out what to do melodically, particularly with that long section of stories! Linda suggested a duet illustrating how Dunyazade teaches Scheherezade her stories, but I don't know. I might just cut it all together.
I cut Taliesin all together. Boo on Taliesin.
"The Prophet" is back in as a Major Player. I like that it's from the perspective of someone watching a non-legendary person try to make a name for himself. I think I'm going to sing it myself, which will be kind of cool, and that it will use all the instruments in my chamber orchestra. I have the song itself written already, since I recorded it on my computer last year as a 'girl and guitar' kind of thing, so I'm just orchestrating! I like orchestrating, especially when I know the song so well.
Here is the text:
The Prophet
What kind of idea are you?
Are you man or mouse?
Your speech has the metre of camel paces
Your voice has the accent of far-off places
Wonderland, Peristan, Never-Never, Oz
You came to wrap your wounds in gauze
And found you could not return
So you preached a revolution
Of water carriers, of immigrants, of slaves
Of prophets stowed away in caves
Realizing your words were less than a farce
You replaced your tongue with a piece of your arse
Whereupon you wept until
Your eyes ran out of salt to cry
And you could do nothing but dream dry-eyed
Dreamed a drought, dreamed destruction
Dreamed dollars and dimes,
Days and nights,
Deities and devils
You dreamed a revolution for me
You dreamed a revelation for me
Then you dreamed disillusion and disgust
And I had to disagree
I had to disagree
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
