Puccini's Turandot

Its been a year since i last done this blog. Now its time to revive it.

For the head start, I will discuss about Turandot, an opera composed by one of the greatest Opera composer Giacomo Puccini. My journey with Puccini's music started when I bought a DVD (produced by BBC) about the composer's life, from this DVD learned quite a lot of his works, for example, Manon Lescaut, Madam Butterfly and Tosca.

Among all his operas, Turandot and his later operas (Madam Butterfly) strikes me the most. Puccini compositional style took on a new direction due to the influences by Debussy and Schoenberg. If you happen to listen to Madam Butterfly, you could hear lots of elements of whole tone scales which creates a typical Debussy's impressionist effect. The impressionist effect did not stop in Madam Butterfly, it occurs even in Turandot, starting of act 3 the section before the very famous "Nessun Dorma". During that section, it started with a night scene, Puccini made used of the whole tone scale (descending and ascending 3rds) at the clarinet part to give a impressionistic and enhanced night settings.

The premiere of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (1912) in Italy in the early part of the 20th century made a great impact on Puccini's perspective in musical style of Atonal Music. Due to this influcence, Puccini attempted to put in atonal elements into the new opera which he was working on. The effect of atonal elements can be found at the very beginning of Turandot by the tutti orchestra and also the mandarino's Part "Popolo Di Pekino" (People of Pekin), the atonal elements reoccurs through out Act 1.

Puccini has never been to china but he managed to compose many motifs which sounds very china and also integrated the famous song of the Lily Flowers "Moh Li Hua" into the opera. All these are due to the chinese music box which his friend brought back from china. Puccini studied the tune of the music box (Moh Li Hua) and picked up the style of composing chinese music.

I believe that Nessum Dorma is the most famous tune in Turandot (Act 3). However a lot of people which I come across said that Nessun Dorma is a "love song". Here I would like to explain and give a little insight about Nessun Dorma, hopefully can give a clearer picture about the famous Tenor Aria. Bascially, at the start of Act 3 of Turandot, people in pekin were ordered not to sleep until they find out the name of young man (Calaf) who had answered all 3 questions posted by Turandot, so "Nessun Dorma" means "No one shall sleep". The tenor aria is (to me) a aria of pride, as calaf sings that "No One Shall Know My Name", "At the daybreak, I shall win, I shall win".

The most interesting part of this famous opera lies at the final part. While Puccini was composing till the duet of liu and calaf, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, he stop working on the work and concentrated in recapulating his disease, unfortunately Puccini died after going through an experimental radiation therapy treatment in brussel, leaving the work unfinished. Puccini had assignment Riccardo Zandonai to complete turandot but was rejected by his son Tonio Puccini. Some italian opera composers like Pietro Masgcani (composer of "Cavalleria Rustricana") and Vincenzo Tammasini attempted to complete turandot but were also rejected. Finally, Franco Alfrano was chosen to complete the opera, Alfrano's version is the one that is much performed today, however there are critics who criticise Alfrano's ending to be a "Cheap work". Up to today, there are composers who stepped out to composer their own version of Turandot's ending, one of them was the famous Luciano Berio. Trurandot (Alfrano's Ending) was premiered on Sunday April 26, 1926 at La Scala, Milan under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.

AAI 104 Blogging Assignment 1

MISTY
Comp: Erroll Garner, Lyric: Johnny Burke.

This video which I would like to share with you is a clip taken during a rehearsal session of a jazz piece call "Misty" by a Brass Quintet which consist of Solo Flugal Horn played by Ze Yu, Trumpet played by Mervin, French Horn played by Jeremy, Trombone played by Guo Sheng and Tuba played by me (JinXing). There are some mistakes and mispitching, however, this is the best sample for me to show you how the piece sound like.

A brief Background of Misty

Erroll Garner (1921 - 1977)

Sarah Vaughan (1940 - 1990)

A Jazz Piece composed by Self Taught Jazz Pianist Erroll Garner in the mid 1950s. It was originally composed as a instrumental piece, later Johnny Burke wrote the lyrics turning this piece in to a vocal piece which was made famous by Jazz Singer Sarah Vaughan who can sing a range from Soprano to Baritone.

Analysis

The form of the whole pieces is in Tenary form which is II: A :II II: B A :II

This piece has a good mixture of accompaniment style, the composer used Arppegio (1, 5, 3), octave displacement and triples. Blue chords and blue notes were used.

The composer of this piece used mainly the circle of fifths progression decorated with blues notes and chords.

Reflection of Analysis

I feel that in jazz music, the overall chords and structure are similar to the classical music, it just that in jazz music, the simple chords are decorated with blues notes like for example, a Bb major chord can be decorated with a flat 9 (b9) to make it have the jazz effect. It also seems to me that Jazz composers like to use chords with leading notes quite often in the progression for their music. As jazz music are meant to be improvised, this score which I analyze is not necessary be the only way to perform this music. The phrasing of verses and chord progression will vary from different performers based on their creativity.

Music Analysis 2

This is a very famous song from Jacky Chang's Musical "Snow, Wolf, Lake" 雪狼湖. It was composed by our local pop composer Dick Lee. This excerpt of the music score is the cantonese version.I will like to share with you my favourite part of this song, which is the very well known chorus. The chorus is very simple and straight forward with a few Passing Tone (PT), however, it seems that Dick Lee uses a lot of Neighbouring Notes (NN). I think that it is very interesting that he make use of multiple Neighbouring Notes to form a Melody. The whole chorus I think ends with Preparation (P), Suspension (S) and Resolution (R).


The progression which I worked out is

: I - vi - IV - V - iii - vi - ii - V - I (continued to P2)(Phrase 1)

: I - vi - IV - vii - III - vi - IV - V - I (Phrase 2)



The Harmonic Function which I worked out is

: T - PD - PD - D - PD - PD - D (Phrase 1)

: T - PD - PD - PD - PD - PD - D - T (Phrase 2)

Music Analysis Exercise 1