Mutual illumination

I've set a lot of text in twenty years – motets, song cycles, and five operas – and I have no intention of stopping.  Why am I drawn to this activity? Music and text have always been constants in my life.  I've sung since I was a kid,  did my first stage performances (a production of “ Pippin”  at the University of Maryland)  when I was in second grade,  and started writing songs in middle school.  

As a young student composer, I asked, “Where do I find text to set?”  “In the world,” was the obvious answer I received, but it didn’t get to what I was really asking. I think I was asking: How does it work? How do I find a text that I will be able to set to music? Where do I begin?

What I wish I’d known then, was what I recognize now to be the most important aspect of text setting: 

Not all text is singable. Some of it is fine just as it is. 

Whether or not a poem, libretto, aphorism, epigram, or chunk of prose can be – or should be – set to music was something I had to learn through experience.  I started to listen to the music of composers I admired with a specific ear to ascertaining not only how a text was set, but why a text could be enhanced by a musical setting, and why that setting seemed made for that text.

Regardless of genre - motet, art song, opera, jazz ballad, rock number – I have followed a basic principle that was beaten into me by my first teacher:   

The music and the text should be mutually illuminative; they should shine a light on each other.  Neither should overpower the other; neither is subservient to the other.  Both should be elevated by their pairing.  

How do I work with text and music so that they are “mutually illuminative?”  Lord, I don't know.   But I’ve found a few guidelines that have helped me get there:

1. Know your forces.  

Some texts are appropriate for a choral ensemble, but not so for a solo singer, and vice versa.  This awareness comes from an understanding of what voices are capable of producing.  Tesatura, textural complexity, even content had to be worked through with real, live singing people in order to obtain an understanding of how my work sits, stands, lands, and flows. 

2. Speech rhythms matter (sometimes)  

Sometimes the spoken rhythm of a text can give you clues:  highlighting important words, giving a sense of meter, allowing one to experiment with phrasing, flow, and even pitch to an extent.  For setting dialogue in a scene, or writing recitative, this is crucial. Less so for aria and art song, even less so for music composed for chamber, church, or opera chorus.  (Although Britten’s opera choruses, especially those in PETER GRIMES, have been a great influence on my writing, and often stick very closely to speech rhythms.)

3. Not every word is important.  

Recognizing – or choosing – the important words in a phrase can give a text direction, which can even lead to ideas for rhythm and melodic shape. Emphasizing the wrong word can skew - or flatten - a phrase’s meaning.  

Now for the nitty-gritty…

Syllabic Emphasis.

Incorrect syllabic emphasis makes me grind my teeth;  I know better, so I can't accept doing it incorrectly.  Technically, I handle this in three ways:

1. Rhythm.  English is a syncopated language in its speaking, so it meshes well with syncopated rhythms, which translates to a good degree of musical freedom. Over-placed syncopation, however, can sound to me like mediocre pop imitation (think Catholic Church music from the early 80s) or faux-folk. While we're at it,  languages other than English have their own rhythmic flow and shouldn’t be approached in the same manner. I've set Latin, German, Italian, and French, and have sung in those languages, plus Russian and Spanish; Each one demands its own rhythmic respect.

2. Pitch.  An early composition lesson taught me that a musical leap is an emotional outburst.  Additionally, my experience with Musical Theater showed the same effect of the leap can be accomplished with a judiciously placed accidental. Textual intention and melodic invention can come from very different directions here, so finding the middle of that Venn diagram is where the real work is.  

3. Silence.  Rhythm is the organization of sound and silence,  as was described to me by my high school band director.  That stuck with me,  specifically the silence part.  When dealing with text, silence equals air – for the singer (which is underrated), as well as for the text.  Silence can allow a statement to land,  can set up a major point with a particularly pregnant pause, or allow for emotional context.  Think of the first minute of Strauss’s Morgen:  the vocal line completes the thought that was developing long before the words are uttered.  

In the end, all of the techniques and considerations listed above had to be learned by doing - writing, failing spectacularly, rewriting, collaborating, listening, asking singers, “How does that work for you?” What has emerged over twenty years is a technique that eventually caught up with the question I asked as a student.