My First Song Cycle
I will attempt my very first song cycle, Songs of Travel by Ralph Vaughan Williams for the recital this year. English songs based on poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. Not very easy for many reasons.
1. English is the hardest language of the four languages in Western classical music. Cannot believe, right? YES! Cuz English has too many variations in consonants and vowels. A language extremely unkind to singers.
2. Song cycles (might) require a level of maturity in musicianship and age to attempt (attempt only, NOT perform...HAHA!) because it demands the singer to be able to make poetic and musical sense of each song and at the same time relate each to the rest in order to impart a sense of unity, a sense of wholeness to the cycle.
3. The poems are not THAT straightfoward. Especially for someone who last studied poems in Sec 2.
4. The songs in the cycle are in general slow ballads. Slow songs are extremely hard to perform!
That's all that I can think right now...BUT exciting! I like excitement! YAY!
QH
1. English is the hardest language of the four languages in Western classical music. Cannot believe, right? YES! Cuz English has too many variations in consonants and vowels. A language extremely unkind to singers.
2. Song cycles (might) require a level of maturity in musicianship and age to attempt (attempt only, NOT perform...HAHA!) because it demands the singer to be able to make poetic and musical sense of each song and at the same time relate each to the rest in order to impart a sense of unity, a sense of wholeness to the cycle.
3. The poems are not THAT straightfoward. Especially for someone who last studied poems in Sec 2.
4. The songs in the cycle are in general slow ballads. Slow songs are extremely hard to perform!
That's all that I can think right now...BUT exciting! I like excitement! YAY!
QH
posted by Quan Hui | 10:07 PM
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