Relation of Words and Music
As in an oratorio, the written text in a choral symphony can be as important as the music, and the chorus and soloists can participate equally with the instruments in the exposition and development of musical ideas. The text can also help determine whether the composer follows symphonic form strictly, as in the case of Rachmaninoff, Britten and Shostakovich, or whether they expand symphonic form, as in the case of Berlioz, Mahler and Havergal Brian. Sometimes the choice of text has led the composer to different symphonic structures, as with Szymanowski, Schnittke and, again, Havergal Brian. The composer can also choose to treat the text fluidly, in a manner more like music than narrative. Such was the case with Vaughan Williams, Mahler and Philip Glass.
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Famous quotes containing the words relation of, relation, words and/or music:
“Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“Science is the language of the temporal world; love is that of the spiritual world. Man, indeed, describes more than he explains; while the angelic spirit sees and understands. Science saddens man; love enraptures the angel; science is still seeking, love has found. Man judges of nature in relation to itself; the angelic spirit judges of it in relation to heaven. In short to the spirits everything speaks.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“Plantin’ and readin’, plantin’ and readin’. Fill a man full of lead, stick ‘em in the ground, and then read words on ‘em. Why when ya killed a man, why try to read the Lord in as a partner on the job.”
—Borden Chase [Frank Fowler] (1900–1971)
“People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around—the music and the ideas.”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)