Gawain (opera) - Music

Music

The plot of Gawain is ideally suited to Birtwistle's approach to musical structure. The repetitious structure of events can be paralleled with a repetitious musical structure. Thus the three hunts in Act 2 use the same musical material, as do the three seductions. The music is varied and adapted every time it is heard, but inner coherence is easily established. The synopsis also indicates many points where recurring motifs are heard: trios of door knocks; the return to the Arthurian court at the end of the opera with the same mood of boredom seen at the beginning; the members of the court gradually recovering from Gawain the items they gave him at the end of act 1. Thus, though the opera is not written with many explicit numbers (i.e. the arias and ensemble pieces characteristic of Classical opera), nor with strongly defined leitmotif in the style of Wagner, there is an overall unity of musical material. There are many occasions when one character will simply repeat one line of text always set it to the same melodic phrase, but this is not the same as using a leitmotif. It does, however, fit well with Birtwistle's standard style of continual variation in the midst of repetition.

The conductor Elgar Howarth has arranged the orchestral suite Gawain's Journey from music in the opera.

Read more about this topic:  Gawain (opera)

Famous quotes containing the word music:

    Franceska: I was happy in the life I built up for myself. I put a fine high wall of music around me and nothing could touch me. I was safe and secure. And then you had to come along and knock it all down and I hate you for that.
    Maxwell: On the contrary, you love me.
    Muriel Box (b. 1905)

    When in our music God is glorified,
    and adoration leaves no room for pride,
    it is as though the whole creation cried Alleluia!
    Frederick Pratt Green (b. 1903)

    Good-by, my book! Like mortal eyes, imagined ones must close some day. Onegin from his knees will rise—but his creator strolls away. And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music and allow the tale to fade; the chords of fate itself continue to vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists where I have put The End: the shadows of my world extend beyond the skyline of the page, blue as tomorrow’s morning haze—nor does this terminate the phrase.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)