Download Verdi - Falstaff Fugue

Giuseppe
Giuseppe
Verdi
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MUSICWORKS
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Giuseppe Verdi
1813–1901
Giuseppe Verdi
1813–1901
Giuseppe Verdi was born Italy in 1813.
His musical career had a bit of a shaky start as young
Giuseppe wasn’t offered a place to study music at the
Milan Conservatoire (apparently he was rejected because
of his poor piano playing).
Luckily he wasn’t discouraged and Verdi went on to
become a hugely popular composer. He is best known for
writing operas, and is considered to be one of the
greatest operatic composers.
Opera
– a drama set to music, with text that
is sung to an instrumental accompaniment.
A key feature of opera is that the music
defines the drama rather than simply
providing a ‘soundtrack’.
In the 19th century Opera was
written and performed to have
huge public appeal. It was a
phenomenally popular entertainment and Verdi really
knew how to please an audience with his music.
Opera often deals with emotional extremes and Verdi
was a master in creating music that brilliantly
emphasised the drama on stage.
Falstaff was Verdi’s final opera, written when he was 80
years old. However, it is one of the most energetic and
youthful comic operas.
Falstaff is based on several plays
by William Shakespeare and brilliantly
fuses them together into a madcap
plot.
As with many comic operas, the action is fairly complex.
However, Falstaff can be summarised with just four
adjectives: it’s simply about deception, jealously,
love and revenge. It is basically an Elizabethan soap
opera!
Falstaff also contains a brilliant example of a fugue.
Fugue
– a complex musical composition written for either
instruments or voices
– a type of contrapuntal music (music that is able to
say more than one thing at a time)
– a piece where each voice or part enters in succession
with a theme (usually called the subject).
The finale of Falstaff contains a good example of a fugue
in action.
This presentation will look specifically at the beginning
of the fugue. Not only is this where Verdi introduces the
main musical ideas, but it is also where the fugue
mechanics are most visible.
The first section of a fugue is called the exposition.
This is simply where the composer exposes the listener
to the main musical ideas.
The first idea is called the subject or fugue subject:
it is simply the main theme.
Subject
The subject is first sung by the character Falstaff. He sings the lines
‘Everything in the world is a joke. Man is born a jester.’
Since Verdi was Italian, his opera is of course sung in Italian.
FUGUE SUBJECT
You can hear the excerpt
below at the beginning of
Track 4 of the
MUSICWORKS CD.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Falstaff
Fenton
Mistress Quickly
Alice
Meg
Nannetta
Ford
Dr Caius
Eight different characters sing
the fugue subject.
1
2
3
4
Falstaff
Fenton
Mistress Quickly
Alice
The first four characters play the
most important role in the
exposition and clearly demonstrate
fugue structure.
Here is how it works.
1
Subject
The 1st voice enters singing the
subject.
2
1
Answer
Subject
Then a 2nd voice enters singing the
subject but transposed into a new
key. This is called the answer.
2
1
Subject
Answer
Counter
Subject
At the same time the 1st voice
continues with an accompaniment.
This is called the counter subject.
Subject
Answer
3
2
Counter
Subject
Subject
1
rd
3
When a
voice enters, the
subject returns to the original key
and voice 2 moves to the
counter subject.
Answer
Subject
Answer
3
2
Counter
Subject
Subject
4
1
th
4
When the
voice enters it is also
th
transposed. So the 4 entry is also
called the answer.
Answer
Subject
Answer
Subject
3
4
Counter
Subject
2
1
At the same time, Voice 3
moves to the counter subject.
&
C
1
The
st
1
voice begins on the note C.
&
G
C
1
The
nd
2
2
voice begins a 5th higher
on the note G.
3
C
&
G
C
1
rd
3
2
The
voice starts also on C,
st
one octave higher than the 1 voice.
3
4
G
C
&
G
C
1
th
4
2
The
voice is also on G,
nd
one octave higher than the 2 voice.
Falstaff
For the next
four entries, Verdi uses
2
a special technique
Fentoncalled stretto.
3 Mistress
Find these
entries in theQuickly
score.
1
4
5
6
7
8
Alice
Meg
Nannetta
Ford
Dr Caius
Stretto
– an overlapping of fugal entries to
increase the sense of excitement in the
music.
Voices 5 to 8 overlap; they
don’t wait for the previous
entry to finish. This is stretto.
8
7
6
5
Stretto
After the exposition is complete, Verdi develops
the musical material.
He creates further sections of music called
episodes.
Each episode is based very heavily on the subject
and counter subject.
Episodes
A key concept used in the episodes is imitation.
Short phrases are copied from one voice to the
next, or sometimes echoed by the entire orchestra.
Imitation
Giuseppe