Host: Griffin Candey (@griffincandey), opera and song composer
I’ve met very, very few composers who don’t want to try their hand at an opera, even just for funsies – and that’s understandable, because it’s a very particular form that can yield very visible, very visceral results. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over two vocal performance degrees and a subsequent (fledgling) career writing operas & vocal music, it’s this:
Writing vocal music is pretty damn hard.
Honestly, a single session of #musochat isn’t going to be able to delve into all of this, and I certainly do not hold myself up as a master of this form – but I’ll try to ask questions that were pertinent ones for me to address when I first began this process. I hope that the result is for you all to dip a toe into the voice/opera world – or, to stick in a foot, or wade through – or to belly flop right in.
Read Griffin’s full intro here.
Questions:
- Introduce self. Then: what pieces/experiences influence your creation of/interest in vocal music? (Post links if applicable!)
- What is (or was) the biggest stumbling block to your involvement in vocal music? What can (or did) help to assuage that?
- What vocal or operatic traditions (of form, of subject matter, et al.) do you enjoy – and which would you like to see axed?
- How concerned are you with an audience’s reception of a work? Why or why not?
- How concerned are you with the marketability of your work? Why or why not?
- How willing are you to relinquish or share creative control? Do you play well with others, creatively/administratively?
- BONUS! What example of new or recent opera/vocal music best embodies what you’d like to see from the field in the future?
You can read the full discussion archive on Storify.
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Photo: Still from Griffin Candey’s ‘Sweets by Kate’
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