Monthly Archives: October 2012

Shumaila – Seminar 10/10/2012

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During Wednesday’s seminar, we were presented with the opportunity to discuss the opera, “Turandot”, as well as meet Professor Sirrota. With Professor Kahan, we talked about everyones various perspectives, and answered any unresolved questions about the opera. During the opera I was very fascinated by how much power the conductors had, and how well they orchestrated the whole event. Elisa pointed out how the entire orchestra left the play much before they could be recognized for their stunning performance. We also talked about how servants were traditionally given no worth, and as a result they thought very little of themselves. The professor pointed out something that I never thought about during the opera, the librettos have to put in a substantial amount of effort to match the script to the specific time frame that the play would take place during. I noticed during the opera how even the music had a chinese flare. She explained it was because they were all played in the fourths intervals. I was amazed to learn how different perspectives regarding different races resulted in certain music being played when they came on stage. 

During the second half of class, we were joined by our renowned guest speaker, Professor Sirrota. He told a delightful story of he became inspired to write such an incredible piece. It all started with an epiphany he had eighteen years ago, when he was almost instantly able to recall the first time he heard a musical piece. He was able to remember an old childhood memory of a man singing a song to some children, and it later went on to become a brave anthem for the people of Israel. The variations of the songs were quite interesting to hear, it was my first time listening to these tunes. I like how they are so gentle on the ears, and the harmony is very serene. His piece is a set of variations that he explained go on the “benjamin britain model”, its melody and harmonic possibilities showed great different combinations. He taught us how we could detect the repetitions in the variations, and how the other instruments came together. He doesn’t have a theme at the beginning, but then a theme emerges from the introduction. 

Learning about all these elements in music served as a very good introduction to the Staten Island Philharmonic that I will be attending on Sunday. Now I am confident that attending this performance will be a memorable experience, one that I will remember for years to come. 

Seminar Class 10/10/12

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On Wednesday, class began with a discussion on our feelings and thoughts on the opera Turandot. Overall we all as a class liked the opera. It was something different that most of us have never experienced before. Many of us especially liked the costumes and scenery of the opera for they were both very extravagant. In class we also discussed the types of music throughout the opera. The two types of music that were played in the opera were Italian-like and Chinese-like. Some music sounded Italian because it was an Italian opera written by an Italian man. Some music sounded Chinese because the setting of the play was in China and was about a Chinese empress named Turandot. The muiscians achieved this Chinese-like music by including a lot of fourth notes.

During the second half of the class, Michael Sirotta came to talk about his experience with music. Professor Sirotta is a world known musician who just created his first orchestral symphony, that of which we will as a class attend on Sunday afternoon. Professor Sirotta first discussed his first experience with music. He remembered what was his first piece of music that he ever encountered. This song was Oyfn Pripetshok, a traditional Jewish folk song. It is so popular in the Jewish community that it is also known as the second Jewish national anthem. He remembered his grandfather singing this song when he was a little boy. As a result of this great memory, he made this song the basis for his first orchestral symphony. Professor Sirotta also talked about his experience and his past with music. He discussed why variation was so important in music and how the composer knows what instruments to use to get a certain emotion or variation.

Having Professor Sirotta come to our seminar class to talk about his orchestral symphony made me more interested in attended the Philharmonic on Sunday. I now understand how difficult his job is as a conductor and will appreciate his performance more than I would have in the past. I know that seeing this performance will be a great experience.

10/10/12 Discuss Turandot/Michael Sirotta – Guest Speaker

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Yesterday’s seminar class began with us discussing the opera, “Turandot,” as a whole and giving each of our inputs, explaining the positives and negatives, as well as what we felt was good and bad. I greatly appreciated discussing the “minor character”, Liu and her role holistically in the opera. But, I didn’t really quite understand why her death was barely paid attention too, however at the same token it made the man more emotionally appealing to Turandot. Being this opera was the first one I ever attended, I was amazed at the scenery and the discipline the conductor must have for his/her orchestra.
The next part of class was a change of pace because I, along with the rest of the class were introduced to a man named, Michael Sirotta, who has traveled all over the world and wrote music from instruments all over the world. Thankfully, the Internet has brought this ever-expanding source of music so easily into our lives. On Sunday, Professor Sirotta is having his newly-written orchestral composition displayed at the Staten Island Philharmonic, and our class is lucky enough to be given the opportunity to attend such an empowering and breathtaking show. This particular piece explores musically a Jewish folk song by Mark Warshawsky, who was a lawyer in the Ukraine, and created Yiddish tunes. I was completely unaware that the alphabet used for Yiddish is in fact the Hebrew language.
I found it so interesting how Professor Sirotta’s first musical memory was so vivid and remembered exactly where, when, and what exactly it was. It just shows me, that it greatly influenced his future and this memory will be forever embedded into his brain. This song that he listened to when he was only five years old was “Ofyn Pripetshok,” better known as the second Jewish national anthem. I was shocked when I heard that statement, because I didn’t really understand how it fits into the category of being a national anthem. This piece is about a Rabbi who teaches small children the Hebrew alphabet, but out of no where the Rabbi hits you in the gut emotionally, by saying that he hopes his students will realize the tears that exist in all the letters in the alphabet, and more importantly, gain the strength to go about each day.
After Professor Sirotta finished discussing why he chose this particular piece to display at the musical gathering on Sunday, he provided us with two different variations of the composer, Johannes Brahms with and without the orchestra. He made it clear to us that, in the 20th century, composers still wanted to do variations and themes, but didn’t want to follow the structure except for some phrases. Therefore, they made their own variations which us, as the audience, cant sing or recognize.
Michael’s piece is a set of variations, not exact phrases by phrase, but was more interested in the melody and harmonic possibilities, so he deconstructed the melody and put it back in different ways, creating introductions and themes emerging out of it. I am looking forward to attending my first Philharmonic and it’s very convenient that it’s held at the College of Staten Island.

Epiphany- 10/10

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It was really difficult for me to come up with a topic for this response.  In my prior blog entries, there was always a topic or an idea that I wanted to write about.  Thankfully, while I was thinking about something to write, I had an epiphany.

During class, Professor Sirotta brought up something interesting before he gave his lecture about variations of music, his epiphany.  He spoke of his first memory of listening to music, back when he was five years old. The professor said that he remembered listening to an older family member sing a Jewish folk song.  In all honesty, I thought he was stretching the truth but just a few minutes before I started writing this response, I believed him.

While I was thinking about a topic for my response, I looked through my class notes and mentally ran down all my memories of the class.  I cannot say for sure but I believe my brain established some sort of a connection between Professor’s Sirotta’s talk about his epiphany and my own first memory of listening to music.  I visualized myself sitting on a floor and in front of a television with my back laying against the bottom portion of a couch. I was watching The Lion King, specifically the beginning part in which, Circle of Life, was playing.  I cannot recall exactly how old I was but the room I was in throughout the visualization was in my old Russian apartment.  I was probably either 5 or 6 years old, around the age the professor was in his epiphany.

I am so thankful for this response, it let me reminisce about a significant moment in my life.  Hopefully, the next response will have a similar outcome.

Stephanie Solanki, 10/10/12

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In today’s class, we started off by discussing the opera. We discussed the “point” of Liu. I thought that the character of Liu was to contrast the character of Turandot. She was generous in her love, whereas Turandot made her suitors fight for her love. Liu was a foil for Turandot. Liu was faithful in how she was viewed in her society. She paid with her life for loving somebody.

Professor Kahan said that Western art is valorizes Western music, and every other music is secondary. Intervals are the distance between two notes. Fifths (intervals) denote “barbaric” music. Liu’s music has a lot of fourth intervals, which denotes the Chinese motif that is present in many Chinese musical pieces. Puccini inserted a lot of fourths into Liu’s part so that we can recognize it as Chinese music. Her character had to be introduced as Chinese to show where the opera took place. The composer has to make exoticism palatable for American audiences. I think this is so interesting. We’ve programmed our brains to know that a certain sound is to be linked to a certain culture. This is subconscious. It just shows the power music has over our brains, and how it can influence us to believe certain ideas.

Mr. Sirotta is a composer of a symphonic orchestral music. His latest piece is to be performed this Sunday, and I have the privilege to attend. Fantasia Pripetshok is based on a piece by Mark Warshovsky. He was creating Yiddish tunes. He composed many songs but never wrote them down until he met a writer who was writing about the struggles of the Jews. They suffered from bigotry and anti-Semitism. The song that Sirotta has chosen to make something of for a symphonic orchestra is by Mark Warshovsky called Oyfn Pripetshok. Rhythmically the tune doesn’t know if it’s coming or going. It’s a parable for the Jewish people. The tune doesn’t follow the strict rules of a square melody. The words of a song teach a lesson. It parallels the survival of a whole nations because of the message paired with a beautiful tune.  He wrote a score using a computer using recordings of music instruments; this technique is called voicing.

Sirotta chose to do variations of the melody in his piece. The themes-and-variations form have been used since the 18th century, used by composers like Johann Bach. One of the reasons for using this form is the composer will pick the melody from a preceding composer and do something in his or her own language with it. The tune is presented in the onset, and then the variations begin. The variations follow the basic tune. The same framework is used with the same basic chord progression harmonizing it.

Sirotta’s piece is a set of variations that is not an identical match. He deconstructed the melody. He was interested in the harmonies and the chord progressions. I loved hearing every piece he played. His own piece was very special because he played it on the piano first, then introduced the history, and then played his symphonic piece all put together. I think i’m going to love the concert on Sunday.

Different Types of Music / Michael Sirotta: 10/10/12

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Today’s Seminar started with us discussing our thoughts and opinions of the opera Turandot, from last week.  Everyone seemed to really enjoy it, and we each had our own favorite particular aspects, whether it was the music, the sets, the costumes, the conductor, or the singing.  We did have a discussion about the purpose of the character Liu in the opera, because to most of us, she seemed like a pretty pointless servant girl character, who eventually died for someone who barely took the time to notice her.  This led to a discussion about how characters in a performance, especially an opera, often stay true to the societal standards of the time and place.  For example, Turandot was set in China hundreds of years ago, and in the Chinese culture of that period, servant girls were there simply for that – to be servants, and their personhood was essentially insignificant and worthless.  So when Liu killed herself out of love for the prince in the opera, to us, it seemed cruel and heartless, but to the other people in the opera and to audiences who saw the opera during the time it was set in, this was not unusual.  In fact, it was expected and accepted.

The conversation revolving around Liu and different acceptable societal roles led into another conversation about socially acceptable music.  Sometimes, music from other cultures can be used disrespectfully and can become a sort of cliché, for example the way we all know the stereotypical “Chinese music” that we learned from cartoons and movies.  This can be considered “racist” in certain contexts and uses.  Turandot is an opera that uses mostly Italian music, but there are hints of Chinese melodies and music, especially when Liu is singing.  This is NOT considered “racist.”  On the contrary, it fits into the story and the composer is introducing something exotic to American audiences like us.  Being an opera composer can be slightly difficult, as a composer has to try and achieve balance between introducing exoticism and not creating a story that is too exotic, and can be misunderstood or taken offensively.  I found this conversation interesting, since I had never even considered this musical aspect, aside from the fact that it was strange watching Turandot being performed in Italian when I knew that the setting was in China.

For the last hour of class, we had a guest speaker, Michael Sirotta.  He is a world-renowned composer and is in the Music Department at the College of Staten Island.  He has just completed his first major orchestral symphony, Fantasia Pripetshok, which will be premiered on Sunday, October 14 by the Staten Island Philharmonic.  Sirotta has always been a lover of music, but he discovered about eighteen years ago that he wanted to take a simple Jewish folksong, Oyfn Pripetshok, and use its simple tune and melody to create a symphonic masterpiece.  Oyfn Pripetshok is a folksong that opens with a description of a rabbi teaching his students the Hebrew alphabet and then uses that simple scene as they key to the national survival of the Jewish people throughout the centuries.  It is a beautiful song, and sometimes referred to as the “second Jewish national anthem.”

What Sirotta did was take Oyfn Pripetshok and create variations of the one tune in order to make it into a piece of music that could be played by an orchestra.  Once again, being a composer is a very difficult role because the composer has to be able to strike a balance between the type of music that is doable for the orchestra performers and the type of musical sound the composer wants to achieve.  This is all taken into account when creating a theme and variation of a tune or melody.  Creating a variation means that you take a tune of a piece of music that has been written and embellish upon it, make it more fancy and in a sense, more difficult to perform.  Usually, it will follow a pattern where the actual tune is played, then the first variation is slightly different, but you can still sing and hear the tune, and then the second variation is completely different, unrecognizable in comparison.  This was also quite interesting to me, because of course, I had heard classical symphonies before, but I had never realized that this is sometimes the pattern they follow.  To be honest, I listened to two symphonies over the weekend and thought them to be long and repetitive, which is what happens when a composer creates a variation of a simple tune.  Before we left class, we listened to a piece of Sirotta’s newest symphony, Fantasia Pripetshok.  It was a beautiful piece of music and from the short piece
I heard, actually appealed to me much more than the other symphonies I listened to this weekend.  I am looking forward to hearing this piece of music played live on Sunday by the Staten Island Philharmonic, and to expanding my mind to understand and enjoy yet another genre of music.

Ariana Z. 10/10/12 Michael Sirotta

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Today’s seminar consisted of two parts. The first half was essentially our “debriefing” of our feelings about the Opera.  I was surprised to hear that, in fact, the box seats on our level of the balcony were considered to be “good” seats. Though they have more room and the presence of a table, I can honestly say that I would not have switched my seat from the family circle had I been offered one in the box. Professor Kahan stated that this was simply “opera” tradition and “in opera fashion” to have box seats. In this case I would, however, take comfort over tradition.

Another statement made in today’s class that I thought was interesting was that the character of “Liu” in Turandot came into question. Though I felt it disheartening that her death was almost skipped over, I must say that her character seemed to be needed in order to prove to Turandot that this man whom she hardly knows is capable of being loved by another so much that someone would take their life for his. I think it ultimately allowed Torandot’s heart to finally open up enough to let a man like Calif through.

The latter half of class was devoted to our guest spear, Michael Sirotta, whose orchestral composition will have its debut  at this weekend’s “Cultures in Harmony.” Professor Sirotta was a delight to listen to as he was truly passionate about his work. I especially enjoyed how he described the inspiration for his piece. It is amazing that one’s memory could go back so far as to when he was a child on his relative’s farm.  I thought it was interesting that the song “Ofyn Pripetshok” he knew as a child could have such strong meaning. Though the words were about a Rabi teaching little children the Hebrew alphabet… “See now little ones take it nice and slow” it also had a dark meaning; with words similar to saying “when you grow older…you will know the tears that come with every letter..” Professor Sirotta went on to state that this song could be , and for some is, considered the “second Jewish national anthem.” He even gave us a quick listen to what the class will be hearing on Sunday, and I must say that I am looking forward to the SI Philharmonic’s performance of the piece.

10/10/12-Swathi Satty

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Today, we discussed Turandot and the first topic that came up was about Liu, who was the faithful servant. She could’ve been used as the foil character, as Naomi mentioned, to the princess because she was so selfless and didn’t see herself as worth anything whereas the princess was very aware of her high status. So her being the complete opposite of the princess was used to create a foil within in the opera. Her death was also not as relevant as the pursuit of the prince. This is common in Operas since the secondary characters don’t often get attended to as the main characters do.

Elisa noticed that while the audience applauded the actors/singers for minutes at a time, the orchestra was quick to get off the scene. This could be because playing instruments for hours at a time is even more physically exhausting than singing on stage for the same amount of time.

In regards to the music played, the music wasn’t what most would consider Chinese music today but was the 20th century depiction of what Italian musicians believed Chinese music would sound like. The music was probably based off of stereotypical perspectives that existed during that time which would now probably be considered racist. In this very opera, certain types of intervals are used to present the impression of the scenario on set given off to the audience. For example, 5ths are used for primitive cultures which would depict them as being violent and aggressive which is a modern day example of racism. In Turandot, Liu’s music had a lot of fourths in her music in her melody making it sound quasi-Chinese allowing the listening subconscious to perceive it as being Chinese. This was present but wasn’t the main focus of the opera. It’s a challenge for the creators of operas to make it exotic but palatable and not overtly racist so they would have to be selective about the instruments used in the orchestra.

Fantasia is based off of a piece by Mark Warhovksy. Even if he was a musician, he never wrote down any of his music until he met another musician who discussed with the bigotry of that age. Professor Sirotta is going to perform with his orchestra is by Mark Warhovsky. I learned that the words and the melody of the a certain piece can trigger past memories in its clearest form which basically states that music is as a personal as it gets. The words mixed with the tune can also convey beautiful messages as shown in “OYFN Pripetshok” which many consider the second Jewish anthem because of the deep message embedded in the tune of the piece and its words.

Many musicians use the melody to shrine the instrument and at the same time show off their skill which goes back to previous discussions about vocalists/instrumentalists trying to give off a message while showing their musical capabilities. Variations in tunes shows the change in music styles in cultures and age. Normally, the variations follow the tune precisely even if the music sounds more and more complex; basically the same framework exists with new harmonies. Sirotta, like many other pieces, brings in the variation after introducing the melody and the tune in his piece which he will perform in the orchestra this Sunday.

 

“Turandot” 10/3/2012 – Shumaila

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On Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012, I went to my first Opera titled “Turandot”. The opera was about a princess who didn’t want to be controlled by any man. She composed a plan so that she would never get married. Any potential suitor would have to correctly answer the three riddles, and if they answered incorrectly, they were beheaded.
When I first got out of the subway terminal, and walked in to the hallway that led to the outside courtyard between the Metropolitan Opera House and the Julliard school, I was amazed by the overpowering scenery. I didn’t expect that the fountain, the building, and just the comprehensive setting would convey such an immense sense of appreciation for the arts.
During the Opera, seeing the orchestra perform live, was something I had never seen before. I watched in awe as the conductor directed the musicians so play their instruments. Watching the “Nessun Dorma” was definitely an amazingly emotion-filled experience. At the end, I was happy that Turandot was finally able to love the man that risked his life to prove that he was a suitable man for her. The colors of the stage, and how they changed the settings during the intermission was so interesting to me.
In conclusion, I loved how so many elements of the arts came together to form such an amazing production. The performers all acted in such harmony, each performing their numbers at the perfect moment. I can most definitely say that my first time at an Opera was an unforgettable experience, one that I will reminisce for the rest of my life.

Wednesday 10/3 Andrew Garafalo

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This Wednesday I went to an opera for the first time in my life and it was a very interesting experience. The Metropolitan Opera House was a beautiful place that really took me by surprise.  I was in awe at the sights around me. Everything was very high class and formal. The story of “Turandot” was compelling and enjoyable. At the start, I felt a little confused and uninterested because it was very foreign and puzzling due to the language barrier. After I turned on the English subtitles, the play was much easier to understand and follow, and I became captivated. Although, looking back and forth between the chair and the stage was difficult. I was taken aback by the power and talent of the opera singers. Their endurance was truly admirable. The orchestra was also phenomenal! Seeing their live performance was truly amazing. I loved the rendition of “nessun dorma”. I had a refined appreciation for it after hearing Luciano Pavarotti perform it twice in class. I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend an opera, although I’m not sure if I would go to another for my own pleasure.