Page 199 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

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fifth (a semitone less than a fifth) which, at first, is loud, violent, and of lyrical reflection, not simply as
below it, resulting in a tritone (an consistently moving off the beat. opportunities for aria or duet but
interval of three tones). Medieval gradually diminishes into a to voice the hopes, desires, and
musical theorists regarded this downward slither that ends up, memories that motivate them and
interval as highly disruptive and with a feeling of exhaustion, on drive the plot. The drama’s final
forbade its use, calling it diabolus another tritone. This image of impression is of individuals hurtled
in musica (“the devil in music”). disheveled flight and collapse along by events over which they
Puccini, who came from a long line serves as a second harbinger have little control, and certainly far
of distinguished church musicians, of what is to come in the opera. less than they believe they have.
would certainly have been familiar The opera’s action is based Its emotional and musical power
with the nickname. on the play La Tosca (1887) by the helped to redefine the English
In a clear break with harmonic Frenchman Victorien Sardou, tradition of choral music. ■
orthodoxies, Puccini not only which was criticized at the time for
uses the motif to characterize his its dizzying tempo of unrelenting
secular devil-figure in the opera but action and reaction. Puccini’s Verismo
also employs the theme throughout librettists despaired of making a
the opera as an emblem of Scarpia’s viable libretto from it, but the Puccini’s Verismo creates a
influence on events that take place composer was able to use daring musical naturalism that
when he is not present, or even harmonic instability not only to reflects real life.
alive. The impact of this is to place contain but also to hold together,
harmonic instability at the center and even magnify, the play’s helter-
of the musical action. skelter ride of swiftly changing
events as part of his overall
Real drama musical strategy. He places the emphasis on
Immediately after the Scarpia Tosca’s three central characters psychological reality, with
theme, the curtain rises on the all begin the drama with their lives emotionally charged arias.
church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, apparently secure, yet through an
and we see the fleeing figure of unpredictable and unstoppable
Cesare Angelotti, a political sequence of cause and effect, all
prisoner on the run. Beginning in three are dead by the curtain, in
another unrelated key (G minor), less than 24 hours. Yet Puccini He uses atmospheric music to
the harmonic movement here is still manages to give all three of suggest a sense of character
much faster. The chord sequence, his chief characters their moments and inner conflict.

Opera and the rise of the new reality

Verismo owed its philosophical often allied to a corresponding He uses familiar sounds,
basis to a literary movement focus on the social evils of such as church bells, to mimic
begun in France by the novelists poverty, crime, and violence. everyday reality.
Émile Zola (1840–1902) and In opera, the new style’s
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). emotional extremities were
It was represented in Italy by realized in taxing vocal writing,
the Sicilian Giovanni Verga, which threw away the remnants
whose short story and play of the display and niceties of bel
Cavalleria rusticana inspired canto (“beautiful singing”) in
Mascagni’s opera of the same favor of hard-hitting directness. The ultimate effect is
name. The premise of verismo Musical continuity was to make the music
lay in a scrutiny of the lives of increased with the dissolution and drama more
“ordinary people”—usually of the old divisions between personal, immediate,
urban or rural workers—in a recitative (speechlike singing), and effective.
local and everyday setting and arias, and other set pieces.

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