• mrcoppermrcopper
    Posts: 653
    New recording posted

    https://soundcloud.com/williamcopper/stabat-mater

    Word for word translation in the description and in the score.
    Vocal score here, orchestral score link provided at soundcloud.

    I know I'm out of step with the season, just think of it as ahead of next year!
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • francis
    Posts: 10,688
    mrcopper:

    This is an incomplete reduction I would imagine since I am hearing other notes that are not in the score? Would you agree that your style really does harken back to the classical era? Do you have the resources to perform your works since they are orchestral/choral in nature? Thanks for the look and listen.
  • mrcoppermrcopper
    Posts: 653
    Francis, yes, the keyboard part is a slightly out of date compromise. I write for orchestra first, then attempt to reduce, then often go back and make orchestration changes and only belatedly get back to correct the keyboard reduction. As to 'classical', yes and no.

    Here's what a colleague said of Copper: "Un musicista che sembra sbucato dal Barocco, attraversando le tempeste musicali dell'Ottocento e del Novecento, raccogliendo i frammenti di un'intero evo musicale... Una musica raffinatissima, colta, piena di drammaticità, che consiglio a tutti gli amanti di musica classica e a tutti coloro che vogliono scoprire qualche chicca."

    I like that description. But I feel somewhat radical, too, I am writing music in a way that has never been done before (like it or not). My composition teachers each did the same, so it is a path that a student should honor.

    Resources: interesting question. I write what seems right. This Stabat Mater is, I believe, a masterpiece, but no one has performed it yet. It is, with the introduction to my Symphony 4, the saddest work I've written. Begun 9/11/2001 when my late wife called me to say 'turn on the television' (I had one then) and watch the World Trade Center burning. Who knows, my time may come. Or I may be deluded, I wouldn't be the first.

    William
  • mrcoppermrcopper
    Posts: 653
    Edit: score-video version deleted, sound not so good and score blurry.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,688
    Well, Google says this of that:

    "A musician who seems popped from the Baroque, through the storm music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, gathering the fragments of an entire musical evo music ... A refined, intelligent, full of drama, which I recommend to all lovers of music classical and all those who want to discover some gem. "

    For what it's worth: I hear very little baroque influence, but definitely the storm of music of the nineteenth and twentieth. Your writing to me is more like a mosaic of various gems, connected with small musical bridges that have no predictability.

    Thanks for the explanation.
  • mrcoppermrcopper
    Posts: 653
    I think he meant Baroque as in Bach, not as in Couperin! I use a great deal of imitation, inversion, retrograde, etc. The Stabat is a classical sonata form, done as Prokofiev did it, complete with change in key center at the recap second theme and a coda. But that relatively rigid structure, to me, just allowed the great emotions to flow through. Google does not translate very well, but I won't try to improve, I don't exactly understand "un'intero evo musicale" anyway.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,688
    Quite interesting analysis, mrcopper. Thanks so much. Intriguing.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,162
    Wouldn't it be "an entire musical era"?
    Thanked by 1mrcopper