Music Performance Review Paper

The performance I attended was the graduate recital for a student from UTEP, Diana L. Esparza. Although not quite an orchestral performance, the music presented still incorporated many of the concepts that we have reviewed over the semester, and a handful of composers that we have reviewed as well: two of these composers being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, and Giuseppe Verdi. The overall nature of the pieces selected involved various genres that incorporate a singer in its scoring, as well as a piano and at one point a clarinet. Some of the genres utilized in the performance included arias (Ah! Je veux vivre, Ah, fors’é lui che l’anima… Sempre libera), lieds/art songs (Am See, Dein blaues Auge, Au bord de l’eau, Toujours) and other …show more content…
It is quite difficult to generalize some of the aspects of several of these pieces. For example, although there were some pieces such as Ah! Je veux vivre and Toujours that featured a faster tempo, louder dynamics, and folk-ish, almost cheery, melodies, there were other pieces that featured a much slower tempo, minor keys, and serene harmonious melodies, such as in Am See and Dein blaues Auge. What could be generalized are some of the techniques used during some of the pieces; in general, vibrato was employed consistently by the voice, and the texture of most pieces could be considered homophonic in nature, excluding perhaps Fair is the Swan due to the exchange of melodies that occurs throughout the …show more content…
The reason I was particularly intrigued by this piece was the fact that I felt some familiarity to the piece, since it was not the first aria I had analyzed. I felt compelled to draw comparisons between this aria and arias I had heard before in class, mainly the aria we analyzed from Mozart’s Don Giovanni (The one involving Donna Elvira). Although the text and overall story are complete opposites, one a tale of star-crossed lovers and the other of a womanizing hopeless man, the style of the music as well as the type of form employed are somewhat similar. Mainly, the style and tone of the accompanying music seemed to reflect the text that was being mentioned, wherein Donna Elvira’s rage and fury was accentuated by sharp fortissimos, Juliet’s serenity when contemplating her potential for love is accompanied by periods of cheery and fast-tempo melodies and slower, melodic, and serene melodies. Similarly, the forms of the two arias share some similarities, notably in the fact that as they repeat certain sections, they are then accompanied by a new series of stanzas. However, it is here where Gounod’s aria differs from Mozart’s; although somewhat vague, there is the possibility that Gounod employed Bel Canto in his aria, requiring the singer to improvise a particular section, possibly the final