Music I love: Coloratura (La pastorella al prato, etc.)

I have always loved music. The earliest music I remember is Church hymns and my father's folk music -- The Brothers Four, The Kingston Trio, The Chad Mitchell Trio, like that. I grew up listening to 70s pop music on AM radio. I took up violin in fourth grade and was introduced to the genre of classical music ("classical" in the broad sense). It was only much later, in my 20s, after coming home from my LDS missionary service in Italy, that I developed a taste for operatic singing. Luciano Pavarotti's voice was my introduction to this genre, and he remains perhaps my favorite operatic artist.

Eventually, I also came to appreciate women's operatic voices. When I began to get a bit familiar with Italian opera, I was drawn to a particular style of singing called bel canto, Italian for "beautiful singing". One feature of bel canto that I enjoyed was coloratura, an Italian term meaning "coloration". Coloratura refers to a collection of acrobatic virtuoso singing techniques that the singer (usually a soprano) uses to decorate her song. Doing it well requires tremendous diaphragm control and singing power; the result is unmistakable, breathtaking, amazing.

Perhaps the best-known coloratura piece is the second aria sung by the wicked Queen of the Night in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. This aria, Der Hölle Rache (Eng. Hell's vengeance), is often called simply "The Queen of the Night aria"; the link points to a particularly well-known coloratura part. (And if you don't think such singing is hard work, listen to Ms. Damrau panting at 4:15.)

A more extreme example of a soprano using coloratura is in Rossini's La Cenerentola (Eng. Cinderella). Rossini is rather notorious for writing highly ornate, difficult coloratura passages, particularly for his sopranos. Here is Cecilia Bartoli singing the final aria of the opera, Naqui al affano...Non piú mesta (actually two arias sung one after the other); the link points to the very end, where the singer traverses an almost unbelievable series of passages. Whether you love this kind of music or laugh at it, you have to stand in awe at the sheer fact that a human being can sing such a thing.

(If you haven't gathered yet, I'm a Cecilia Bartoli fan. Some have criticized her Rossini singing as neurotic, like she's about to bite the head off a bat. Whatever. In my little world, no one tops Cecilia.)

One of my favorite coloratura pieces is La pastorella al prato (Eng. The shepherdess through the meadow), written, strangely enough, by Franz Schubert. It's a sweet little Italian poem set to a pretty tune. The words are as follows:

La pastorella al prato

Contenta se ne va,

Coll' agnellino a lato

Cantando in libertà.

Se l'innocente amore

Gradisce il suo pastore

La bella pastorella

Contenta ognor sarà.

(Literal translation:

The little shepherdess contentedly passes through the meadow,

With a little lamb beside her, singing in liberty.

If her shepherd appreciates innocent love,

The pretty little shepherdess will forever be happy.)

Here is my attempt at a more poetic, singable translation:

Passing through the meadow walks

The lovely shepherdess,

And with her little lamb she talks

And sings in love and bliss.

If her sweet shepherd boy

Returns her love and joy

As he said, the pretty maid

Will ever feel love's kiss.

I've tried to retain the original poem's rhyming scheme of ABABCC(dd)B, where the (dd) means a line with an internal rhyme: La bella pastorella. My translation's internal rhyme, As he said, the pretty maid, is the best I could come up with. I considered making the fourth line And sings in love like this, rhyming with a changed last line, Will ever feel such bliss, which I thought might sing a bit better.

Yeah, like anyone would actually ever sing this. :)

P.S. My last "Music I love" entry also featured an Italian poem about shepherds. What's up with that? Dunno. Just coincidence, I suppose.

Music I love: Se tu m'ami

Some find my taste in music laughable, or baffling, or strange, or pedestrian. It's probably all of those, depending on the person doing the critique. But it's mine, and I take delight in it. I want to share examples of the music I love, with the thought that maybe others will share some of the pleasure I have found, or at least get a good laugh.

Se tu m'ami, se sospiri (pronounced more or less "Say two Mommy, say so speedy", better translated as "If you love me, if you sigh") is a poem from the early 18th century by Paolo Antonio Rolli. It was set to music in the late 19th century by Alessandro Parisotti, who for some reason attributed the composition to Giovanni Pergolesi. Why? Perhaps because Pergolesi lived around the time that Rolli wrote the poem, and Parisotti thought a spurious attribution would give his melody more credibility; perhaps because the melody evoked a more Baroque feel that seemed out of place in Parisotti's late Romantic era; perhaps something else entirely. I have no clue.

Here is a live version by Cecilia Bartoli.

The text of the poem is as follows (the parenthetical "tu" is added in the sung version to make it scan correctly with the music):

Se tu m'ami, se (tu) sospiri

Sol per me, gentil pastor,

Ho dolor de' tuoi martiri,

Ho diletto del tuo amor,

Ma se pensi che soletto

Io ti debba riamar,

Pastorello, sei soggetto

Facilmente a t'ingannar.

Bella rosa porporina

Oggi Silvia sceglierà,

Con la scusa della spina

Doman poi la sprezzerà.

Ma degli uomini il consiglio

Io per me non seguirò.

Non perché mi piace il giglio

Gli altri fiori sprezzerò.

Here's my attempt at a poetic translation:

If you love me, sighing deep

For me alone, dear shepherd boy,

In your suff'rings I take pity;

In your love I take great joy.

But you think my love I'll give

To you alone? This you believe?

Foolish shepherd! See how quick

And easily you self-deceive!

Silvia may likely choose

The pretty purple rose today,

But, lamenting thorns, tomorrow

That same rose she'll cast away.

For myself, I see no reason

Men's vain counsel I must take;

Just because I love the lily,

Other flow'rs I'll not forsake.

Listen to how the music conforms to the words. A beautiful, longing, lyric melody accompanies her initial declaration of love for the shepherd boy. But then, when she asks if he then expects her to return his love only to him, the music changes; she laughs! Unmistakably, the music changes to a tone of scornful laughter at the naive shepherd who expects fidelity.

I think that's just plain amazing. I don't understand how people possess such ability to compose music that fits like a glove over a hand -- how a simple tune can first communicate love and longing, then switch so effortlessly to mocking laughter. Music is not a language I speak, but it is a language I understand to some extent. I am left in awe at such offhand displays of genius.

The song itself doesn't express a particularly Latter-day-Saintesque sentiment about love and commitment, of course. It seems to subscribe more to the "Woman is fickle" point of view. But it does make for a pretty aria.