>> So I fit the stereotype, I'm Italian, I write operas, I attend operas.

So I'm the perfect stereotype to give this lecture today.

Though what you're going to hear, so if you're expecting me to talk about opera,

you name it, you will be a little bit disappointed.

I wanna give you a different angle to what opera is.

In fact, the title of this speech is Why the Opera Changed the Course of Music?

So let's focus on that.

So the opera is not just these things that we enjoyed, sorry, I see so

many friends, and to people that have been in my classes and I've been teaching so

it's great to see them.

I would like to take this approach.

This is like a composition class.

You are composers.

You're very good composers.

You know everything about music theory.

You're an expert musician.

You study music.

So, we're gonna have a conversation among colleagues.

And I'm gonna try to make in a way, that what I say,

it's understood by everyone, okay?

So, I'm going to go into the details of music, into the, if you like,

the grammar of music, and see how music works and

how and why music changed because of the opera.

What we listen today, most of the music that we're listening to today

is the way it is because someone in the past thought,

well we should write music in this way because it's gonna serve this purpose.

The purpose of the opera.

That's what we're gonna talk about.

And then at the end, I was going to play some music, but

Sonya here, who's sitting right here in front, she approached me.

She is a singer, she is an alum, contacted me and said,

why instead of playing music, we don't get to perform it live?

Sonya and I will be performing a couple of

areas from the standard repertoire of the opera.

Okay?

So the first concept we need to understand that music is a language, all right?

Nothing else but a language.

So, like a language,

there are rules that in the course of history that been changed.

Music is a language that develops through time.

It moves through times.

This is a concept that it needs to be clear since the beginning.

If we go back into the ancient Greeks, they divided the arts into two categories.

The categories of the arts that moved that develop into space,

like architecture, paintings, and sculpture.

So a sculpture needs space.

It's this big, all right, or it's this big.

A building needs space.

And then they would categorize arts that would develop in time.

Meaning, music needs time.

Music is not a meter tall.

Music, it's five minutes long.

Music develops through time.

Music has motions, and I will demonstrate that, what I mean with that.

Same we can say with words, with poetry.

And also the same has to do with dancing.

So all these arts, they move through time.

What do I mean?

Let's say, if I say, yesterday, at 7:30.

What?

All right, so I create that motion.

I create something that needs, in time, needs to move ahead.

Yesterday at 7:30 something, we need something.

In music it happens exactly the same.

if I play, let's say this.

[MUSIC]

Can I stop there? No.

[LAUGH] No.

[MUSIC]

If I stop there everyone will be disappointed.

All right.

So we need.

[MUSIC]

[NOISE] It has to resolve.

We say, this music is like, yesterday at 7:30, something.

That chord, it creates some tensions, and

that tension needs to be released into something else.

That's what I mean when I say music moves through time.

Music is nothing but tensions that is created by melodies,

it's created by rhythm, it's created by chord progressions,

and when you have tensions it moves the music forward.

And why?

What happened?

Why?

What happens inside the music world,

into the grammar of music that makes that motions?

Music, yet again, is about motion.

What happens?

Let's say there's two way to see music.

If I play something like this.

[MUSIC]

So what we hear is mostly block of sounds, right?

I hear the sound, and this block of sound.

In music, we call them chords.

So this is in music, the chord progression is what makes the music move forward.

But

if I play something,

let's say, something like this.

[MUSIC]

You know, this is different, right?

How it's different?

It's not a block of sound and another block of sound.

It's more a melody interacting with another melody.

Here I have one melody here.

[MUSIC]

And then I added one more.

[MUSIC]

And then and I added one more.

[MUSIC]

Now I have four.

[MUSIC]

And so forth. So basically what's happening in this

second piece that I'm playing, I have this melody here and

there's another melody and there is another one and then it's another one.

So what happens the music develops, creates that motion

because there is the interaction of all these different melodies.

So, in some historical periods that's what governed the music,

it was the interaction of melody and composers were very concerned.

I'd say this melody goes up and then goes down and

the other one how does it interact?

It follows the same pattern, they move or we say, in parallel motions, or

they might say, this is moving, this one is not.

Or they're going in opposite direction.

>> And do you say, what do I care about that?

>> Okay.

>> Well, actually that was something very important.

This is what we call in music, if somebody,

if there were some musicians here.

We call it counterpoint.

How the musical lines are interacting.

So the counterpoint is not a disease.

>> [LAUGH] >> We'll say, what'd you have?

I have a little bit of counterpoint, I don't feel good.

The counterpoint is something that studies how two different

musical lines are interacting.

And basically, what it says, if this is moving up and that one is moving down,

what happens?

Well, this is what happens.

If this is moving and the other one stays in the same notes, what happen?

Well, this is what happens.

In composition for at the conservatory, we study counterpoints for years.

It's something actually very complicated.

So how is the interactions?

So, and I'll take questions at the end.

So how are these things interacting?

What makes it the music to move forward, to go to the next level, to have

that beautiful sense of motion that we all enjoy while we listen to music?

It's two things.

This block of sound or the interactions of melodies.

So let's have this example.

If I say, I have one melody.

So this melody goes like that.

[SOUND] Beautiful.

Then this is gonna be my melody, I'm gonna write another one here.

So this is my second melody.

[SOUND] If I put them together, this is what happens.

[SOUND] We're gonna add one more, because we're good composers,

we can handle at least three.

>> [LAUGH] >> So I'm gonna write it here,

I'm gonna do something like this.

Now we have three lines, one, two and three.

So the last one, it goes like this.

[SOUND] So three melodies.

If I play them all together, you'll see they generate.

[MUSIC]

So the first one was.

[MUSIC]

The second.

[MUSIC]

And the last one.

[MUSIC]

Now this three melodies, if I look at them say,

how is this melody moving?

It goes up and then it kinda jumps up.

This is moving more like that.

This is definitely jumps down and then it moves down.

So composers were very concerned on how these things were interacting,

but there is one other way to look at it.

Let's say, so now, we're looking in that direction.

So now, we're gonna see what happens here in a more vertical sense.

We'll say, what happened?

This is a block of sound.

The block of sound is this one [SOUND] and

that is a music we call a chord.

So if you know something about music, you would call this is a C major.

So here's a C major chord or you can call it, it's a block of sound.

It's a combination of three sounds.

Now, what happens here?

There is another chord.

We call it that half major.

And what happens here?

We go back to the initial chord slightly different.

We're not gonna go into the details of that chord being in first inversion.

First inversion, we don't have to talk about that.

So now I see, we have three blocks of sound or three melodies, which is?

Which is the one?

What's the most important?

So you're the composer, where would you start?

By saying, I have three chords and

these three chords are generating three melodies or you can say, no, no, no, no.

I had three melodies that have generated three different chords.

>> [LAUGH] >> The chords.

So some music is generated by chord progressions,

others are generated by this interaction of melodies.

And sometimes, it's a combination of both.

And that interaction of how chord they progress and the motion of the melodies,

one going up and other going down.

All of that, it creates these motions that we're looking for.

Let's say in the 15th century, composers.

Oh, it's clear that lets say, if I'm adding one more melody to three

to make it four, thing they get more complicated.

Every time we're adding something,

the problems are solving it becomes like solving a problem.

The problems of interacting this melody, they multiply.

So if I have four voices, a counterpoint with two voices is relatively simple.

Three, gets complicated.

Four, it's hard.

More than that, things get very hard.

In the 15th century, composers were so good and making these lines to interact.

That they were capable of writing songs that had 4 voices,

8 voices, 16 voices, 30 voices.

We are example of polyphony.

That polyphony means more than 1 line of 40,

42 different lines interacting.

Imagine what probably today would need a very good advance computer

to make sure this line are interacting in a way that creates motion and

at the same time is sort of follow the rules of counterpoint.

So one thing that is very important to remember and

I'll get to the opera, eventually.

I warned you before.

One thing that it's important to understand is that all these lines of

the music, working together, they were all equal.

It's not like the top line is more important.

It's not like the middle line is less important or the bottom line is more or

less important.

Have you ever sung in a choir?

Raise your hand.

Oh, most of you.

Good.

So you know that I'm a soprano, I get the good line.

[LAUGH] >> I'm an alto.

Oh, alto lines are so boring and reflects on the people.

>> [LAUGH] >> They are boring, as well in their life.