# In a "Capriccio affair", which side would these great composers take...



## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

...Word first, Music first, or left unsettled as the Countess?

"Great composers" are:

Monteverdi, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner

Handel, Gluck, Weber, Berlioz, the bel canto trio, Massenet, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Puccini, Janacek, Strauss, Debussy, Berg, Britten, Prokofiev, Shostakovich.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Well in the case of Wagner I guess it's the answer to how do you confuse Richard Wagner.

Bellini and Rossini reused some of their music to new words and so the music literally did come first.

Verdi is an interesting one, especially as he never heard 'Les Vepres Sicilienne' as it is performed today.

N.


----------



## clara s (Jan 6, 2014)

Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, music into music, yes, definitely

countess Madeleine would agree, I suppose

Berlioz or Debussy could be more into "word first"


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Mozart in his mature operas is definitely THE exponent of setting words to music and music to words. An unsurpassed osmosis of words and music. Of course he had the genius da Ponte to produce probably the greatest librettos ever.
Verdi comes a close second,reaching a zenith in Falstaff - and another librettic genius in Boito.

And of course, not forgetting that other genius (though not in opera) of setting words to music in song - Schubert.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Wagner started out thinking he was a "words first" guy in his "Opera and Drama" essay, writing at length about how opera had degenerated into vocal display and how he was going to cut out all that extraneous music for its own sake and make music illuminate the libretto word by word with the help of leitmotivs. The _Ring_ was going to be his demonstration piece, but as he went along the temptation of extended musical expression became too much to resist. While composing _Die Walkure_ he read Schopenhauer's view that music was the most powerful of the arts; it reinforced his sense that his highest calling was that of composer, and that music was opera's primary medium of expression. He had to break off _Siegfried_ and write _Tristan_, mainly, I think, to let music pour out of him unconstrained, and when he returned to the _Ring_ his musical idiom had become notably richer and the purely musical passages in his operas more extended and less wedded to the text.


----------



## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Mozart in his mature operas is definitely THE exponent of setting words to music and music to words. An unsurpassed osmosis of words and music. Of course he had the genius da Ponte to produce probably the greatest librettos ever.
> Verdi comes a close second,reaching a zenith in Falstaff - and another librettic genius in Boito.


Another treasured osmosis is Ponchielli's La Gioconda. Again, libretto my Boito.


----------

