# The relationship between composer and librettist(s). How does that work



## FrankE (Jan 13, 2021)

I was just wondering the logistics of the creation of an opera with different composer and librettist(s).

What are the ways in which an opera musical composer and their librettist work together?
Assuming the text isn't straight out of a book do they work together in person over a long period of time?
Does the composer compose for a libretto they receive or does the librettist write the text for a score near completion?


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

All of the above. 

Probably, the most typical is, that they work together for the extended period of time. I love the example of Bellini and Romani, who tended to work at the same desk, or through correspondence, and they also became friends. The friendship was temporarily broken but resumed again, which makes the story all the more moving for me.

However, there was a time, when finished librettos were offered to the composers. I think the libretto of Nabucco was offered to Verdi in the finished form. Sometimes the composers picked from the pool of circulating finished ones, which occassionally resulted in sibling-like operas using the same libretti. 

Writing a text to a completely finished score is unusual, I don't know an example which is exactly like that, but, I know about the instances of recycling. Bellini wrote an opera Zaira, which was a fiasco. So he moved most of the music, 9 numbers, to I Capuleti e i Montecchi, a very different plot. His librettist had to rewrite stuff. Also, Rossini wrote an opera for the coronation of the French king, Il Viaggio a Reims. He thought it would not be used again and forgotten, so he moved a lot of the music to Le Comte Ory. Note that rewriting libretti to bel canto operas was comparatively easy, because they had strict conventions about the structure of the operatic verses.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

I should correct myself on one technicality. When Bellini moved the music of Zaira to a new opera, he was using an existing libretto (by Romani) about Romeo and Juliette, which was previously used by at least 2 other composers. The conventions about the structure of operatic verse made it doable. But, at the same time, this libretto was modified, to give audience the feel of something new. So we have sibling operas, which have some identical arias, text-wise, but differing plots. Tebaldo is killed in one version (opera by Vaccai), but survives in Bellini's. Giulietta has a chat with her parents before she dies in Vaccai's version, but not in Bellini's. Her mother does or doesn't exist :-D

On the top of this, Bellini's opera was such a success, that Vaccai made a new version of his version and added one aria from Bellini (text-wise) to his own.

On the top of the top of this, certain primadonna, Maria Malibran, liked better the finale from Vaccai, so she just took liberties and performed Bellini's opera with the part from Vaccai's opera implanted into it ! 

Even Riccordi printed it like this and people almost forgot what it is supposed to be like. Until another primadona took her chances and performed Bellini's opera complete and without any implant :-D


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Exactly like how Wagner worked


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> Exactly like how Wagner worked


For people who hope to understand this subject better, a response like this, which I presume is supposed to be found amusing by someone besides you, is the opposite of helpful.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

hammeredklavier said:


> Exactly like how Wagner worked


Huh ?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BBSVK said:


> Huh ?


Was "huh" inspired by the falsity of the sentence fragment, by the construction "like how," by the absence of punctuation, or by... well, by everything?

In any case, your comment can't be beat for conciseness.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> Was "huh" inspired by the falsity of the sentence fragment, by the construction "like how," by the absence of punctuation, or by... well, by everything?
> 
> In any case, your comment can't be beat for conciseness.


I am not a native speaker, so I resort to imitating literary sources without understanding all the layers and the nuances . It usually works and impresses people. Occassionally, though, disasters happen, as, for instance, when I once wrote "Duh" in a different forum


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

I’ve spoken to a few composer colleagues about this, and it does vary from person to person. There’s typically a conversation at the start, and usually the composer starts work after some of the libretto is done. I can think of a couple of people I’ve spoken to, who wait until the libretto is fully finished before they begins working.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

BBSVK said:


> I am not a native speaker, so I resort to imitating literary sources without understanding all the layers and the nuances . It usually works and impresses people. Occassionally, though, disasters happen, as, for instance, when I once wrote "Duh" in a different forum


Once upon a time I looked for a word "feck" in a dictionary after reading some posts.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

ColdGenius said:


> Once upon a time I looked for a word "feck" in a dictionary after reading some posts.


feck
exclamation INFORMAL•IRISH
used to express annoyance, frustration, impatience, or surprise.

huh
exclamation
used to express scorn, anger, or surprise.
"‘Huh,’ she snorted, ‘Over my dead body!’"
used in questions to invite agreement or further comment.
"pretty devastating, huh?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, then, I was expressing surprise and inviting a further comment 

I know Wagner wrote his own librettos. (Was it always the case) ?
The comment appeared 1 hour after my lenthy response, which ended with the description of musical recycling, and very shortly after another comment which ended by the descriptions of "implants".
Did he mean, Wagner did some recycling and implanting ? Because I know, he did the latter - he wrote his own double aria for Oroveso as an insertion for Norma  . I doubt he wrote his own text for this insert aria, because it is in Italian.
Or did he mean to say, the ways of Wagner were superior and this is how it should be done all the time ?

Edit: Or that I forgot about the examples of composers writing their own libretti ? I didn't. The question was not about that.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Is there an opera, where the complete score appeared first and the libretto was written afterwards ? There should be a few like that.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

BBSVK said:


> feck
> exclamation INFORMAL•IRISH
> used to express annoyance, frustration, impatience, or surprise.
> 
> ...


Your dictionary was better. 
I felt intrigued, like Anaís Nin after a conversation with Henry Miller.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

BBSVK said:


> Is there an opera, where the complete score appeared first and the libretto was written afterwards ? There should be a few like that.


Pasticci are a bit like that. All the music existed before with different texts and someone wrote new ones.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BBSVK said:


> I know Wagner wrote his own librettos. (Was it always the case) ?


Yes, Wagner always wrote his own libretti, which he called "poems." He grew up around the theater - his stepfather was an actor - and wrote plays before he considered becoming a composer. In one youthful effort, I gather, he killed off all the characters and had to bring some of them back as ghosts in order to have an ending for the story. Clearly he never lost his overactive imagination, unlike most of us.

I don't know who wrote the text for the aria he composed for Oroveso in _Norma. _He may have written German words and had someone translate it.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

In re-reading the Verdi-Boito Correspondence (possibly my favorite of all opera books), it seems that Verdi wrote the music after which Boito would send him words and they would discuss together how they would fit in with the music.
Carelessly perusing other collaborators, especially those in Broadway musicals,(ex. Comden/Green, Bernstein and Sondheim, and Lerner and Lowe) I think that it is a mixed bag as to who writes the lyrics first followed by the music.
An interesting case is that of Rodgers and Hammerstein -- who wrote the lyrics followed by music by Rodgers. Conversely, we also interestingly note that the very opposite is true with the Rodgers and Hart collaboration where Lorenz Hart wrote the lyrics second, after Rodgers' music (a la Verdi-Boito) so one never knows for sure.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

nina foresti said:


> In re-reading the Verdi-Boito Correspondence (possibly my favorite of all opera books), it seems that Verdi wrote the music after which Boito would send him words and they would discuss together how they would fit in with the music.


I'd like to see some citations about this. I don't doubt that Verdi had plenty of musical ideas before he had dialogue in front of him, but I don't believe that any composer can create a complex vocal/orchestral score without words to set. Boito's libretti for _Otello_ and _Falstaff_ are considered masterful, and Verdi's music illuminates words too perfectly to have been composed before he ever saw them. I imagine a constant exchange of ideas between the two men.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

FrankE said:


> I was just wondering the logistics of the creation of an opera with different composer and librettist(s).
> 
> What are the ways in which an opera musical composer and their librettist work together?
> Assuming the text isn't straight out of a book do they work together in person over a long period of time?
> Does the composer compose for a libretto they receive or does the librettist write the text for a score near completion?


I’ve got somewhere a book of the Strauss / Hofmannsthal correspondance, well worth getting if you’re interested in this subject.


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## FrankE (Jan 13, 2021)

Mandryka said:


> I’ve got somewhere a book of the Strauss / Hofmannsthal correspondence, well worth getting if you’re interested in this subject.


It was just one of those silly things I got curious about after hearing a couple of composers in the pub talking about their works and getting libretti together before the lockdowns.

I figured in the Baroque period collabs would mostly be local but as postal services, travel and the transportation and communications industries developed collabs could have taken place with more distant people up to current day Internet.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I'd like to see some citations about this. I don't doubt that Verdi had plenty of musical ideas before he had dialogue in front of him, but I don't believe that any composer can create a complex vocal/orchestral score without words to set. Boito's libretti for _Otello_ and _Falstaff_ are considered masterful, and Verdi's music illuminates words too perfectly to have been composed before he ever saw them. I imagine a constant exchange of ideas between the two men.


Best I can comply is pages 74,75,76 in a letter from Boito in Milan, after 26 April,1884 and response from Verdi from Genoa, May1884 (the book is a seriously fine read)
This is not to say that much was not discussed before the above letters and after, so it is entirely possible that they could have switched spaces.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> I'd like to see some citations about this. I don't doubt that Verdi had plenty of musical ideas before he had dialogue in front of him, but I don't believe that any composer can create a complex vocal/orchestral score without words to set. Boito's libretti for _Otello_ and _Falstaff_ are considered masterful, and Verdi's music illuminates words too perfectly to have been composed before he ever saw them. I imagine a constant exchange of ideas between the two men.


I have this, but it does not answer your question about the finishing touches which make the words fit







so well.
(It is from Divas and Scholars by Gossett)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BBSVK said:


> I have this, but it does not answer your question about the finishing touches which make the words fit
> View attachment 176767
> so well.
> (It is from Divas and Scholars by Gossett)


Verdi "laid out in abbreviated form the basic structure of the first act before receiving any poetry." In other words, he outlined the events of one act of the opera, after which he was sent the libretto. That's no surprise, since he was basing the opera on a well-known literary work. But the question at hand is how much of the _music_ was composed before he had the libretto. The last incomplete sentence seems to say that "we" don't know, beyond the fact that he had some musical motifs in mind.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> Verdi "laid out in abbreviated form the basic structure of the first act before receiving any poetry." In other words, he outlined the events of one act of the opera, after which he was sent the libretto. That's no surprise, since he was basing the opera on a well-known literary work. But the question at hand is how much of the _music_ was composed before he had the libretto. The last incomplete sentence seems to say that "we" don't know, beyond the fact that he had some musical motifs in mind.


From the context it is more clear that it was the music he composed in advance, not just the text drafts of the plot structure. I cut out too much in my example. I will post 4 pages in full now.

(Klick on the photos and they will get bigger. )

Edit: Reading again what you wrote, maybe I am not answering your question again. Anyway, read it if you are in a mood and see if it is helpful or not.
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Edit 2, for others: Apparently, a simple click on the following photo-thumbnails will not visualise the photos of the pages as a whole. If you are at the PC, click into the photo with the right button of your mouse and choose the option "view as a separate tab" or something similar. If you are viewing on your cellphone, open the thumbnail and then click a small grid like icon on the bottom right.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)




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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)




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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)




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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)




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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

This book focuses on bel canto operas and I bought it because of Norma, obviously  . Boito is mentioned only once, as someone who fulfilled Verdi's intuitive wishes to be liberated from the structures established in bel canto. Maybe Gossett did not know about their correspondence.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

FrankE said:


> I figured in the Baroque period collabs would mostly be local but as postal services, travel and the transportation and communications industries developed collabs could have taken place with more distant people up to current day Internet.


In the baroque era, there were lots of "standard" libretti by Metastasio and others that were then adapted by local poets/writers. Librettist was not necessarily a full time job. One of Handel's collaborators for texts/libretti Nicolas Haym? also played cello (?I think) in the opera orchestra.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

BBSVK said:


> From the context it is more clear that it was the music he composed in advance, not just the text drafts of the plot structure. I cut out too much in my example. I will post 4 pages in full now.


That's really quite interesting. A lot of the composers I know nowadays are really thinking of the text quite extensively when they set out to write something that's got text – how to highlight certain aspects of it, whether or not they want it to be intelligible, maybe they want to go against some aspect of it for an ironic effect... it depends. I wonder if there's any situation where the composer comes up with music first and then sends that to a librettist – again, most composers I've spoken to about this want to have some text first before they start working.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

composingmusic said:


> I wonder if there's any situation where the composer comes up with music first and then sends that to a librettist


See this as well - about Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi:


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

BBSVK said:


> See this as well - about Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi:


That's quite interesting – and I think it's really interesting how different this is from people I've spoken to in my own circles! Thanks for sending this.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

composingmusic said:


> That's quite interesting – and I think it's really interesting how different this is from people I've spoken to in my own circles! Thanks for sending this.


I remembered one more example. In fact, it is something, that could theoretically happen to your friends one day, who knows ?

Prokofiev was asked to write an accidental music to be played with the poetry of Pushkin, Eugen Onegin. Then the important people stopped the project, so he moved the music to his new opera, War and Peace.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

BBSVK said:


> I remembered one more example. In fact, it is something, that could theoretically happen to your friends one day, who knows ?
> 
> Prokofiev was asked to write an accidental music to be played with the poetry of Pushkin, Eugen Onegin. Then the important people stopped the project, so he moved the music to his new opera, War and Peace.


Oh yes, working with a pre-existing text is not a new thing. A number of composers start with a pre-existing text in some capacity: some still prefer to work with a librettist in creating a suitable libretto, others do it themselves. Having music that’s moved over from one project to another is quite interesting though, and it does make sense from a practical point of view. I don’t think my friends have done this specific thing though, purely because they haven’t wound up in this particular situation!

This isn’t quite the same thing, but I know people sometimes write shorter pieces as studies for longer works – Wagner does this with his Wesendonck Lieder and Tristan und Isolde, for instance.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

composingmusic said:


> Oh yes, working with a pre-existing text is not a new thing. A number of composers start with a pre-existing text in some capacity: some still prefer to work with a librettist


Just to clarify. What Prokofiev was initially asked to do, was to write a purely instrumental music, which would be played as a background to an actor (not singer) reciting Eugene Onegin. After this was abandoned, he used these melodies for his new opera War and Peace. (Maybe Tatiana Larina and Natasha Rostovova struck him as two young girls with similar personalities.)


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Yes, Wagner always wrote his own libretti, which he called "poems." He grew up around the theater - his stepfather was an actor - and wrote plays before he considered becoming a composer. In one youthful effort, I gather, he killed off all the characters and had to bring some of them back as ghosts in order to have an ending for the story. Clearly he never lost his overactive imagination, unlike most of us.
> 
> I don't know who wrote the text for the aria he composed for Oroveso in _Norma. _He may have written German words and had someone translate it.


Yes, this is exactly what happened, he wrote the German words and got them translated to Italian.

He intended to use his new aria in a performance in Paris, but it was impossible as the renowned bass Luigi Lablache refused to perform it due to the fame that the opera had already acquired. 

On the subject of this thread, the relation of Bellini and Romani was very close from the beginning of Bellini's career. However, they had a big fight during the creation of "Beatrice di Tenda", and that's the reason why the libretto of "I puritani" was written by Carlo Pepoli, clearly not to Romani's standard of quality.

It's fascinating to look at several composer-writer associations in Opera. Just to name a few: Puccini with Illica&Giacosa, Strauss with Hofmannsthal, Verdi with Boito, Britten with Piper, Mozart with Da Ponte,...


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

schigolch said:


> On the subject of this thread, the relation of Bellini and Romani was very close from the beginning of Bellini's career. However, they had a big fight during the creation of "Beatrice di Tenda", and that's the reason why the libretto of "I puritani" was written by Carlo Pepoli, clearly not to Romani's standard of quality.


Yes, but they made peace and were going to collaborate again ! Only Bellini died so they did not make it. 
If people make friends again after one calling police after another, that's really something !

I Puritani is the only one of Bellini's operas I know and still feel cold about, and it is probably about Romani not being part of it. I like to believe, he would tell him to abandon this stupid plot, or make it somehow more relatable to the feelings of the listener.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

BBSVK said:


> Just to clarify. What Prokofiev was initially asked to do, was to write a purely instrumental music, which would be played as a background to an actor (not singer) reciting Eugene Onegin. After this was abandoned, he used these melodies for his new opera War and Peace. (Maybe Tatiana Larina and Natasha Rostovova struck him as two young girls with similar personalities.)


Indeed, and that's why you were pointing this out as an example of the melody coming first! It would be quite interesting to make a study comparing the original incidental music and the opera...


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

schigolch said:


> It's fascinating to look at several composer-writer associations in Opera. Just to name a few: Puccini with Illica&Giacosa, Strauss with Hofmannsthal, Verdi with Boito, Britten with Piper, Mozart with Da Ponte,...


Agreed, and this continues to today! I can think of a few more contemporary ones: John Adams and Alice Goodman, Harrison Birtwistle and David Hersant, George Benjamin and Martin Crimp. There are also some who've worked with several different authors on texts: Hans Abrahamsen, Thomas Adès, Kaija Saariaho, Péter Eötvös, and Poul Ruders (though he's worked with Paul Bentley for a couple of operas). Yet others, such as Salvatore Sciarrino, or Olivier Messiaen, write (or wrote) their own libretto.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

composingmusic said:


> Indeed, and that's why you were pointing this out as an example of the melody coming first! It would be quite interesting to make a study comparing the original incidental music and the opera...


It's on youtube somewhere. Even if this Onegin was abandoned before, people resurected it later. I have heard it, both Russian and English version of the poetry, with the music in the background. The opera has been recorded as well, of course. I have heard it at one opera lecture. 
Edit: As for scholarly comparison, I don't know if that has been done.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BBSVK said:


> From the context it is more clear that it was the music he composed in advance, not just the text drafts of the plot structure. I cut out too much in my example. I will post 4 pages in full now.
> 
> (Klick on the photos and they will get bigger. )
> 
> Edit: Reading again what you wrote, maybe I am not answering your question again. Anyway, read it if you are in a mood and see if it is helpful or not.


Thanks, but there are no numbers on these pages and its impossible to figure out a sequence for them. What I do see that's relevant here is a statement that Verdi's requests for changes in the libretto were made mainly during the "sketching process." This should put to rest any notion that he composed the music of an opera before having a librettist set words to it, a notion which I'm surprised anyone would entertain.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Thanks, but there are no numbers on these pages and its impossible to figure out a sequence for them. What I do see that's relevant here is a statement that Verdi's requests for changes in the libretto were made mainly during the "sketching process." This should put to rest any notion that he composed the music of an opera before having a librettist set words to it, a notion which I'm surprised anyone would entertain.


Woody: (do you hate that name??) If I gave you the impression that the entire music was completed by Verdi first and then came the lyrics, then I have sincerely missed my mark of communication. I never meant to say that nor would I even have believed it myself. Clearly, there was much discussion first between them for, not just months, but almost years about Otello. It was a team of collaboration much more than there was a clear completion of music first over lyrics.
However, certain passages, as the one I noted, was done by Verdi after which Boito, in attempting to fit it in sent him the Iago's Credo which indicated that Verdi much preferred the changes and felt they would fit much better with the music. (For all I know, he was simply remarking about music in his head and not yet written!)
Hope this helps.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> Thanks, but there are no numbers on these pages and its impossible to figure out a sequence for them. What I do see that's relevant here is a statement that Verdi's requests for changes in the libretto were made mainly during the "sketching process." This should put to rest any notion that he composed the music of an opera before having a librettist set words to it, a notion which I'm surprised anyone would entertain.


Pages are in a consecutive order but you probably saw then truncated - sorry, I didn't know TC will cut the bottom of the photos. I could tell you how to view them properly, but you have an idea of the content already, and this is more relevant:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BBSVK said:


> Pages are in a consecutive order but you probably saw then truncated - sorry, I didn't know TC will cut the bottom of the photos. I could tell you how to view them properly, but you have an idea of the content already, and this is more relevant:
> 
> View attachment 176799


As a sort of ephemeral composer - my occupation was to accompany ballet classes, and my approach was to improvise just about everything - I can say that the brains of composers are inventing tunes constantly to the point of driving them batty, and I'd guess that opera composers are always speculating on how those melodic fragments might be used in operas. Wagner, who composed his music and libretti simultaneously, talked a fair bit about the process, and we know that many of his musical motifs were inspired by dramatic and poetic ideas preceding the actual composition of the operas. The famous opening bars of _Tristan _were one such motif, and Wagner describes it in a letter in philosophical, vaguely Shopenhaurean/Buddhistic terms that have, at least for us, no obvious connection to the glance that passed between the lovers as described by Isolde to that music. I think we can assume that in this way a great deal of operatic music is composed before composers see libretti.


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