Opera

Bust this: it's pentatonic. It has voices. Two voices right now: the drunk major riding with his cavalry brigade in Changkangshan, rolling grasslands lolling past, hiccupping soldiers, tossing jokes across horses, mockery of the peasants in the muud ruts by the side of the road. his tune is urgent. Staccato. All black keys; tonic is F#; trines all over the place. Bu-Dum rhytming. Ten minutes development, and bring it back suddenly. Hold the tonic until the audience is squirming in their chairs. I'll call it "The Stallions of Changkangshan". Or, better yet, cross fade ino the song of the maiden. And what does the song contain: soft, supple, loght touch, liberal use of pedal: major and minor thirds in harmony, but the harmony develops over on top of the introduction of the melody: sweet, lilting. She is drying sheets on a hilltop, singing old folk songs. There is a pot in the kitchen she is preparing for her old, sick father. Song changes to melancholy. Occassional minor seventh thrown in for effect; her family is poor, but they get along. And thne the thunder comes, emerging slowly, pianissimo in the bass, at first shadowing the melody, then deviating from it. Eventually, the melody is stopped, startled, preoccupied, transposed an octave down. Legato gives way to marcato, then staccato. Lots of fifths, paralleling up and down. New progression. Suhc is "Billowing Sheet on Mountaintop". The maiden makes her way homem, but from a distance she is espied by a dashing cavalry officer coming up the road. She checks her modesty, for the hills of the village are the domain of the women, where clothes may flap in the breeze of the highlands, where cherries and blueberries are eaten injudiciously, juice dripping down chins, where dirty jokes are told and China-doll expressions are sloughed off, heavy wooden masks thrown to the ground, straps limp, the wicked spirit within now powerless. The major hoots and hollers, his blood boils in lust. Before he has seen the face of the maiden he has guessed her countenance. He has already focused all his energy to planning how to unstrap her bodice. Little does he know that at precisely that time, the maiden was checking her bodice and gave out an involuntary shudder. He sings: a brusque, militaristic number. "The Gallantry of the Galloper". Many triplets, many of which are unearned. Little melodic development. Quck, four-measure phrases. New instrumentation: brutal electrical organ subtle in the higher register. Booming male voice, the picture of health, haleness, unaddressed lust for weeks on end...

Consider: "It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him."