Michael Daniel

Core C – NYT, 1/19/2007 – 1/19/2007 pg. B23, “Four Singers, Playing Cards, Breaking
the Rules of Opera”
1/23/2006

Robert Ashley is a composer/playwright who breaks the rules of opera. His

opera, titled “Concrete”, has very little stage action and monotone, simple vocals. The

opera consists of four actors sitting around playing cards with a huge deck. They tell

each other stories about friendships, card sharks, accidents and cocaine deals. They sing

in a style called Sprechstimme, which is more tuneful than speech but it is less tuneful

than a song and it preserves speech rhythms. He performs his own music live thru

electronic equipment. The music is somewhat improvised and it is full of strange

samples from sci-fi films and resounding bass lines, which gives the music texture and

topography. What concrete lacks in form is made up for in narrative. The opera is more

of a literary or theatrical work than a musical work.

I would be very interested to see this opera. I have never heard of Sprechstimme,

and I have a hard time imagining it based on the description in the New York Times. I

can kind of imagine a song that is performed in the same style that Eminem raps in.

Eminem’s voice is high, which gives it the quality of being more melodic than talking,

but at the same time I wouldn’t call his vocals song. While being somewhat melodic,

Eminem enunciates clearly and generally keeps the rhythm of normal speech.

I would be interested in seeing this opera for the electronic component as well. I

have heard quite a lot of electronic music but it is rare for it to expand a song’s, “texture

and topography”. Most of the time electronic music is boring and uninspired because

artists rely too much on the machine to write the song for them.