Thanks for this information, it is quite helpful. I was not
aware of the Pound Opera, presumably, since it is
unpublished, it is also unperformed.  Is it ready for
performance, or unifinished? Finally, did he build it around
the sestina?
  I will certainly check your article and the texts you've
mentioned (these same for others who have posted concerning
this point)
 
As to minimalism, as a composer, when you work with verse,
you find that the more complex a meter is the less  room  you
have for melodic variation--in that sense, minimalism is the
most prudent choice--otherwise you end up with CATS--
 
The Balkan epic singers  use brief, repeating melodies that
can cover as little as a fourth--and this, as much as the
current wave of minimalist thought, has guided me.
 
I am currently experimenting with  some parts of  an English
translation of Commedia,and, if any of you are skeptical, I
invite you to pick up your portable Dante and just try and
sing a few lines.
 
Ted
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
"s.j. adams" wrote:
 
 >
 > I've done quite a bit of work in this area, so I can point
you in a few
 > directions.  EP's work on Arnaut Daniel was early.  He did
find the two
 > extant Daniel melodies (though they had previously been
published by a
 > scholar named Restori), and he used them in a collection
of nine
 > troubadour songs, composed by his friend Walter Rummel,
called _Hesternae
 > Rosae_.
 >
 
 > Pound's ideas about music for poetry are scattered.  The
obvious place to
 > begin is _EP and Music_, edited by Murray Schafer, and
there is an
 > important essay on music in the "I Gather the Limbs of
Osiris" sequence.
 > There are also the recordings of EP's opera _Testament of
Francois Villon_
 > (the score is unpublished--MS at the Beinecke at Yale).
 >
 
 > It's interesting that you mention minimalism, since EP's
ideas and the
 > music he composed are certainly minimalist.  In a
different way, George
 > Antheil's experimental music of the 1920s stands in the
historical line
 > that points to the so-called minimalism of recent years
(Glass, Adams,
 > Riley, Part et al).  You may be interested in my recent
article on the
 > music of Pound's operas in _Literary Modernism and the
Occult Tradition_,
 > edited by Leon Surette & Demetres Tryphonopoulos.
 >
 >                                 Stephen Adams
 >                                 Department of English
 >                                 University of Western
Ontario
 >                                 London, Canada  N6A-3K7
 >                                 [log in to unmask]
 >
 >
 
 
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