Music vs. Theater

I wrote one more #operaplot tweet today. It’s for Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. But as a rap. I thought that would be particularly appropriate, since the whole show is about Oedipus’s hubris, which seems to fit right into the rap genre.  So this is what I came up with…

Oedipus Rex

Ego Rex,yo! With my mad flow. Tiresias be hatin on my bling tho. Cuz I’m the king, aint no other. Is my ho fly? Word to my mother! #operaplot

See how I snuck the latin in there?

The problem is, it wouldn’t leave my head. I kept on singing the damn thing all day. So tonight, instead of promoting my string quartet, or working on my opera, (or packing for my trip to LA tomorrow), I spent my precious few free hours after rehearsal trying to produce a passable hip hop track.

So, with my sincere apologies, I will subject you to the results.

[audio:https://musicvstheater.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/OedipusJam-Rendered.mp3|titles=OedipusJam Rendered]

ed: I think I mispronounced the “ego” at the very beginning.  (Should be aego, not eego).  My latin teacher would kill me.  If I had ever taken latin.

If you’d like to read my other #operaplots, you can find them here and here.  I also made a fairly ridiculous attempt to classify the many hundreds of #operaplots that others have written.

The second movement of my string quartet has been mixed and edited and the program notes have been written up.

https://musicvstheater.com/wordpress/works/string-quartet-no-1/tango-a-la-peachy/

And if you haven’t yet listened to the first movement, check it out here:

https://musicvstheater.com/wordpress/works/string-quartet-no-1/on-the-rails/

The third movement is mostly finished and will be released very soon.

I’m happy to announce that the first movement of my string quartet is now available for free download. I’ve also written up extensive notes for that movement if you’d like to know more about the composition and where it came from. (Of course you’d like to know more. Why else would you be reading this blog?)

I hope you’ll take the time to listen and follow along with the program notes. I spend hundreds of hours composing this piece (not including the time writing up the essays for each movement) and I’m very proud of it. It’s all time wasted if no one gets to hear it. So I’m counting on you here.

The other two movements will be released in the weeks to follow (I’m editing as fast as I can), so be sure to check back.

Sometimes I don’t have a great sense of how much time things really take.  I figure if it’s conceptually easy, it shouldn’t take much time to do.  I neglect to schedule the actual overhead involved with the mechanical tasks. Sometimes this gets me in trouble.  I’m a little bit worried that this might be one of those times.

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