Lyric Opera of KC ~ John Brown Educational Resources: Lesson 14

Lesson 14: Becoming a Composer, Creating an Opera

Background

On one level, creating an opera - choosing and developing a story and writing words and music, - is an extremely difficult task requiring varied skills and craft. At the same time, the basic features of creating an opera are the same ones that go into any creative endeavor.

This lesson stimulates students to conceptualize how an opera such as John Brown is composed and what kinds of experiences and skills are needed to do it. Information shared by the opera's composer, Kirke Mechem, is included in the lesson, offering a real-life connection both to the opera the students are seeing and to the idea of writing an opera.

Lyric Opera of Kansas City has provided the audio interview from the text within this lesson online at their site. If you have access to the Web, listening to Mr. Mechem's own words will raise the interest level of your students. If you do not have access to the Web, you can use transcribed sections of the interview contained in this lesson.

Objectives

Upon completion of the lesson, students will be able to:

Recognize that creating an opera, as with other artistic creations, combines personal life experience with developing technical skills;
Identify various skill sets needed in order to create an opera.

Materials

Board or flip chart(s)
Markers
Computers with access to the Internet

Lyric Opera of Kansas City Web Site for an interview with Kirke Mechem:

Click here to listen to the Interveiw with Kirke Mechem.

Internet sites for references for the extension activity on creating an opera
Description of "How to Write an Opera": http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=20900611

Metropolitan Opera "Stories of the Opera":
http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/history/stories/

James MacMillan: Composing an Opera:
http://www.soundjunction.org/jamesmacmillancomposinganopera.aspa?NodeID=134

Richard Wagner: Opera Composer:
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96may/wagner.html

Jeffrey Brody on Composing for Longwood Opera:
http://longwoodopera.org/past/composing.html

Shulamit Ran on Writing an Opera:
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/970612/ran.shtml

Time

1 class period

Procedure

Introduce the lesson by saying it is going to be about what it takes to write an opera. Ask for a volunteer to play an imaginary composer.
Have the composer make up a name. Tell the class that they are the composer's "muses." Ask if anyone knows what a muse is. If no one shares a definition, have a student quickly look it up and read a definition. Establish that a muse, in effect, is an imaginary guide (from the ancient Greeks) who helps an artist or musician or writer create a sculpture or piece of music or other kind of work of art.
Say that the composer (student) is destined to be a great composer of operas, and it is the muses' job to help plan the composer's life to achieve this goal. What kind of a life, family, background, education, etc. will the composer need to become a composer? Ask for discussion and suggestions.
Have the "composer" write the suggestions on the board as they are made.

Possibilities may include:

Supportive parents	Good teachers	Discipline (to practice and compose)
Parents who are musicians	Musical ability	Money to go to school
Musical instruments at home	Long, strong fingers	Friends who like music
Inspiration	Ambition	Desire to be heard
Self-confidence	Good hearing	A peaceful home life
A creative home setting	Patience	A friendly neighborhood
Genius	Writing ability	Good story-telling skills
Ability to work with others	Good timing	Dramatic sense
Hearing	A musical instrument	Organizational ability
Luck

Ask for ideas about prioritizing the list. What do students think is most important? What is second? Have the muses vote or use other tactics to stimulate discussion and consensus on what the future composer will need in what order to become a composer of opera.
Tell the class that Kirke Mechem, the composer of John Brown, offers an example of how an opera composer develops and creates an opera. Say that Mr. Mechem talked recently about their class and what they would be talking about, and that his story may offer some information. First, say that when he heard they were in middle school and were going to talk about opera, he said:

Play Audio Clip 1: Mechem’s reflections on opera when he was of middle-school age

"When I was that age I hardly knew opera existed. I'll be 82 in two weeks."
An Interview with Kirke Mechem (August 6, 2007).

Students can read the interview, or selected students can read it and report to the group on how Mr. Mechem's life and composing methods correspond to the muses' expectations. Another option is to read a section at a time and compare it to the muses' recommendations. Note how the recommendations are similar to or how they differ from Mr. Mechem's story. (Highlights especially relevant to this specific lesson are bolded, but we recommend reading or listening to the entire interview whenever possible.)

A) Introduce this clip by telling students that first Mr. Mechem talks about his life as a young boy.

Play Audio Clip 2: Kirke Mechem’s youth

Question: Have you always been interested in music?

Kirke Mechem: "My earliest memory is of my mother playing the piano. She loved Chopin best of all. She also played some Gershwin and Bartok, some modern pieces. She played a lot of Impressionistic pieces by Debussy and Ravel, but played the classics mostly. In addition to Chopin she played Bach, Beethoven, and some Brahms.

"So that was the language I learned immediately, just the way you learn a spoken language. I do think music is a language, so just as you learn English by hearing it, you learn the language of music by hearing it. Whether you can write music is something else, but a lot of people can speak without being able to write much."

Question: From your early contact with music through your mother, did you jump in and become a musician?

Kirke Mechem: "No, not at all. My father was a writer and was interested in sports, and so was I, and I was good at sports. All my friends were in sports and none were in music. But I still heard music all the time.

"My parents would have to offer me a football helmet if I practiced the piano for six months, and then offer me a baseball glove if I practiced another six months. This went on until I had all the sports equipment and then I stopped.

B) In the following clip Mr. Mechem remembers his teen years.

Play Audio Clip 3: Kirke Mechem as a teenager

"When I was a teenager, my friends and I became interested in popular music. Popular music was a lot more like classical music then, especially big band music. We heard it on the radio and at dances, and I learned to play it on the piano by ear.

"In order to do this I had to learn about chords. I would buy sheet music of the pieces I had learned to play, then try to see how they were written down. I could already read music [from taking piano lesson when I was younger]. I could see how songs were arranged for the piano in a simple way. The structure was usually the same - 32 measures long, eight measures repeated and then a middle part, called a bridge, in a different key, and then it would go back to the original key again. So I said, well, I can do that, and I started writing songs. They were pretty bad, but I didn't know it. They even played some of them on the local radio station, WIBW in Topeka. I was totally self-taught at that point - high school.

C) This clip describes Mr. Mechem's adulthood as it relates to music and composing.

Play Audio Clip 4: Kirk Mechem as an adult

"Then I was drafted into the Army during World War II. Eventually, when the war was over and I was waiting for my discharge, I was transferred into Special Services in order to write songs for USO shows. I was learning all the time about harmony, and wrote many songs and a musical comedy. I wrote my own lyrics because I was trained as a writer. I had been editor of my high school paper and junior high school paper. I had actually gotten a job while I was still in school as assistant sports editor of the Topeka Daily Capital.

"The GI Bill made it possible for me to go to a big expensive school like Stanford. I majored in English but playing on the tennis team was more important at first. I was still writing songs on the sly. As a sophomore I decided to take a harmony course. In that course all the rollers seemed to fall into place - like on a slot machine everything came up cherries. It was all so easy for me. I felt that music was really for me; it turned me on. I just did what they later called "following your bliss."

"However, I had no confidence that I could become a professional musician. I was writing stories in creative writing classes. My choral director at Stanford, Harold Schmidt, advised me to go to Harvard and study with two eminent composers, Randall Thompson, a great choral composer whose niece I later married, and Walter Piston, who had written the standard harmony and counterpoint books. So I went to Harvard to get a Master's degree. When I got the degree I wanted to compose and conduct, but I realized I still had a lot to learn. I looked for a job that wouldn't be full time. I had never learned to play the piano very well or to hear a score in my head without playing it. I felt that I could if I practiced enough. I also began learning to play the viola.

"I got a job at Menlo College for $50 a month and room and board. I conducted the glee club, and a pep band for the football games, and I was the tennis coach. But that gave me a lot of free time and I practiced four or five hours a day on the piano. I wrote a piano suite and choral and violin pieces. During that time Harold Schmidt hired me to be his assistant choral director at nearby Stanford.

"After three years, I was told it was time to move on. My mentor told me he wanted me to go to Europe for a year. That was the real eye-opener. I could go to a symphony, opera, chamber music every night. This changed my life. For the first time I was able to spend my mornings composing. I wrote a piano trio there (piano, violin and cello), and it was better than I thought it was going to be. I had it played by some friends and got a recording. Some Viennese friends heard it and said I should be a full-time composer. Maybe I could really do it!

"While I was still in Vienna I received a telegram from Harvard asking if I would take a post conducting and teaching there, and I turned it down. I knew what it would mean: I would be teaching the basic courses. I also knew I would be on trial for the first few years. I was 32 years old. Either I was going to be a composer and teach on the side, or I was going to be a teacher and conductor and do a little composing on the side. By this time, that was a no-brainer.

"I've never regretted turning down that job. My wife and I came back to this country and I took part-time teaching jobs for years until I was doing well enough to become a full-time freelance composer.

D) Mr. Mechem reflects on how he became a musician.

Play Audio Clip 5: Kirke Mechem’s reflections

"That's not the way to become a musician at all - unless you have a certain knack for composing the way I did. There's no other reason why I should be a composer. It's certainly not my early training. It's not anything except a great love for music, which I got from my family and that strong desire to keep on writing music, no matter what.

Question: Did the course you take help you in some way in your composing, even if it wasn't the quickest route to a musical career?

"For writing operas and writing choral music, maybe you do need a varied background in the humanities and an interaction with people in different ways, as I did, for instance, in working on a newspaper, and being in sports all my life. That sort of thing may give you a better chance to be able to re-create the emotions of different kinds of people, as you must in opera.

A good opera composer makes you feel that his or her music exactly describes a character better than words can. In La Bohème you know these people much more deeply because of what they sing and how they sing it. It's not the words so much as the music they sing and the instrumental music that accompanies it that gives their character depth and uniqueness. When I'm looking for a subject for a new opera, I look for a story that has many good characters, varied characters, because I know then I can write varied music to it. So possibly it did help me to have more than a strictly musical background.

E) Mr. Mechem discusses John Brown

Play Audio Clip 6: The Opera – John Brown

Question: Why did you choose to write an opera about John Brown?

Kirke Mechem: "That's easy. My father was the director of the Kansas State Historical Society, and a fine poet and a playwright. It was only natural for him to write a play about John Brown. He entered it in a national competition and it won. His play about John Brown was put on NBC in a national radio hook-up. It was a fine play. So I grew up being interested in John Brown.

"When I lived in Vienna all operas everywhere in Europe were sung in the language where the opera was performed. So in Vienna a Mozart opera was sung in German, not in Italian, and the audience was all native Viennese (who spoke German). They were constantly laughing and having a great time. I finally got what opera is all about. It's about emotions: humor or tragedy - a story that makes you laugh or brings you to tears. I saw that opera was like our musical theatre in the United States, except the music was a lot better. It was not only songs; the action also took place in music, which for a musician was just great fun. That's what turned me on to opera.

"I decided I'd like to write an opera. Naturally I first thought of John Brown [because of my father's play.] John Brown is a larger-than-life character. And when Frederick Douglass, former slave and the greatest African-American of the 19th century, gives one of his moving speeches it is great drama. And there is a touching love story: one of John Brown's sons, Oliver, falls in love with a girl who is a pacifist. Think of the conflict there! Think of this man and his son who believe that slavery is so terrible you have to fight against it, while pacifists believe you should never fight, no matter what. That gave a focus, a dramatic controversy to solve."

F) Mr. Mechem talks about how he writes an opera.

Play Audio Clip 7: How Kirke Mechem writes an opera

Question: In opera, do your write the music first or do you write the words first?

Kirke Mechem: "In most songs, the lyrics are written first and then the music is written. But sometimes the music is written first, then words invented to fit the melody. But with an opera the story has to come first. The words are in the libretto ("little book" in Italian). The composer tries to write music that exactly fits the words and the emotion of what's happening. For example, if a guy's angry, you're not going to write nice, slow, soft music for him. And if he's talking about love to his girlfriend, you're not going to write very fast, angular, dissonant music, either. The guy wouldn't get to first base.

"So the job of music in opera is to heighten the feeling, the emotion of the words."

Question: Do you start at the beginning of the story and work through?

Kirke Mechem: "The fact that I did a lot of writing before going into music is a big advantage. An opera libretto doesn't have to be written by a great poet. But you have to be a competent writer and know opera. I have always started with plays or novels. With my father's play, even though I changed it a lot, I had to start from the beginning.

"First I had to do a lot of reading about John Brown. I realized my ideas about him were a lot different from my father's."

G) Advice for students from Mr. Mechem.

Play Audio Clip 8: Advice for students

Question: What advice would you give students interested in becoming a composer and involved in music?

"A decision to become a composer should come later. A composer should become a good musician. I really wish I had practiced the piano more. Train yourself, your fingers and your ear, learn about the structure of music, harmony, counterpoint, musical forms. You must learn an instrument really well. If you don't get that experience when you're young, you'll never get the speed you need. Take it from me! Practice, practice, practice is what it takes to get that speed. By practicing an hour a day when you're young you can accomplish more than by practicing four hours a day in your twenties and thirties. Don't waste your youth; it is the only time you will ever have to easily learn skills like playing an instrument or learning foreign languages. I don't mean that you should devote all your time to learning. But is an hour a day such a burden? Music is not always a very good vocation, but it's the best avocation in the world.
After Kirke Mechem's interview is shared in some way with the students, ask for a discussion of the muses' plans for their composer matched or differed from his life story. Concluding points may include that there are different routes to composing an opera, but that a good grasp of musical technique is necessary. Also, it helps to be a writer of words as well as a writer of music, to strongly connect the two in one strong work of art.

In the end, as Mr. Mechem points out, there were other ways he could have preceded that may have been easier, but his love of music carried him through everything he faced, and his having many varied experiences helped him understand people in a way that made writing opera, perhaps, easier for him. Finally, for him, opera is not some odd kind of music that is very different from popular music or classical music or musical theatre: all music is united by being a language in which people can share their feelings and experiences.

Extension

More advanced students can research whether great works of opera are more likely to be original stories or taken from earlier stories.

If they are interested in becoming a composer, students can study the lives of other composers and see how they prepared for their art. Resources are provided in the Materials list.

Younger students can discuss a story they would like to see made into an opera, based on criteria they develop (such as big, bold characters, exciting story line, different point of view/conflicts).

Essay Contest

Encourage your students to participate in the Lyric Opera of Kansas City Essay Contest. You can find more about it by visiting www.kcopera.org/About/johnbrowneducation/essay.

Lesson created by Martha A. Henry and Keith S. Murray, M.A. Henry Consulting, LLC.

Lyric Opera of Kansas City

John Brown Education

State Standards

Kansas

Missouri