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me and my melodies

  • Writer: Amanda Riddell
    Amanda Riddell
  • Dec 20, 2023
  • 1 min read

Well, the upshot is that I come from a living tradition. I grew up on NZ pop and rock, and that often has a more theatrical or dramatic slant than UK or US popular music. Plus I'm a third-generation musician on my mother's side, so there's a certain degree of osmosis and whatever that comes from hearing a lot of live music as a child, including those Italianate influences. - However, I'm also part of that living tradition of R&H and Sondheim, and Rodgers in particular was a lodestone for me when I was trying to work out how to write really good tunes for operatic voices. Plus Sondheim told me to listen to Britten, which fills in the rest of that picture. 🥝

 
 
 

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1 Comment

Amanda Riddell
Amanda Riddell
Dec 20, 2023

Sondheim's music mostly interests me for his perfect scansion and harmonic developments; his melodies are usually cells rather than fully-breathed 'tunes' .. for example, the A-section of Finishing the Hat is basically just repetitions of the same cell. There are exceptions, of course, like Johanna and So Many People. Those are really glorious melodies.

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