Hmm.

[artsyhonker]

"A text in Latin shall be used", I read, of a choral composition competition.

It turns out they are a bit more picky than that:

Only texts by the following Latin Authors will be accepted: Ovidio (Publius Ovidius Naso), Orazio (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Virgilio (Publius Vergilius Maro), Catullo (Gaius Valerius Catullus), Marziale (Marcus Valerius Martialis), Lucrezio (Titus Lucretius Carus).

Being more a Christian sacred composer than anything else, and lacking a Classics background, I'm utterly unfamiliar with most of these. I understand Catullus is rather rude.

I suspect the pronunciation varies considerably from church Latin, too, though probably not so much that I can't set it well.

I feel a bit like this is a veiled attempt to filter out people who aren't posh enough, or haven't had the "right" educational background. I dislike those kinds of barriers to participation.

So: does anyone have any suggestions for me from those authors? Any passages you'd particularly like to hear me set to music?

Comments

[the_lady_lily]

Hi! Tell me more about this choral competition and the sort of things it is after! How much text are they/you after, in terms of lines? What would be the length of something you'd normally set? What kind of texts do you usually like setting?

[artsyhonker]

Good questions, thank you! The competition states a maximum of four minutes for the choral category, and the shortlisted pieces will be used as competition pieces in a festival. More details at http://www.seghizzi.it/en/composition-contest-2019/ but they don't really say a whole lot about what they are looking for.

I tend toward very short settings, myself: four minutes is quite long for me. I enjoy setting formal poetry (for example, I have set a number of sonnets by marnanel, though only a few of those are online yet), and something about that length or a little longer would probably be right for this competition. When possible, I like to base the form of the piece on the imagery of the poetry, a sort of structural word-painting, in addition to actual word-painting in places; this means I like poetry with strong concrete imagery: it's a lot harder to set concepts like truth or beauty or virtue than, say, the sea or clouds or ploughing a field.

[the_lady_lily]

Do you know, I rather fancy seeing what you do with the description of Queen Amata running away to the woods to try to hide her daughter, and bringing all the women to 'pretend' Bacchic fury with her. Virgil, Aeneid 7.385-405 - Latin here and a serviceable English translation here.

From a slightly more 'why the hell not' angle, you could have a go at Virgil's Eclogue Four, which is the one that the early Christian church decided was a prophecy of the coming of Christ - lots of nice 'lion laying down with lamb' stuff - Latin here and translation here, although you'd want to make a selection based on what passage grasps you more.

The other option which comes immediately to mind, and which might come to other people's minds as well but might work with your other experiences, is Horace's Carmen Saeculare -Latin and translation. Again, you'd probably need to cut it somewhere, but it is an actual hymn written to be performed at the Secular Games organised by the emperor Augustus in 17 BC (details over at Wikipedia are basic but accurate). So you could do sacred stuff with a sacred text if that felt like a thing.

Happy to go away and think some more, but those are the immediate thoughts which come to mind!

[turkeyplucker]

Can't suggest any texts, I'm afraid, but I will say don't worry about the pronunciation. I see it's an Italian choir, so I wouldn't be surprised if they sing it Italianate anyway, and even if they do go for the classicists' "New Pronunciation" it's entirely interchangeable for singing purposes, just like Byrd, Tallis, Fauré &c. didn't set Italianate but work fine when sung that way.

[artsyhonker]

Good to know; thank you.

[emperor]

At the risk of being very cheesy, one thing that stuck with me from GCSE Latin(!) was Catullus' poem to his late brother - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_101

[cmcmck]

Marziale also has his moments of ahem! :o)

[siderea]

Warning! There's this whole thing about metrical feet in classical Latin poetry, based on vowel sounds, not (IIUC) emphasis. It works differently than the poetry we're used to. I'm assuming that if they want classical poets set, they're expecting familiarity/facility with the conventions of classical poetics.

[artsyhonker]

That's definitely good to know about before I start!

Do the vowel sounds follow some kind of consistent rule based on what is written down, like Spanish, or are there squillions of exceptions to memorise, as there are in English?

(I can probably cope even with the latter if I can get a good recording, but choosing a text first seems sensible.)

[siderea]

I don't know. Latinists tend to badly exaggerate how methodical and consistent Latin grammar is (five declensions, my ass, e.g.) and I have only the barest of acquaintances with this fact. It was mentioned in Latin 2 as something we would be dealing with in Latin 3, but I graduated after Latin 2. Also, it comes up again in the Renaissance, where certain famous poets decided to apply the rules – or what they thought the rules were, which may not be the same thing – to French poetry. And then musicians decided to run with it and set the poetry by following the same rules: long syllables get two beats, short syllables get one beat, and we're in whatever time signature that works out to at any given moment. This should not have worked, but generated some surprisingly lilting and rhythmically pleasant music.

ETA: Some links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_%28Latin%29
http://people.virginia.edu/~jdk3t/epicintrog/scansion.htm

[siderea]

Also, I would recommend checking out an intro to classical pronunciation, so you know what phoneme palette (palate? :) you're working with.