MU100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Georges Bizet, Cross Necklace, Joses
Document Summary
Music we"ve listened to in terms of contexts (concert music, gender, ethnicity) Story of lowlives, depicts gypsies, gamblers, bar owners etc. Shocked the audience with its treatment of sex. Was not about kings and queens like every other opera. One of composers music tricks was to borrow spanish melodies/rhythms such as habanera and seguida to depict carmen as exotic femme fetale. Worked at a cigarette factory (close to a prostitute) Carmen gets together with good soldier boy don jose from the country and rejects him after he broke up with previous girlfriend and left the army. Carmen gets with another man musical characteristics that help to convey her image as a sultry gypsy, a prosittute: Harmony: minor harmony that turns major when the chorus hits. Carmen singing minor while others sing major shows exemplifies her difference from other women. Melody: a descending chromatic line outside of the structures of traditional depictions.
