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- Title
Changing Images of Isabelle: A Study of Keyboard Transcriptions Based on Meyerbeer’s “Robert, toi que j’aime”.
- Authors
Nana Wang
- Abstract
Nineteenth-century piano transcription as a genre exists as a target of derision for being derivative, but is yet illustrative and familiarizing for historical musical life. Current scholarship criticizes it as “bastard and obsolete genre, the worst crimes.” Nevertheless, works of this type reached a wider public than their operatic sources did, which greatly increased the public’s knowledge and appreciation of the original opera. This article sheds light on this issue by examining and comparing three currently lesser-known piano transcriptions based on “Robert, toi que j’aime.” As a highlight in Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable, it is one of the most frequently transcribed extracts from the original opera. This cavatina, featuring the image of a despairing Isabelle, portrays her pleadings for mercy from her beloved Robert who is under the control of the evil Bertram. Although all three piano transcriptions are based on the same cavatina, the three transcribers’ respective creative processes each use different musical strategies. Musical analysis and consideration of each through the lenses of different theories in translation demonstrate a fluidity of both transcriptional praxis and resulting musical-dramatic intertextuality.
- Subjects
ARRANGEMENT (Musical composition); MUSICAL style; INTERTEXTUALITY
- Publication
Opera Journal, 2022, Vol 55, Issue 2, p61
- ISSN
0030-3585
- Publication type
Article