For in truth, I had forgotten what an attractive thing the world is...

I was really drawn to the music of The Aspern Papers. Argento has a very unique, gracious way of writing for the voice and his use of the singers and the orchestra in the selections we listened to was just mesmerizing for me, personally. I wish we could have seen more of the work, but in order to get some idea of Argento's style I listened and watched the two available clips repeatedly. Here is a sort of winding analysis of the two clips, specifically their contrasting qualities and their similarities.

~1835: Juliana and Aspern~

I found it interesting that the first section of this duet uses recitative-like writing with the orchestra simply sustaining chords underneath the singers. Soon after, in what I see as a sly nod to the Belcanto diva, Argento gives Juliana a duet with a woodwind during early phrases of her solo singing ("The way I always feel when a performance is over. The way I always feel at the end of summer.") that highlights the nostalgia in her sentiments. To bring out the idea that the characters aren't really connecting in this moment, Argento highlights Aspern's lines with a woodwind tremolo so that Juliana's duet partner changes mood dramatically as Aspern responds to her.

I find it interesting that the most melodic writing in this scene seems to come in the orchestral interlude when Juliana kisses Aspern. The duet, with each character in canon throughout seems to evoke the contrapuntal writing of an earlier time, as does (for me) the repetition of phrases of text (although this is also emblematic of the fact that both characters seem slightly unsure about their relationship at the time). The lines seem to weave in and out of each other so that one catches brief fragments of each before they become part of the full texture again. There is a certain blurriness to the writing, as if Argento is trying to evoke the way memory works. It seems to me that there is a certain timelessness in the duet in that there is very little sense of downbeat or meter in the music and it often seems to hover in and out of keys, not staying firmly in one or that other. In the canonic writing (can one call it that when the lines are not exactly the same?) the tonicization of one singer's line seems to be undermined constantly by the entrance of the other like. This gives the whole scene this sort of shimmery, unstable energy for my ear.

I find it interesting that the two characters/singers first truly unite when singing those nature-laden phrases which seem to hold such dichotomies ("Snow and cypress...glacier and leaf...the Ice Age and the golden months of summer..."). They are united, but the tonality (or chromaticism) of the opera seems to betray their doomed relationship. [On a side note: That unification of melody made me wonder if perhaps that is a line from Aspern's work Medea, which one can supposedly hear in Argento's score repeatedly...]


~1895: Ms. Tina and the Lodger~

In a similar manner, this part starts with Tina singing a recit-like phrase, for which the orchestra quiets completely before asserting the main melodic idea. Argento's writing seems to be less linear in this aria, and less symmetrical in a way. While the duet seemed Italianate, this style alternates between an almost French coloristic sensibility and a pure American sense of melody. The chromaticism in this aria stands out more as well; it seems somehow more pointed. Interestingly, for my taste, there is there is more of a sense of melody present in this piece of the opera (I wonder if that is a general difference between Argento's painting of the two time periods). To me, there is a different sense of solidity to Ms. Tina's aria. I love that she seems to be drawn back to the same notes over and over again. Argento really captures the sweetness of that moment in time and her joy and love for the world.


~Commonalities~
To me, Argento's music sounds like an old black-and-white film score in many ways; the way he uses the strings, brass and woodwinds imagistically seems to evoke another time. I find his use of brass to highlight the most euphoric, climactic phrases or emotions really intriguing. In the duet ("Nothing abides unaltered...love will endure") it seems to undermine the joy expressed by the singers, yet in the aria it comes at a point where it seems to wrench the audience from the calm picture Argento had set up ("the bright shop windows"..."as if all the world was out-of-doors"). Lastly, I think one of the things that makes Argento's writing feel Italianate is the fact that his use of chromaticism doesn't scream at us. In the duet it seems almost functional and in the aria it is used for inflective purposes.

In conclusion, the more I listened to these two clips, the more I found to listen to. I would really love to hear/see this work in its entirety.