IMSLP Forums

What are some pieces that require ordnance to be fired on specified beats, besides the following:

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
Puccini: Tosca
Beethoven: Wellington's Victory
Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture
Berlioz: Funeral March for Hamlet

Just any old general battle scene in an opera doesn't count. The gunfire must be called for on specific beats in a measure. Anybody know if Prokofiev's War and Peace qualifies?

--Sixtus

Just looked at my score of Berg's Lulu. The title character shoots Dr.Schoen 5 times in Act 2 (on page 474 of the study score), on specified beats in unison with a piano. Almost everything that happens onstage in this opera is carefully synchronized with happenings in the music, not excluding how fast the curtains open and close.

--Sixtus

Definitely off-topic, but if I remember correctly, when Lulu is dictating to Dr. Schön a letter to his fiancee at the end of the first act, as he is writing the words Lulu is saying down, there is a stave added above Dr. Schön's with notated pitches and rhythms for the words he is writing down!

Doubt this counts (seeing as their not gunshots), but in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites, 14 guillotine drops are notated in the score.

In Cesar Cui's 1-act opera "Mademoiselle Fifi," the title character (so nicknamed, really Lt. von Eyrik) fires his pistol twice in the chateau where the German soldiers are stationed in order to shoot out the eyes of one of the portrait paintings on the wall. (And this is timed with the music.)

I'm not sure whether the 3rd act of Cui's "Captain's Daughter" includes cannon shots.

Verdi: Otello Act 1, third beat of bar 27, "colpo di cannone" (in the FS; in the VS it's on the 4th beat!... and all the while, the organ is holding that incredible 240-bar long pedal cluster!)

PML

PS I can't remember whether the cannon in the finale of Act I, Tableau II of Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini is notated on a specific beat. (Some day the world will wake up and realise what fabulous music is to be found in this opera...) Anyone with a full score?

Good submissions all, so far! Keep up the good work.

re Lulu: Act 1, Scene 3 [1305ff]. The writing starts out as a canon at the unison where both parts are doubled by the orchestra, Lulu by the winds, Dr.Schoen by the strings. So the notation of Dr.Schoen's "silent" writing is not quite as bizarre as it might seem. As the letter goes on, however, the relationship between the two "voices" gets more complex (as if his penmanship is getting sloppy). This total-control-over-everything attitude was part of the serial-music mindset and was to result in the everything-is-controlled works of the 1950s (Messiaen, Boulez, Babbitt etc). The score of Lulu as a whole is extraordinary and it is certainly one of the greatest operas -- musically and theatrically -- of the 20th century. Too bad it can't be uploaded here.

re Carmelites: even in a performance of otherwise mediocre quality, in the theater the scene referred to is unforgettably intense. I'm almost moved to tears just thinking about it.

--Sixtus

re Cellini: I only have a Kalmus full score of the 3-act version of this opera. I presume the canons referred to are the ones in the Finale of the 2nd act of this version. On page 285 there are rests in all parts for the first two canons shots but no indication as to precisely when they should sound. And while there are other things going on during the third shot, there is likewise no specific beat on which they should shoot.

--Sixtus

'On the Hunt', a polka by Johann Strauss begins with two pistol-shots.

In Mehul overture to La Chasse de jeune Henri, there is a gunshot at the climax.

Paul Moravec's recent opera The Letter opens with six gunshots.

There are three canon shots in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda.

I recall a gunshot in Kurt Weill's Mahagonny, although I don't remember in what piece.

Of course, there's always Pachelbel's Canon.

MS

Are all these firings on specified beats in a bar? They would have to be to qualify. Getting six rapid shots in a specified rhythm at the start of an opera would be difficult, even for somebody handy with firearms (which, I think it would be safe to say, most opera singers are not). Likewise are the Maria Stuarda cannon blasts on specific beats? Or are they, like the cannons in Benvenuto Cellini mentioned above, only given a "window" in which they have to shoot? Anybody know if the rifle shots in Weber's Freischutz go off on specific beats?

--Sixtus


.

Just a guess, and someone who knows the opera thoroughly will have to confirm, but Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen is about a hunter and a fox. Are there any gunshots in that?

If musicals count, Beauty and the Beast has a rifle shot in the opening scene where Gaston is lauded as the supreme hunter of animals and women!

Yes there's is gunfire in the Janacek. It kills the title character. But I don't remember if it comes on a specified beat in the music and I have no access to a score to determine whether it does or not.

Remember, I'm not just looking for gunfire -- that is relatively easy -- I'm looking for shots that occur at exactly musically specified instants, as per the examples in the inital post.

--Sixtus

I am playing Cunning Little Vixen in a month's time. I will certainly check the score. Watch this space . . . .

There is a revolver that essentially is emptied on specific beats in Satie's ballet Parade. Page 46 and 47 of the IMSLP score. The score also contains and extensive part for sirens, among other unusual percussion instruments.

--Sixtus

http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/d ... score_.pdf

Rodrigo is shot in Verdi's Don Carlo. While this does not happen on a specific beat (stage direction "the man carrying the arquebus aims and fires"), the general period in which this is to happen is clear. It has to happen within 1.5 measures of 4/4 at 152 quarters/min. I'm still looking for more gunfire-as-percussion, hence the requirement that the shots occur on a specific, notated beat.

--Sixtus