I Pagliacci

This is a clip of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s famous opera I Pagliacci. This is an Italian opera known as a Verisimo, which is a realist type of story that involves everyday people in normal situations instead of historical figures in fantastic and faraway places. In this particular scene the characters all contain the melody, while an orchestra accompanies them. The orchestra also provides ornamentation for the characters’ vocal parts. The characters all have wide vocal ranges and can go very much higher than the tonal center. Also, the vocal parts are filled with accents and vibrato.

Even though there is a lot of drama in this scene the majority of the music is in a major mode with sections of it becoming minor. The dynamics range from soft to very loud. The melodic motion for the characters was both conjunct and disjunct in this scene. In terms of tempo, the music in this scene has a very steady beat and can be followed pretty easily to those who are used to Western music. It was hard to classify this scene as a homophony or polyphony because some songs only have one melody, but the whole scene has many people with interacting melodies.