Jules Massenet's mélodies feature a distinct vocal treatment regarding musical prosody through his eight song cycles, including Poëme d'Avril, Poëme Pastoral, Poëme du Souvenir, Poëme d'Amour, Poëme d'Hiver, Poëme d'un Soir, and Quelques Chansons Mauves, and a collection, Expressions Lyriques. These mélodies show the influence of the trend of salon music and the high-level poetry from the poetic movements of romanticism, Parnassianism, and symbolism. This study deals with Massenet's mélodies relating to the prosody idea, which is conspicuous in his vocal treatment. His melodic styles feature four distinct aspects of vocal treatment including lyrical, recitative or parlando, melodramatic, and déclamation rhythmée, and represent the idea of musical prosody of phonetic, syntactic, and semantic aspects. Massenet's other musical idioms such as harmony, form, and piano treatment, are also closely related to the prosody matter as a semantic aspect, reinforcing the poetic mood and content. In this study, each melodic style related to French versification is examined in detail. The musical analysis regarding the other musical idioms on selected examples presents the semantic feature of prosody idea. The brief review of French versification and opinions regarding the performance are included. Massenet's contribution to the genre of mélodie, with the prose melody and treatment of piano as an equal partner of voice line, is clearly demonstrated. With this contribution, Massenet should be recognized as the most influential composer to the climatic time of French mélodie led by Fauré, and Debussy, and Duparc.

Igor Stravinskys collaborations with contemporaries including Picasso, Nijinsky, and Cocteau are well documented. Less familiar, however, are the anachronistic collaborations suggested in one short movement Stravinsky wrote in 1918, and involving the Germans Luther and Bach, the Swiss Ramuz, the Russian Stravinsky, and the American Kurt Vonnegut Jr.<p> Grand Choral, the penultimate movement of Stravinskys lHistoire du Soldatwritten in 1918provides a key to unlocking the mysteries of construction, ideology, and by extension, performance of the work. Grand Choral parodies J.S. Bachs Cantata 80 (1715) which, in its turn, is based on Martin Luthers 1529 hymn, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. C.F. Ramuz, Stravinskys original collaborator on lHistoire du Soldat, based his libretto on a Russian folk tale, but in 1993, Vonnegut wrote a new text to accompany Stravinskys music, a text inspired by the true story of Private Eddie Slovik, the last American soldier executed for desertion. In essence, Vonnegut collaborates with Stravinsky in a posthumous sense, as Stravinsky does with Bach and Bach with Luther. Vonnegut and Stravinsky each write themselves into an existing work, giving it contemporary meaning and a new poignancy.<p> The principal aim of my paper is to document the process by which I studied and conducted lHistoire du Soldat with one libretto by Ramuz and another by Vonnegut. In the paper, I will first examine the historical context in which each of the collaborators contributed to lHistoire du Soldat. I will also present an analysis of Grand Choral with regard to the source material by Luther and Bach. Finally, I will document the process and findings of my study, rehearsal, and performance of each of the two versions of lHistoire du Soldat which I conducted on March 31, 2009 in Quance Theatre, on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan with a full cast of musicians, dancers and actors.