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Originally posted by The Sage

A long, looooong time ago here in these halls, one task remained forever atop my ever growing “To-Do” list. *winks at Wooly*

Namely, a compilation of ALL the references to music, musical lore, instruments and other aural arts published in every single Realms product.

I’ve kept at it here and there over the years of my absence and I feel like committing myself wholly to further updating it and releasing a draft copy for evaluation amongst the many learned scribes here at Candlekeep. It still needs some updates from Ed’s voluminous lore published elsewhere over the last two years, but I’m closer than I’ve ever been to finishing it.

So I guess… what I rambling around to asking is… would there still be interest for this work I’ve committed to for the past 10 years… exist here in this community?

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Originally posted by The Sage

Oooo! The Wulfgar opera doesn’t appear in my notes. Maybe missed that or I’ve referenced it in some other way.

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Originally posted by Ashe Ravenheart

I second the vote!

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Originally posted by The Sage

.

So I guess… what I rambling around to asking is… would there still be interest for this work I’ve committed to for the past 10 years… exist here in this community?

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Originally posted by Gelcur

Any chance you want to post your renditions of songs?

Also on a musical note... Are there any references to sheet music in the Realms? If so what is used as notes? Easy answer would be Thorass but seems more likely it would use Espruar script from the elves. Ideas?

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Originally posted by Gelcur
Also on a musical note... Are there any references to sheet music in the Realms? If so what is used as notes? Easy answer would be Thorass but seems more likely it would use Espruar script from the elves. Ideas?

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On music notation in the Realms (from Greenwood's Grotto/Discord)

Lucio — 02/16/2023 8:46 PM

Hi Ed, dunno if it's in some FR product already but what is Music language in the realms? How would be a music sheet be written compared to our world?

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Ed Greenwood — 03/12/2023 11:58 AM

There's a future Patreon post that will delve into this. Short answer: various forms of written music notation have been used, but died out. More often, spells are used to "record" tunes.

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Originally posted by Gelcur

I'd be interested in both works.

Waterdeep Dragon Heist had a few musical references.

Canticle of the Silver Chalice, hymn to Siamorphe
Wulfgar and the Crystal Shard, opera
Your Beardy Face, Dwarven love song popular in the Moonsea
The Fall of Tiamat, opera in Giant

There were actually a few other non-musical theatrical references in there too. Overall not a fan of the adventure's execution but there were a lot of fun ideas in there.

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https://twitter.com/TheEdVerse/status/1303552480031256578 https://twitter.com/TheEdVerse/status/1466885068706693120 https://twitter.com/TheEdVerse/status/1467952619125673986 https://twitter.com/TheEdVerse/status/1467953410515382275

Sep 9, 2020

@WaddellErik

Hi there. @TheEdVerse ! I’m wondering if there are any famous operas performed at theatres in the Realms?

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@TheEdVerse

Oh, yes. There are four really famous human operas that get performed many times and in many places across Faerûn, every year: The Lovelorn Knight, Alvaericknar, The War Of Three Castles, and Downdragon Harr.

The Lovelorn Knight:

A knight falls in love with haughty woman after haughty woman who doesn’t love him. Sad and despondent, he is heartbroken when he discovers THE woman, only to discover she prefers the company of women, so he goes to an evil sorcerer to be made into a woman so he can woo her. The magic works, the courtship succeeds, and they are happy together until the sorcerer tries to slay them both and steal their castle and riches; he succeeds, but as ghosts they defeat him, and continue their love match in the crumbling castle they now haunt.

Alvaericknar:

The merry misadventures of a rascal who outwits foe after foe, swindling them in the process, until he robs a lich who slays Alvaericknar. But the merry rogue has played a trick, and arranged that his horrible demise takes place in a spot of active enchantments, so he’s magically forced into undeath. As an undead, he goes right on being a swindling, fun-loving rascal, only now he doesn’t need food or drink or shelter.

He still likes wine and the ladies, though.

The War Of Three Castles:

THE opera for those who love heavy, martial marches and triumphant horncalls and heroic deaths in battle, this saga concerns three warring kingdoms whose kings hate each other, and each decide to obliterate their rivals and conquer their realms, no matter what the cost. Each hurls his warrior princes and princesses into battle, at the heads of the realms’ armies, and of course they fight each other, wound each other, plunge into the Underdark when the ground beneath them collapses, and there, amid the tombs of long-dead kings, they nurse each other back to health and fall in love with each other in so doing: two princes and one princess, who can’t choose between the princes but is adamant that she shall have them both, equally, or neither. She prevails, and they decide to wed each other in a three-crowns union, even if their fathers execute them for it. Yet when they struggle back to the surface, fighting loathly worms to do so, they discover all three kings dead, the kingdoms laid waste by marauding monsters after their armies had annihilated each other, and the few surviving peasants only too happy to have peace—in a new, united, three-crowns realm (where everyone seems to sing in melodious chorus).

Downdragon Harr:

A princess, the only heir to a throne, is transformed into a dragon by a wicked sorceress who uses magic to transform herself, and take the place of the princess. Only to murder the king, and so succeed him as a ruling, unwed queen. Her first royal decree is to command all knights of the realm to go forth and slay every dragon they can find (the dragons are all basso profundos). There is much slaughter of wyrms, but the knight who happens upon the transformed princess wields a magic sword, and as he gravely wounds her, it shatters the magic upon her, and she returns to her true form. They fall in love (in a famous duet, “Too Long Apart, United Now, One Heart”) and the knight persuades Harr, the oldest, most powerful dragon of all, who has slept for the last century, to act as their steed as they fly to the royal castle to confront the queen. She sees their approach and uses mighty sorcery, that drains the life from most of her courtiers and all of her guards, to slay the dragon as it dives down on the castle—but in death, it slays her, crashing into the castle and crushing her to pulp under its great bulk as it slides to a (dead) stop. (It sings in death, and so does the queen from somewhere under it.) The princess and the knight begin their happy rule, and wedded bliss, atop the carcass of the great dragon (right away, before it begins to stink). There are also half a dozen halfling comic operas (think bawdy Gilbert & Sullivan; dwarves and gnomes love these, too) that are constantly performed, with patter song lyrics altered to fit the locale and the latest news, all of them with utterly improbable plots involving mistaken identities, misunderstandings in bedchambers, executioners running about missing everyone who can sing with their axes, and hairy male singers who end up in feminine lingerie. Their titles are Ravalar’s Roister In The Cloister; Yeomen, Bowmen, and The Taming Maiden; The Seven Drunken Swordswingers Of Silverymoon; The Haunted Bedpan; The Laughing Statue Of Beltragar; and The Night Six In-Use Beds Fell Into The Castle Moat.

Someday (I should live so long) I’ll write them all, and try to persuade @TheOperaGeek to star in them.

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@Artie_Pavlov

Hi @TheEdVerse more of a creative question on arts and crafts in the Realms. Can you share any of the opera names and maybe details on them? So far I just found 2 operas mentioned by Jeff Grubb and Kate Novak.

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@TheEdVerse

Back in September 2020, I tweeted details of "the big four" operas that get perfomed over and over: The Lovelorn Knight, Alvaericknar, The War Of Three Castles, and Downdragon Harr, and mentioned many more. The tweet chains are really long, though, and I'm about to lose power.

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@Artie_Pavlov

This is great! I’ll dig em up!! (There we’re big for mentioned somewhere in printed realms right? Maybe Elminster’s FR?)

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@TheEdVerse

Most of my own prior published Realmslore opera mentions were couplets or lone lines, in chapter-head quotations in my novels.

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@Artie_Pavlov

Ok @TheEdVerse I gotta ask… those halfling operas… haunted bedpan? What’s that one about?? See-no-evil monkeySee-no-evil monkeySee-no-evil monkey

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@TheEdVerse

Hin culture has a strong streak of toilet humour.

In that opera, the bedpan is enchanted, and "clings" to emotional (dramatic) moments in the lives of those who've used it. "Replaying" them audibly for later users to hear, and (comically) misinterpret. Chaos ensues.

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@Artie_Pavlov

Are you sure it’s a comedy and not horror?? Eyes

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@TheEdVerse

Heh. It replays some frightened moments and some violent confrontations, yes, but they are NOT "actually using the bedpan" moments. Though I hear some actors are from time to time flushed with pride.

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Juniper Churlgo — 02/21/2023 1:38 PM

Returning to my 2-year-old question about operas. we learned about the haunted bedpan, but Ed, what id "The Seven Drunken Swordswingers of Silverymoon" is about?

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Ed Greenwood — 02/22/2023 10:13 AM

The Seven Drunken Swordswingers of Silverymoon is a comic farce of mistaken identity and misunderstandings between lovers-to-be. There’s no sex, but plenty of flirtation, and characters assuming wild sex is happening between others (think a real-world Noel Coward play, like Present Laughter). There are seven male main characters (tenors, baritones, and basses), all roistering buffoons but expert swordsmen, and friendly rivals, who come to Silverymoon trying to elevate themselves from mercenaries to well-to-do gentlemen by marrying wealthy half-elven ladies of high society. Who are vastly amused by the seven bumbling suitors, and arrange all sorts of pratfalls for them—which they plough through, not seeing how they’re being set up, and in the end capture the hearts of seven ladies (all altos) by passing little tests of steadfastness, being good sports, and endless entertaining the women. (The closest Shakespeare equivalents would be Much Ado About Nothing or All’s Well That Ends Well.) There’s lots of brief singing, but no arias or huge cast numbers, and there’s lots of running around and “just missing seeing” someone else, who hides behind a pillar, or in an adjoining room that others keep threatening to enter. A great favourite with audiences, that would be staged more often if it didn’t require such a large cast of good actors/singers.

It’s usually billed as being written by Hurlastro Brendril, a mellifluent and large-bellied actor who led his own troupe of players up and down the Sword Coast from 1312 DR to his death in 1368DR, but others say Hurlastro cobbled it together from the “best bits” of three older plays, and most of what we laugh at in the play was written circa 246 DR by “Valuentam” (a pseudonym), who was a high-ranking male elf of Myth Drannor poking fun at humans.

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Originally posted by Gelcur

Any chance you want to post your renditions of songs?

Also on a musical note... Are there any references to sheet music in the Realms? If so what is used as notes? Easy answer would be Thorass but seems more likely it would use Espruar script from the elves. Ideas?

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