A quick post with an update on
Hate - up until "Oh my king". I am really excited about the song now, I feel like it's growing well.
The Feanorian part, like you said, wasn't gonna particularly subtle anyways, and it's flexible enough that there's many ways to echo the lines or not as you so choose. Thingol's part felt like a smooth transition. And in Melian's part I opted to actually not score her melody specifically as it would be sung and instead add a countermelody and I feel like that makes it keep building up. And Melian and Thingol are still singing over the backdrop of the Feanorian's earlier rhythm, which I think is just musically cool, but symbolically they are all tangled up in the same curse/story and singing the same Song and I am so happy with it.
For the Madness part, I did a lot of thinking because V1 and V2 do it quite differently. I thought that one way could be to score and sing the Madness trio as in V2, but rather than a cut to black as in Aria (because this is not a raging Melian but more a lamenting one) I can repeat just the music of Madness but in V1 style, as a way to fade the song out. Basically - first time sung, second time just musical repetition. What do you think?
Also, I have a sinking feeling that I may have screwed up the hyperlinks and given you the wrong version of Appeal, but I still need to verify that. Uuuhhh... Before you're ready to produce a final copy of Act 1, I can just re-record it to be sure.