The frequency of imagination : auditory distress and aurality in contemporary music theatre (original) (raw)
Related papers
Creating for the Stage and Other Spaces: Questioning Practices and Theories, 2021
The article focusses on the concept of music performativity in reference to works of three European composers and theatre directors: Georges Aperghis, Niels Rønsholdt and Wojtek Blecharz. All are representatives of ‘the new music theatre’ which can be defined by the negation of traditional opera and musical (Salzman, Desi, 2008). In opposition to the constant and unchanging hierarchy of devices presented in traditional opera, the new model of music performance is based on questioning established patterns and perpetual testing of new solutions in the field of shaping the relationship between music and other spheres of performance. The composing and staging strategies of Georges Aperghis, Niels Rønsholdt and Wojtek Blecharz consistently develop the concept of music performativity which evokes the idea of Fluxus „visual music” – music which is not only „to be heard” but also „to be seen”. Aperghis creates a type of automated theatre, where electronic devices cooperate with actors and their voices, creating a new model of „musical assemblage”. Niels Rønsholdt specialises in chamber operas and music installations in which viewers are meant to be active participants, not only observers. Theatrical projects of Wojtek Blecharz explore the relationship between body and sound in a wide and multi-level way, paying attention to the audience’s experience. The main purpose of the article is to show the process of sound autonomisation as well as to present various models of music performativity in contemporary European theatre. Simultaneously, the author intends to retrace the aesthetic influences, affinities and oppositions between these three examples of experimental music theatre.
Musicality in Theatre. Music as Model, Method and Metaphor in Theatre-Making (2014)
2014
As the complicated relationship between music and theatre has evolved and changed in the modern and postmodern periods, music has continued to be immensely influential in key developments of theatrical practices. In this study of musicality in the theatre, David Roesner offers a revised view of the nature of the relationship. The new perspective results from two shifts in focus: on the one hand, Roesner concentrates in particular on theatre-making - that is the creation processes of theatre - and on the other, he traces a notion of ‘musicality’ in the historical and contemporary discourses as driver of theatrical innovation and aesthetic dispositif, focusing on musical qualities, metaphors and principles derived from a wide range of genres. Roesner looks in particular at the ways in which those who attempted to experiment with, advance or even revolutionize theatre often sought to use and integrate a sense of musicality in training and directing processes and in performances. His study reveals both the continuous changes in the understanding of music as model, method and metaphor for the theatre and how different notions of music had a vital impact on theatrical innovation in the past 150 years. Musicality thus becomes a complementary concept to theatricality, helping to highlight what is germane to an art form as well as to explain its traction in other art forms and areas of life. The theoretical scope of the book is developed from a wide range of case studies, some of which are re-readings of the classics of theatre history (Appia, Meyerhold, Artaud, Beckett), while others introduce or rediscover less-discussed practitioners such as Joe Chaikin, Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, Michael Thalheimer and Karin Beier.
Music Theatre: Concepts, Theories and Practices
2013
This research paper explores music theatre writing and research since its conception in the 1960s. It will explore what music theatre is or isn’t and will serve as a resource for me to draw upon whilst writing my own music theatre portfolio. I will be looking at different practices and practitioners such as Kagel and Cage as well as more contemporary practitioners and music theatre groups. Please note the focus of this paper is toward MUSIC THEATRE as apposed to musicAL theatre. http://www.lulu.com/shop/ryan-green/music-theatre-concepts-theories-and-practices/paperback/product-22097945.html
This document brings together three essays that I published on my blog the biting point in 2016, on the subject of music and theatre. The first essay confronts the unstable and dissatisfactory category of 'music theatre', via a book review of Eric Salzman and Thomas Desi's The New Music Theatre (2008). Through the course of the next two essays, I then attempt to reconstruct a sturdier definition of music theatre, on the basis of newly posited definitions of 'music' and 'theatre', inspired by Richard Schechner and Alain Badiou. My listener-oriented definition of 'music' relies on a concept derived from theatre: becoming-music as a dramaturgy of sound. This means that both 'theatre' and 'music' are defined according to the same basic operation—presentation-as-world—yet, while the 'world' of theatre is always mimetic, the 'world' of music-qua-music is always exceptional to the 'real' world. Thus, the operation of theatre can be considered a solution to the impossibility of musical reality: music theatre is the 'presentation-as-world' of the musically possible. The picture of 'music theatre' that emerges from this framework is a very broad one, which necessarily includes all live musical performance. In the third essay, I outline a theory of musical genre that differentiates between the various aesthetic criteria that arbitrate within this wide field, making different demands of different performances on the basis of different genres. At the heart of this theory is a notion, borrowed from Schechner and Victor Turner, of music theatre as ritual. The result is a quasi-anthropological survey of genre rituals (from pop and jazz, to opera and experimental music) as they relate to the 'worlds' of music and theatre, the modality of music's 'appearance' within the fictional world presented, and the 'aesth-ethic' criteria of success within each ritual performance.
Towards Music Theatre Contextualisation
Composers such as Bertolt Brecht, John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, Harrison Birtwistle, although working independently of each other, have been prolific in creating experimental music theatre work, which often challenged the political landscape of their times. They set a precedent for the new synthesis of a new music theatre, which had not been recognised before as a new art form. This new kind of work would set a standard in theatre which effectively blended drama, music, properties and other theatrical elements found in ‘traditional’ theatre. This paper explores the history of music theatre and the etymology of said phrase from Brecht in the 1940s up until the present day. It discusses where music theatre sits in realation to other music driven theatre and describes ways in which music theatre was created. Following this, this paper offers an in depth analysis of music for theatre work and introduces the theory that music theatre can be identified in a logical way using a five step model. The results of this test show that there is scope in creating a working model however it will need to be ratified and tested further in order to increase its validity. This paper concludes that although music theatre’s hay day was during the 60s and 70s, when institutions such as Dartington College of Arts had a major impact on the arts, it is still an emerging art form with room for growth.
Listening with My Eyes Wide Open: Researching Music Theater in Artistic Research Environments
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2022
In Pia Palme's "Mattetoline" (2019) the composer-performer brings on stage reverberations of a deserted island and its impact on her perception, which is acted out through different media and with two further musician-performers. 1. In 2019 I was part of Heike Langsdorf's artistic research symposium Through practices, 28.-30.10.2019, KASK School for the Arts in Gent, Belgium. See for reflections by the participants the contributions in Langsdorf/Arteaga (2021).
Entering The Stage - Musicians as performers in contemporary Music Theatre (2010)
The article seeks to explore the role of musicians as theatrical performers in theatre, and how this role has been developed from the 20th century up to the present. The profession of musicians in theatre has been greatly expanded since the days of Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat through the Instrumental Theatre of Kagel and Schnebel in the 1960s up to contemporary multimedia performances and the influence of digital and interactive technology. Opposed to these expansive concepts this essay introduces reductionist approaches as alternative ways of working with musicians in the theatre.
Elucidating Orchestration as an Aesthetic of Music Theatre - Research Prospectus
When it comes to small-scale, experimental theatre there is often a blur between composer and orchestrator where the two separate roles often become one and the same. Orchestrators in musical theatre have very clear boundaries of work and orchestrations themselves have an important part to play. At present, there is little to no study which explores the fascinating and extremely complex task of orchestrating highly nuanced and highly experimental compositional ideas. New music theatre emerged in the 1960s and 1970s and can be located in the late post-modern period of avant-garde experimentation. The German term Musiktheater, the coinage of the term often attributed to Walter Felsenstein (Bawtree, 1991: 2), related to his approach to directing productions of existing opera repertoire for the Komische Oper and has been used since to describe work testing new ideas in the space between opera and musical. The methodology for this study is grounded in score-based research and accompanying interview alongside careful analysis and evaluation of music theatre work since the 1960s which may be compared to contemporary music theatre work. This project will also contribute an element of Practice as Research. This study will use multiple methods of data collection including interview, survey, material such as archived video as well as information contained in scores and printed publications such as journals and theses. This research will investigate and elucidate the significance of the role that orchestration and instrumental choices play in the creation of contemporary, experimental music theatre and identify them as a contributing aesthetic of the art form. This study will achieve this by first understanding audience attitudes towards experimental productions. This research aims to fill the space between discussion and analysis of music theatre by concentrating on one specific area of the art form. There is presently no singular study of understanding the developing orchestration development in music theatre instead studies refer to the subject in passing.