Aus dem Vorwort Erst in den letzten Jahren ist die Erforschung von Emotionen in der Geschichtswissenschaft stärker in den Blick genommen worden. Emotion und Kognition werden als untrennbar angesehen, ...wobei Gefühle als soziokulturelle Praktiken und Produkte dem historischen Wandel unterworfen sind. Gefühle haben eine Geschichte und machen Geschichte, wie die Historikerin Ute Frevert es im Jahr 2009 formulierte. Daher ist es sehr verdienstvoll, dass sich Gabriele Thießen in ihrer Studie dieser Forschungsrichtung zuwendet und am Beispiel der Liebeskonzepte der Münchner Boheme um 1900 die Reichweite dieses Ansatzes untersucht. Sie fragt gezielt nach dem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen sozialem Umfeld und individueller Situation sowie nach Alternativen zu bestehenden Gefühlskonventionen. Dabei ist besonders hervorzuheben, dass trotz der psychoanalytisch orientierten Studie Peter Gays über Liebe im bürgerlichen Zeitalter von 1987 eine systematische Untersuchung von Liebeskonzepten in Europa um die Jahrhundertwende noch aussteht, sie also weitgehend Neuland betritt. Inhaltlich untersucht die Verfasserin aufgrund der Tagebücher die Liebeskonzepte von Franziska Gräfin zu Reventlow (1871- 1918), Oscar A. H. Schmitz (1873-1931) und Frank Wedekind (1864-1918), die um 1900 zur Münchner Boheme zählten. Unter Bohemiens versteht sie mit Helmut Kreuzer Intellektuelle "mit vorwiegend schriftstellerischer, bildkünstlerischer oder musikalischer Aktivität oder Ambition und mit betont unoder gegenbürgerlichen Einstellungen und Verhaltensweisen" (S. 23). Bislang wurde in diesem Kontext vor allem die Sexualität betrachtet, nicht jedoch die Liebeskonzepte der Boheme. Die Verfasserin arbeitet anhand der Selbstzeugnisse heraus, welche partnerschaftlichen Liebeskonzepte dargestellt werden, auf welche Faktoren sie sich zurückführen lassen, und ob die Münchner Boheme sich als "emotional community" charakterisieren lässt. Sie fragt, ob "die erotische Rebellion auch eine emotionale" war (S. 25).
Pierrot L Pedneault-Deslauriers, Julie
Journal of the American Musicological Society,
12/2011, Volume:
64, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
During Arnold Schoenberg's 1912–13Pierrot lunairetours, critics frequently described the work's Sprechstimme delivery as “hysterical” and “neurasthenic.” The essay expounds this important strand ...ofPierrot lunaire's reception by positioning the character of Pierrot in Paul Margueritte's pantomimePierrot assassin de sa femme(1888) and Schoenberg's Opus 21 against Parisian and Viennese discourses on hysteria. Engaging aspects of pantomime, travesty, visual arts, medical iconography, and performance practice, I explicate how, as the medical definition of hysteria underwent important changes in etiology, symptomatology, and treatment in Freud's revisions of Jean-Martin Charcot's theories, so too did Pierrot's performance of the illness.
In this dissertation, I argue that opera’s anti-heroine archetype – one of the most familiar in the genre’s historical canon – returned to prominence at the turn of the twenty-first century, along ...with many of its typical tropes and plot trajectories. Between 1993 and 2013, four leading composers chose to update and adapt the basic idea of a transgressive heroine who rises in her society only to fall silent in the end. Each of the creative teams behind these works finds a novel way to modernize, transform, disrupt, or critique opera’s long tradition of doomed anti-heroines – but each also draws upon a common, historically rooted set of musical and dramatic devices in characterizing their compromised protagonists. Like Alban Berg’s Lulu of 1935, these operas incorporate forms of American popular music into modernist scores; all partake of and thematize audiovisual media, such as film, photography, and phonography. In an introduction, I trace the phenomenon of opera’s anti-heroine back to its historical heyday, and discuss the methodological and theoretical frameworks in which I operate. In the first two case studies, grouped under the heading Remembering the Twentieth Century, I examine new opera’s depictions of two real women who came of age between the wars. Margaret, Duchess of Argyll becomes a complex concatenation of archetypes in Thomas Ades and Philip Hensher’s Powder Her Face, and Anaïs Nin, the posthumous librettist and sole physical character of Louis Andriessen’s Anaïs Nin, becomes an insatiable femme fatale in the Dutch composer’s tightly edited biographical sketch. The second pair of case studies, American Dreams, Southern Scenes, and European (Re)visions, opens with a look at a third quasi-biographical account of a female celebrity’s rise and demise: Mark-Anthony Turnage and Richard Thomas’s Anna Nicole, a satire influenced by the tabloid culture of the 1990s and 2000s. In the final chapter, I turn to a work that eschews the depiction of a real woman, instead featuring a new version of a pre-existing operatic femme fatale: Berg’s Lulu, reimagined as an African-American native of New Orleans in Olga Neuwirth’s American Lulu. I conclude by suggesting paths forward, for both scholarship and contemporary opera.
This thesis examines, documents, and evaluates the process of designing the lighting for a production of Spring Awakening, produced by Temple University's Department of Theater. I will discuss the ...initial design process, the execution of the design, and evaluate the finished design.
University of Washington Brecht Between Mediums Kristin M. Seifert Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Stefka Mihaylova Department of Drama Is Epic theory solely applicable to live performance? Was ...German writer and director Bertolt Brecht a champion for the theatre and theatre alone? This dissertation combines analysis of live and recorded performance, historical analysis, Epic theory, film and media theory in order to discuss Brecht’s shifting relationship with film and other multi-medium performance traditions. The historic and theoretical exploration of Brecht both influencing and being influenced by cinematic work seeks to reclaim him as a multi-medium artist and explore a kind of continual flow of Epic theory and technique not merely between Brecht’s cinematic and stage projects but also in the work of his contemporaries, fellow exiled artists during WWII, and a direct line of cinematic careers shaped, to this day, by the Brechtian legacy. The larger scope of this case study questions the allocation of artists, like Brecht, into disciplines and troubles the existing medium-disciplinary hierarchies-separations that negatively affect the ways in which performance is created, viewed and studied. This dissertation, therefore, more broadly examines the segregation of the performing arts within the academic world and scholarly research that maintains a staunchly medium-specific approach that fails to recognize the endless stream of theories and methods that circulate between performance mediums.
BERG VIOLIN CONCERTO Headlam, Dave
Music Library Association. Notes,
06/2012, Volume:
68, Issue:
4
Book Review, Journal Article
Peer reviewed
...I am not well emotionally either, which won't surprise you at all in someone who suddenly discovers that he isn't considered a native in his fatherland and is thus completely homeless, all the ...more since such things cannot be experienced without effects of profound and lasting human disillusionment" (The Berg- Schoenberg Correspondence, ed. (See George Perle, The Operas of Alban Berg, vol. 2, Lulu Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, 243- 52, on the twelve-tone elements in the concerto; and Perle, "Berg's Style of Freedom," Musical Times 139, no. 1863 Summer 1998: 12-31, for a discussion of Berg's mixing of tonal and twelve-tone structures.) The corrections offered in the Bretikopf edition, for the most part, make sense, except for these three: (1) Rhythm in the solo violin, m. 5 beginning of mvt. 2:
This study traces a genealogy through German and Austrian literature and film from the onset of the twentieth century to the present day that conveys a haunting imposition of Europe’s violent history ...on its contemporary moment. The narratives and films from the onset of the 20th Century to the present day – especially those by Germans and Austrians, who seem to carry on their shoulders a painful awareness of the haunting violence left by European history – attest to this legacy of memory in both its voluntary and involuntary aspects. Both of these nations have histories of frequent governmental transition and various forms of state. I argue that the ghost comes to portray the ruptures in society that characterize the last century and a half of western, and more recently, globalized society, analyzing critical outlooks expressed in literary and filmic forms.
With few exceptions, the understanding of the commedia dell’arte character of Pierrot in musicology focuses on aesthetic progress and the representation of the lonely artist. This dissertation ...examines a wide range of examples of Pierrots at the turn of the twentieth century, and argues that composers and performers used the character to express social-political identities, commentaries, and critiques. My study of French Pierrots focuses on music for pantomimes, outdoor spectacles, and piano. These Pierrots offered commentaries on gender, class, the social-medical condition of hysteria, national identity, the French military, and other issues. The Russian composer Igor Stravinsky composed Petrushka (1911) – a blend of French Pierrot and traditional Russian Petrushka – which musically constructed Russian national identity in France. Pierrots in the Francophone world made an oft-neglected impression on Pierrots in the German-speaking world. Hausmusik composers, catering to the middle class, consciously sought to distance Pierrot from any direct social-political critiques. Pierrots in cabaret-inspired music, exemplified by Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire (1912), align more closely with the carnival origins of commedia dell’arte. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnival theory, I reveal Schoenberg’s religious commentaries on social issues through sacred parody, as well as the song cycle’s connection to existing German literature in presenting social critique through the themes of blood and death. The idea and practice of black Pierrots test the limit of the white-faced Pierrot character. I focus on a black Pierrot depicted by Brazilian-born, Italian-trained composer José Cândido da Gama Malcher. My analysis shows that Pierrot, taken to the extreme, can ultimately serve dehumanizing ends. My work reconnects the musical study of Pierrot with the character’s deep social ties as part of the commedia dell’arte tradition. As a result, it urges composers and performers to consider social and political aspects as they create and perform new commedia dell’arte characters.
This thesis examines, details, and evaluates the process used while executing the scenic design for a production of Spring Awakening, produced by Temple University's Department of Theater. I will ...discuss each part of the design process as well as the technical rehearsal process and evaluate the choices made.
Full Circle Patteson, Scott Wiley
01/2013
Dissertation
The idiom "to come full circle" signifies a return back to the point from which a person or idea started, especially after a significant journey or process. It is the completion of a cycle and brings ...to mind the familiar "circle of life." In terms of my artistic training here, I've learned that the actor's process is the most important aspect of what we do, and in this process we are continually coming full circle. We approach a part with a certain level of understanding and, after a few weeks, come back to our character and our initial instincts with a much deeper and more realized interpretation. There's no way to shortcut this process, and we wouldn't want to even if we could. The MFA Acting program here has been both an intensely rigorous and enlightening journey over the past three years, and I believe that I am graduating a stronger man and artist. I've learned that acting problems are essentially life problems, and as much as the training here is about acting, it's also about who we are as human beings - what makes us tick, our values and beliefs, our individual strengths and weaknesses. As we become stronger, more dynamic artists, we also become more empathetic, holistic individuals. In the end, acting, like life, is about coming full circle. It's about diving in and embracing the journey back to the beginning. And we can never forget that we (just like the journey itself) are enough just as we are.
