tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/wolfgang-amadeus-mozart-53272/articles
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – The Conversation
2024-02-05T02:34:03Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221595
2024-02-05T02:34:03Z
2024-02-05T02:34:03Z
Campy, playful and funny: Opera Australia finds the joy in The Magic Flute, Mozart’s most-performed opera
<p>The sheer familiarity of The Magic Flute, Mozart’s most-performed opera, can blind one to its inherent oddness. It draws on a range of influences, from ancient Egyptian symbolism and freemasonry to European politics (the character of the Queen of the Night has <a href="https://www.eno.org/discover-opera/operas-greatest-soprano-roles/">been read as</a> a covert allusion to former Austrian Empress Maria Theresa). </p>
<p>Librettist Emanuel Schikaneder has created something that is part allegory, part dream and part fairy tale. That this mish-mash elicited some of Mozart’s greatest and most popular music should shake up ingrained notions of classical music as something po-faced and humourless. </p>
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<h2>Embracing silliness</h2>
<p>Unlike the three Italian <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_buffa">opere buffe</a></em> that Mozart composed to the libretti of Lorenzo da Ponte, The Magic Flute avoids <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recitative">recitative</a> – sung speech – in favour of spoken German dialogue. In the recording I first got to know, <a href="https://www.classicstoday.com/review/the-deluxe-magic-flute-standard/">Klemperer’s legendary version</a> from 1964, only the sung portions were included. This tilted the work’s balance away from the silly and towards the sublime. </p>
<p>A new production by Kate Gaul for Opera Australia does not shy away from pantomime silliness from the start. The monster threatening Tamino (Michael Smallwood) is rendered as a silhouette projected by a child with a torch, and Papageno (Ben Mingay) is first seen in the stalls engaging with audience members before making his way to the stage. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Michael Smallwood and the Opera Australia Chorus perform onstage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Michael Smallwood has a pleasing light lyrical tenor as Tamino.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Saunders/Opera Australia</span></span>
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<p>Key to bringing out the humour is presenting the opera in English. The translation by Gaul and Michael Gow has some chortle-worthy lines. “Am I hard of hearing, or is no one volunteering?” sings Papageno as he vainly seeks a woman – any woman – to satisfy his romantic urges. This character is given a decidedly ocker makeover, complete with an esky and allusions to beers and barbies. </p>
<p>Thankfully, more serious moments for other characters – including Sarastro’s arias (sung with gravitas by David Parkin) and Pamina’s lament (heart-rendingly performed by Stacey Alleaume) – are allowed to unfold without forcing the comedy.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Ben Mingay and Stacey Alleaume are on stage, playing the characters of Papageno and Pamina." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ben Mingay and Stacey Alleaume are cast as Papageno and Pamina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Saunders/Opera Australia</span></span>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/barrie-koskys-the-magic-flute-is-a-contemporary-spectacle-despite-the-operas-outdated-attitudes-112284">Barrie Kosky's The Magic Flute is a contemporary spectacle, despite the opera's outdated attitudes</a>
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<h2>Campy costumes and an ornamental set</h2>
<p>Opera Australia’s previous Magic Flute by Julie Taymor reduced the overture to its opening three chords. It is a relief to hear it in full in this production, directed with sureness of touch by Teresa Riveiro Böhm. The orchestra provides a fulsome sound and crisp articulation over the evening, with just a handful of uncoordinated moments between the pit and stage.</p>
<p>Special commendations are due to the flautist and glockenspiel player for their fine solos (the latter was a role taken on by Mozart for the first performance). Weirdly, Tamino held his on-stage flute up in the air instead of miming, creating an odd disconnect between sight and sound. By contrast, the enforced response of Monostatos (Kanen Breen) and his henchmen to the sound of the magic bells was a hilarious spasm of dancing, macarena moves included. </p>
<p>The costumes by Anna Cordingley are eclectic. Cordingley uses guano-stained tradie attire for the bird-catcher Papageno, simple blueish outfits for Tamino and Pamina, red overalls and outsized glasses for Monastatos, and a gaudy gold cloak for Sarastro. All the villains are changed into tie-dye hippy clothes for the final chorus. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Nathan Lay, David Parkin and Gregory Brown act in The Magic Flute." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">David Parkin portrays Sarastro in a gaudy gold cloak and bold eye makeup.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Saunders/Opera Australia</span></span>
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<p>The Queen of the Night (Giuseppina Grech) asserts her pantomime villain credentials with her platinum blonde hair, vampish fur and feather costume. Outdoing even this for connoisseurs of camp is the late appearance of Papagena (Jennifer Black) in a Brazilian-carnival-style bird costume. </p>
<p>Michael Yeargan’s set has a three-sided exterior surrounding grass, with ornamental entrances on each side. Shiny ribbon curtains represent the fire and water tests, with other curtains repeatedly drawn across the middle of the stage for projections and byplay between characters. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-tale-of-two-queens-flipping-the-script-on-the-princess-culture-in-opera-125606">The tale of two queens: flipping the script on the ‘princess culture' in opera</a>
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<h2>Spell-casting performances</h2>
<p>Needless to say, the Queen of the Night’s two arias are among the most applauded. Grech conquers the stratospheric coloratura with aplomb. But for me, the standout voice belongs to Alleaume, who brings a burnished legato to Pamina’s arias, but also playfulness in the ensembles. </p>
<p>Ben Mingay is a seasoned musical theatre performer and aside from some roughness in tone quality, he takes on the role of Papageno with assurance and brings out the humour and humanity of the character. </p>
<p>Smallwood has a pleasing light lyrical tenor as Tamino – less forceful than some exponents of the role, but tuneful and exemplary in his diction. </p>
<p>The three spirits, extended and demanding roles for child singers, are sensibly double cast, and the opening night trio of Abbey Hammond, Zev Mann and James Valanidas demonstrate sureness of ensemble and decent acting chops. The adult trio of Ladies, Jane Ede, Indyana Schneider and Ruth Strutt, work very well together. </p>
<p>Of his big numbers, Parkin as Sarastro (and Speaker) is probably most satisfactory in the aria, Within these sacred halls, which sits higher in his register. His brave but unwise decision to go for the final unwritten low “E” reveals his problematic bottom register, which is often distorted with vocal fry. </p>
<p>Breen brings his trademark comic gifts to Monostatos who, like the other villains, is welcomed into the fold at the end. Gregory Brown and Nathan Lay are solid priests. </p>
<p>Whether one enjoys a laugh, or finely sung sentimental numbers, this production has something for everyone. It may not have solved all the conundrums of the work, but at least one gets to appreciate Mozart’s genius uncut. </p>
<p><em>Opera Australia’s <a href="https://opera.org.au/productions/the-magic-flute-sydney/">The Magic Flute</a> is at the Sydney Opera House until March 16.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221595/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Larkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new production by Kate Gaul does not shy away from pantomime silliness.
David Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/211598
2023-08-25T12:27:58Z
2023-08-25T12:27:58Z
AI scores in the top percentile of creative thinking
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544631/original/file-20230824-19-dofq41.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4071%2C2986&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Creativity involves generating something new -- a product or solution that didn't previously exist.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/red-apple-on-a-background-of-green-apples-royalty-free-image/536687143?phrase=repeated+objects+with+one+unique+object&adppopup=true">Maestria_diz/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Of all the forms of human intellect that one might expect artificial intelligence to emulate, few people would likely place creativity at the top of their list. Creativity is wonderfully mysterious – and frustratingly fleeting. It defines us as human beings – and seemingly defies the cold logic that lies behind the silicon curtain of machines. </p>
<p>Yet, the use of AI for creative endeavors is now growing. </p>
<p>New AI tools like DALL-E and Midjourney are increasingly part of creative production, and some have started <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-artists.html">to win awards for their creative output</a>. The growing impact is both social and economic – as just one example, the potential of AI to generate new, creative content is a defining flashpoint behind the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-hollywood-actors-and-writers-afraid-of-a-cinema-scholar-explains-how-ai-is-upending-the-movie-and-tv-business-210360">Hollywood writers strike</a>.</p>
<p>And if our recent study into the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yjoc.2023.100065">striking originality of AI</a> is any indication, the emergence of AI-based creativity – along with examples of both its promise and peril – is likely just beginning. </p>
<h2>A blend of novelty and utiliy</h2>
<p>When people are at their most creative, they’re responding to a need, goal or problem by generating something new – a product or solution that didn’t previously exist. </p>
<p>In this sense, creativity is an act of combining existing resources – ideas, materials, knowledge – in a novel way that’s useful or gratifying. Quite often, the result of creative thinking is also surprising, leading to something that the creator did not – and perhaps could not – foresee. </p>
<p>It might involve an invention, an unexpected punchline to a joke or a groundbreaking theory in physics. It might be a unique arrangement of notes, tempo, sounds and lyrics that results in a new song. </p>
<p>So, as a researcher of creative thinking, I immediately noticed something interesting about the content generated by the latest versions of AI, including GPT-4. </p>
<p>When prompted with tasks requiring creative thinking, the novelty and usefulness of GPT-4’s output reminded me of the creative types of ideas submitted by students and colleagues I had worked with as a teacher and entrepreneur. </p>
<p>The ideas were different and surprising, yet relevant and useful. And, when required, quite imaginative. </p>
<p>Consider the following prompt offered to GPT-4: “Suppose all children became giants for one day out of the week. What would happen?” The ideas generated by GPT-4 touched on culture, economics, psychology, politics, interpersonal communication, transportation, recreation and much more – many surprising and unique in terms of the novel connections generated. </p>
<p>This combination of novelty and utility is difficult to pull off, as most scientists, artists, writers, musicians, poets, chefs, founders, engineers and academics can attest. </p>
<p>Yet AI seemed to be doing it – and doing it well.</p>
<h2>Putting AI to the test</h2>
<p>With researchers in creativity and entrepreneurship <a href="https://www.vm.vu.lt/apie/destytojai/2-uncategorised/637-christian-byrge">Christian Byrge</a> and <a href="https://www.umwestern.edu/directory/christian-gilde/">Christian Gilde</a>, I decided to put AI’s creative abilities to the test by having it take the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/torrance-test">or TTCT</a>. </p>
<p>The TTCT prompts the test-taker to engage in <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-unlock-your-creativity-even-if-you-see-yourself-as-a-conventional-thinker-196198">the kinds of creativity required for real-life tasks</a>: asking questions, how to be more resourceful or efficient, guessing cause and effect or improving a product. It might ask a test-taker to suggest ways to improve a children’s toy or imagine the consequences of a hypothetical situation, as the above example demonstrates.</p>
<p>The tests are not designed to measure <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0099">historical creativity</a>, which is what some researchers use to describe the transformative brilliance of figures like Mozart and Einstein. Rather, it assesses the general creative abilities of individuals, often referred to as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0099">psychological or personal creativity</a>. </p>
<p>In addition to running the TTCT through GPT-4 eight times, we also administered the test to 24 of our undergraduate students. </p>
<p>All of the results were evaluated by trained reviewers at Scholastic Testing Service, a private testing company that provides scoring for the TTCT. They didn’t know in advance that some of the tests they’d be scoring had been completed by AI. </p>
<p>Since Scholastic Testing Service is a private company, it does not share its prompts with the public. This ensured that GPT-4 would not have been able to scrape the internet for past prompts and their responses. In addition, the company has a database of thousands of tests completed by college students and adults, providing a large, additional control group with which to compare AI scores.</p>
<p>Our results? </p>
<p>GPT-4 scored in the top 1% of test-takers for the originality of its ideas. From our research, we believe this marks one of the first examples of AI meeting or exceeding the human ability for original thinking. </p>
<p>In short, we believe that AI models like GPT-4 are capable of producing ideas that people see as unexpected, novel and unique. Other researchers are arriving at similar conclusions in <a href="https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2303.12003">their research of AI and creativity</a>. </p>
<h2>Yes, creativity can be evaluated</h2>
<p>The emerging creative ability of AI is surprising for a number of reasons. </p>
<p>For one, many outside of the research community continue to believe that creativity <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/yoel_tawil_why_creativity_has_no_definition">cannot be defined</a>, let alone scored. Yet products of human novelty and ingenuity have been prized – and bought and sold – for thousands of years. And creative work has been defined and scored in fields like psychology since at least the 1950s. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.idsa.org/education-paper/exchanging-the-4ps-of-creativity/">The person, product, process, press model of creativity</a>, which researcher Mel Rhodes introduced in 1961, was an attempt to categorize the myriad ways in which creativity had been understood and evaluated until that point. Since then, the understanding of creativity has only grown. </p>
<p>Still others are surprised that the term “creativity” might be applied to nonhuman entities like computers. On this point, we tend to agree with cognitive scientist Margaret Boden, who has argued that the question of whether the term creativity should be applied to AI is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v30i3.2254">philosophical rather than scientific question</a>. </p>
<h2>AI’s founders foresaw its creative abilities</h2>
<p>It’s worth noting that we studied only the output of AI in our research. We didn’t study <a href="https://theconversation.com/chatgpt-dall-e-2-and-the-collapse-of-the-creative-process-196461">its creative process</a>, which is likely very different from human thinking processes, or the environment in which the ideas were generated. And had we defined creativity as requiring a human person, then we would have had to conclude, by definition, that AI cannot possibly be creative. </p>
<p>But regardless of the debate over definitions of creativity and the creative process, the products generated by the latest versions of AI are novel and useful. We believe this satisfies the definition of creativity that is now dominant in the fields of psychology and science.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the creative abilities of AI’s current iterations are not entirely unexpected. </p>
<p>In their now famous proposal for the <a href="https://home.dartmouth.edu/about/artificial-intelligence-ai-coined-dartmouth">1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence</a>, the founders of AI highlighted their desire to simulate “every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence” – including creativity.</p>
<p>In this same proposal, computer scientist Nathaniel Rochester <a href="http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html">revealed his motivation</a>: “How can I make a machine which will exhibit originality in its solution of problems?” </p>
<p>Apparently, AI’s founders believed that creativity, including the originality of ideas, was among the specific forms of human intelligence that machines could emulate.</p>
<p>To me, the surprising creativity scores of GPT-4 and other AI models highlight a more pressing concern: Within U.S. schools, very few official programs and curricula have been implemented to date that specifically target human creativity and <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?language=en">cultivate its development</a>. </p>
<p>In this sense, the creative abilities now realized by AI may provide a “<a href="https://www.space.com/10437-sputnik-moment.html">Sputnik moment</a>” for educators and others interested in furthering human creative abilities, including those who see creativity as an essential condition of individual, social and economic growth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erik Guzik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Researchers had college students and AI take a standardized test in creative thinking, and all of them were scored by trained evaluators who didn’t know in advance that some had been completed by AI.
Erik Guzik, Assistant Clinical Professor of Management, University of Montana
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/207796
2023-06-28T12:35:03Z
2023-06-28T12:35:03Z
US music education has a history of anti-Blackness that is finally being confronted
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534363/original/file-20230627-26812-uskrxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=862%2C116%2C5128%2C3871&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">These multicolored notes reflect the diversity of music across the world.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/musical-note-shape-bokeh-backdrop-royalty-free-image/1147839051?phrase=music+theory+notes&adppopup=true">MirageC/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When it comes to achieving racial diversity, music education at the university level in the U.S. still has a long way to go. </p>
<p>One of the leading professional organizations, the Society for Music Theory, <a href="https://societymusictheory.org/announcement/executive-board-response-journal-schenkerian-studies-vol-12-2020-07">put it bluntly</a> in 2020: “We humbly acknowledge that we have much work to do to dismantle the whiteness and systemic racism that deeply shape our discipline,” the group wrote.</p>
<p>The focus on white, male Europeans in textbooks and music selected for study has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/music-education-has-a-race-problem-and-universities-must-address-it-143719">called into question</a> by countless scholars and practitioners because of <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/03/can-music-theory-education-overcome-its-whiteness-problem">music education’s deep roots</a> in anti-Blackness. </p>
<p>In recent years, the simplest solution for music professors has been to find nonwhite classical composers and use their work on a program or concert to demonstrate the school’s commitment to diversity. One person whose work some professors have used in such a way is <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/the-rediscovery-of-florence-price">Florence Price</a>. A composer and music teacher who died in 1953, Price is considered to be one of the first Black female musicians with mainstream appeal.</p>
<p>But <a href="http://philipewell.com/">in my view</a> as one of only a few Black scholars in the field of music theory, such diversity efforts often serve only to reinforce the whiteness and maleness of the system. </p>
<p>Ethnomusicologist Dylan Robinson <a href="https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/is/2019-v39-n1-is05836/1075347ar.pdf">calls these efforts</a> “additive inclusion” in that they give the impression of making positive change but serve only to maintain an overemphasis on the work of white male Europeans.</p>
<h2>Music theory textbooks</h2>
<p>In 2020, <a href="https://www.furman.edu/people/megan-lyons/#">music theorist Megan Lyons</a> and I did <a href="https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.2/mto.20.26.2.ewell.html">an analysis</a> of the seven most common undergraduate music theory textbooks in the U.S. </p>
<p>We wanted to establish a baseline of the racial and gender makeup of the composers represented in the books to see what teachers were offering to our students as the most important music to consider in the undergraduate music major.</p>
<p>Music theory courses, usually spread over four or five semesters, are often considered the most crucial aspect of the major, and theory textbooks are presented as authoritative sources that outline the essentials of the discipline. </p>
<p>Representative titles include “Harmony and Voice Leading,” “Harmony in Context,” “Harmonic Practice in Tonal Music” and “Concise Introduction to Tonal Harmony.” </p>
<p>Looming large in these textbooks is the word “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/harmony-music">harmony</a>,” the sound that is heard when two or more instruments or voices sound together, though in a global context the term has other meanings as well. What is considered harmony in the U.S. is based on European notions of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/tonality">tonality</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/pitch-music">pitch</a>, <a href="https://www.simplifyingtheory.com/music-scales/">scale</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/mode-music">mode</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/key-music">key</a> and <a href="https://online.berklee.edu/takenote/conjunct-disjunct-melody-basic-definitions/">melody</a>.</p>
<p>The three composers the books most commonly represented were Germans <a href="https://www.biography.com/musicians/johann-sebastian-bach">Johann Sebastian Bach</a> and <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/ludwig-van-beethoven">Ludwig van Beethoven</a> and Austrian <a href="https://www.operaphila.org/whats-on/on-stage-2016-2017/figaro/composer/">Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A black and white portrait of a white man wearing a white powdered wig and holding a sheet of music." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534173/original/file-20230626-12748-u5iebb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534173/original/file-20230626-12748-u5iebb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534173/original/file-20230626-12748-u5iebb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534173/original/file-20230626-12748-u5iebb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534173/original/file-20230626-12748-u5iebb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534173/original/file-20230626-12748-u5iebb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534173/original/file-20230626-12748-u5iebb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mid-19th-century engraving of Johann Sebastian Bach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/bach-antique-engraved-portrait-royalty-free-illustration/164111851?phrase=Black+classical+musical+composer&adppopup=true">FierceAbin/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We found that of the nearly 3,000 musical examples cited in the textbooks, only 49 were written by composers who were not white and only 68 were written by composers who were not men. </p>
<p>On rare occasions those two subgroups overlapped, as with Florence Price. Only two examples were written by Asian composers.</p>
<p>All told, almost 98% of the musical examples were written by white men who mostly spoke German, and these seven textbooks represented about 96% of the market share.</p>
<p>Left out of textbooks are the many African American musicians who contributed significantly to American music, such as classical composers <a href="https://songofamerica.net/composer/dett-robert-nathaniel/">Nathaniel Dett</a>, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200038842/">James Reese Europe</a>, <a href="https://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/blogs/lapl/julia-perry-american-neoclassicist">Julia Perry</a> and <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200038858/">Clarence Cameron White</a>. </p>
<p>Also generally excluded were nonclassical genres like jazz, blues or bluegrass, or contemporary popular music such as hip-hop, soul or punk. </p>
<h2>Anti-Blackness in music conservatories</h2>
<p>American music academies generally reflect the social norms of the day. Anti-Blackness was commonly accepted in all music institutions until well into the 20th century through the <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/11865737/destined_to_fail">eugenics of music pedagogue Carl Seashore</a>, the <a href="https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/am/article/38/4/395/261756">white supremacy of the composer-pianist John Powell</a> and the <a href="https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.2/mto.20.26.2.ewell.html">racism of music theorist Heinrich Schenker</a>.</p>
<p>In her 2019 master’s thesis “A Message of Inclusion, A History of Exclusion: Racial Injustice at the Peabody Institute,” violinist Sarah Thomas details a <a href="https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/62108">common American story of racial angst</a> in higher education. </p>
<p>Thomas focused on the Peabody Institute, founded in 1857 in Baltimore, Maryland and the oldest U.S. music institution, and its board members’ letters about the possible admission of Black pianist Paul Brent.</p>
<p>In July 1949, Peabody President William Marbury <a href="https://exhibits.library.jhu.edu/exhibits/show/a-message-of-inclusion/policy-change-at-peabody/acceptance-of-brent">wrote the school’s board of directors</a> and reminded board members of the school’s unofficial policy at the time:</p>
<p>“We are brought face to face with the issue whether to modify our long-standing rule against the admission of negro students,” Marbury wrote. </p>
<p>Once the issue was put to a vote, only one board member, Douglas Gordon, openly opposed admitting Brent and cast the one dissenting vote. </p>
<p>“It seems to me that it would be a great mistake to change the present policy,” <a href="https://exhibits.library.jhu.edu/exhibits/show/a-message-of-inclusion/policy-change-at-peabody/acceptance-of-brent">Gordon wrote</a>. “In our climate the presence of negroes can to some be extremely offensive.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="One black student stands with a group of white classmates." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533001/original/file-20230620-12148-mzmx1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533001/original/file-20230620-12148-mzmx1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533001/original/file-20230620-12148-mzmx1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533001/original/file-20230620-12148-mzmx1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533001/original/file-20230620-12148-mzmx1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533001/original/file-20230620-12148-mzmx1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533001/original/file-20230620-12148-mzmx1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul A. Brent, the first Black student to enroll at the Peabody Conservatory, is second from the right in the back row in this 1953 photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://cdm16613.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16613coll11/id/285">Peabody Institute</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though Brent was admitted and became the first Black student to enroll at Peabody, the abhorrent views of Gordon still remain present today in more subtle forms. </p>
<p>The study of jazz is one such example of racial exclusion. </p>
<p>Generally considered a Black musical genre, jazz is now part of most music educational institutions, but is virtually always separate from the mainstream music major. </p>
<p>In a few cases, students are able to major in jazz. But in most cases, if students wants to major in jazz, they must major in classical music while playing jazz on the side.</p>
<h2>Change in music education is coming</h2>
<p>Citing declining enrollments for music majors across the country, the College Music Society in 2014 published a <a href="https://www.music.org/pdf/pubs/tfumm/TFUMM.pdf">manifesto for change</a> to the undergraduate music major.
It deemphasized music and methods of the Western canon while emphasizing the need for students to engage with music from different cultures and with new technologies. </p>
<p>This change has taken many forms. </p>
<p>Musicians are rethinking their curricula to treat all music of the world on equal footing as the European standards. </p>
<p>Piano proficiency and European language requirements are being reconsidered – in some cases cast aside – by music institutions. Other schools are creating new music majors for those working with digital sound and sound design, or for those studying popular genres such as blues, rock, metal and country. </p>
<p>Academic work in music is changing as well, and students can now at times get credit for work <a href="https://theconversation.com/hip-hop-professor-looks-to-open-doors-with-worlds-first-peer-reviewed-rap-album-153761">outside of traditional paper writing</a>.</p>
<p>It’s my belief that the sooner we musicians, irrespective of our own identities, can face up to our racial segregationist past, the sooner we can all reap the benefits of our nation’s unique musical diversity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207796/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Ewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The predominantly white European field of music education in the US is changing radically these days as schools confront anti-Black histories.
Philip Ewell, Professor of music theory, Hunter College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165862
2021-09-22T17:55:18Z
2021-09-22T17:55:18Z
Why Beethoven wasn’t the original punk rocker of classical music
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422397/original/file-20210921-5916-1k6oq98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3988%2C2664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Comparing Beethoven to punk rockers is based on the composer's attitude to tradition, but is it an accurate categorization?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last summer, the meme “<a href="https://theconversation.com/was-beethoven-black-a-twitter-meme-reveals-more-about-race-and-music-than-the-composers-origins-143440">Beethoven was Black</a>” was trending online, a trope that drew the iconic composer into <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-beethoven-black-and-why-might-be-wrong-question-ask-180975159/">a 21st century discussion about race and social justice</a>. But there is another curious classical music trope in circulation, one that is actually hard to avoid: Beethoven was a punk.</p>
<p>A cursory search for information about iconic composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt or Stravinsky inevitably yields articles and blog posts proclaiming them the “original punk rockers,” linking them with the infamously brash modern pop music phenomenon associated with bands like the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and The Clash.</p>
<p>What is going on here? </p>
<h2>Punk characters</h2>
<p>Who are the supposed punks of the classical music world? It seems that, for many commentators, any composer who went against the grain in some way was a punk.</p>
<p>British radio station Classic FM, for example, <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/lifestyle/culture/punks-of-classical-music/">provides a short list of classical music punks</a> that begins, improbably, with the medieval nun Hildegard von Bingen. Her wide-ranging chant melodies and settings of risqué texts apparently make her an “anti-establishment figure.”</p>
<p>The list also includes Tchaikovsky, considered a punk by virtue of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pyotr-Ilyich-Tchaikovsky">the emotional effusiveness of his symphonic music</a>. Twentieth century French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez also makes an appearance because he who sought to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/06/pierre-boulez">craft the future of modern music from scratch by vehemently rejecting the past</a>.</p>
<p>In an article for <em>The Guardian</em>, scholar John Butt cites the Reformation, launched by the composer and schismatic monk Martin Luther in the 16th century, as classical music’s “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/18/the-reformation-classical-musics-punk-moment">punk rock moment</a>.” The rocker and poet Patti Smith asserted that Mozart was a punk rocker because his music exemplified the “<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/patti-smith-peyote-dance-album-bruce-springsteen-bob-dylan-mozart-antoine-artaud-a8936716.html">pursuit of the new, of making space, of not being confined or defined</a>.” </p>
<p>In a similar vein, in his 1986 hit “Rock me Amadeus,” Austrian pop star Falco famously characterized Mozart as an 18th century rock star — “ein Punker,” loved by all the ladies for his hard-drinking, punk rock insouciance. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cVikZ8Oe_XA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In ‘Rock Me Amadeus,’ Austrian pop star Falco portrays Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a rebel.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The harshly dissonant music of early 20th century Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg is “punk rock,” according to journalist Rebecca Mazzi, <a href="https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/schoenbergs-controlled-chaos/Content?oid=2181661">by dint of its non-conformist rejection of musical traditions</a>.</p>
<h2>Beethoven the punk</h2>
<p>But Beethoven — once again, as a cultural icon who seems able to absorb meaning and interpretation from any and all directions — appears to be the exemplar of a proto-punk. A tongue-in-cheek <em>Entertainment Weekly</em> article <a href="https://ew.com/article/1995/01/27/sid-vicious-and-beethoven-long-lost-twins/">draws connections between Beethoven and the Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious</a>: both “trashed hotel rooms” and composed “anti-monarchy songs.” </p>
<p>Music critic Colin Fleming’s characterizes Beethoven’s eighth symphony as “punk-rock” thanks to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/02/beethovens-punk-rock-8th-symphony/284033/">its quick tempos, boisterously loud passages and overall “pugnacious and punchy” character</a>. The BBC claims that the annual Proms concert is perhaps one of “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zbgy6v4">the oldest punk rock concerts on the planet</a>,” featuring music by Beethoven that 19th-century audiences and musicians often found “challenging.”</p>
<p>Even the scholarly world can’t resist the lure of this trope, it seems: a German press release for musicologist William Kinderman’s very recent book about the political nature of Beethoven’s music describes the composer as a “<a href="https://www.styriabooks.at/download/private/press/import/9783222150524_PT_Kinderman_Beethoven.pdf">Rebell und Punk</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://pitchfork.com/features/from-our-partners/9943-rip-it-to-shreds-a-history-of-punk-and-style/">Punk began in the mid-‘70s in the United States</a>, moving to the United Kingdom only to fizzle out by the end of the decade. This notion that Beethoven, along with other big names in the classical music canon, was a punk invites some deconstructing. A key issue is the notion that punk — a very short-lived musical movement (and arguably, a form of lucrative and cleverly stage-managed outrage) — somehow exemplified the “pursuit of the new,” as Patti Smith claims.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Patti Smith performing behind a microphone with long grey hair" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Singer-songwriter Patti Smith, shown here performing in the Netherlands in 2018, called Mozart a ‘punk rocker.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Punk traditions</h2>
<p>Punk rock is, if anything, decidedly regressive. It challenges the ear via its raucousness and its provocative and often obscene lyrics, not through audacious musical innovations. It is sped-up rock ’n’ roll, nothing more. Punk relies on traditional instrumentation — guitar, drums, bass — and traditional rock chord structures.</p>
<p>It rejected the excesses of other '70s-era musical genres — especially progressive rock and disco — by becoming more stripped down, but also more rootsy: punk is, in essence, a rock revival movement rather than an anarchic reimagining or refashioning of music. </p>
<p>The ethnomusicologist Evan Rapport has argued that punk’s true roots actually reside in the blues, and makes the provocative claim that the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143013000524">tendency to link punk to the European avant garde constitutes a whitewashing of history that seeks to obscure punk’s origins in Black music</a>, much like the discourse concerning Black composers in the 19th and 20th centuries. </p>
<p>The great classical composers, certainly from Mozart onwards, were admittedly idiosyncratic and individualistic, but whether they were radically anti-authoritarian punks is highly debatable. They may have composed music that sometimes vexed their contemporaries, but they also wrote for the box office, courted patrons, sought popularity and were not artistic anarchists: rather, most understood themselves — even the most irascible, like the arch-modernist Schoenberg — to be part of a larger, continuous cultural tradition.</p>
<h2>Stravinsky, the original punk rocker?</h2>
<p>Notwithstanding the lack of any true affinity between classical music and punk, Beethoven-as-punk-rocker seems to be part of an effort to assert the ongoing relevance and sexiness of classical music, even as performing organizations and venues struggle to stay afloat, and audiences continue to decline. It is the case, alas, that most of us no longer have the right ears and brains for this music, which requires focused attention, musical memory, familiarity with a vast lexicon of expressive gestures and an understanding of how large-scale musical structures are built.</p>
<p>Drawing connections between snarling, three-minute punk songs and Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony in the hopes of simulating interest in the classics and getting bums into seats in concert halls ultimately doesn’t help listeners plumb the depths and navigate the richness and complexities of a half hour-long orchestral work.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a black and white photograph of dancers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A posed group of dancers in the original production of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet <em>Le sacre du printemps</em>, showing historical Russian folkloric costumes and backdrop by Nicholas Roerich. The first performance sparked a riot in Paris in 1913.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Sketch Magazine)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If we must draw some connecting lines between punk and classical music, I suppose we could look to Igor Stravinsky. The Paris premiere of his 1913 ballet <em>Le sacre du printemps</em> is reputed to have <a href="https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/schoenbergs-controlled-chaos/Content?oid=2181661">sparked a riot</a>, and is lauded as a turning point in the development of musical modernism. </p>
<p>This performance, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2006/05/11/110506_sex_pistols_gig_feature.shtml">like the legendary first gig by the Sex Pistols in 1976</a>, has since become shrouded in myth: in each case, many more people claim to have been in attendance than actually were. Perhaps the “classical music is punk” trope should begin and end there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Carpenter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In popular media, Beethoven is imagined as a punk rocker. But what do these claims reflect about our relationship to classical music?
Alexander Carpenter, Professor, Department of Fine Arts, University of Alberta
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125606
2019-12-05T17:42:15Z
2019-12-05T17:42:15Z
The tale of two queens: flipping the script on the ‘princess culture’ in opera
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301563/original/file-20191113-77320-eow605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C32%2C1280%2C818&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two female models face off in a production of _The Magic Flute_ at Texas A&M University. Above, the Queen of the Night is up to no good, while the passive Pamina awaits her rescuer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:15031-Magic_Flute_Production-0385_(16425041116).jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Opera. Whether you love it, hate it or don’t understand it, whether you see it as a treasured art form or a dusty has-been, opera is woven into our popular culture. Let’s take a modern version of opera: a damsel in distress, a heroic male lead, a fantasy world, and <em>everyone</em> sings. Sound familiar? The <a href="https://www-jstor-org.accesdistant.sorbonne-universite.fr/stable/539184">princess movies of Disney</a> can be seen as the direct descendants of opera.</p>
<p>Princess movies and opera alike reveal the model of <a href="https://www-jstor-org.accesdistant.sorbonne-universite.fr/stable/3594706">ideal cultural femininity</a>, with ideals centred around beauty and passivity. The conversation about opera – which can be seen as the original “princess story”, when viewed through the lens of gender equality – can make it more accessible and relevant. This involves not only a new look at beloved classics but the overdue discovery of works by female composers and librettists who reject or transform the <a href="https://www-jstor-org.accesdistant.sorbonne-universite.fr/stable/40215274">rigid model for women</a>. The tales of two grownup princesses in two different operas – one well known and another that <em>should</em> be well known – provide an interesting contrast.</p>
<h2>Aggressive villains or passive heroines</h2>
<p><em>The Magic Flute</em> by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and Emanuel Schikaneder (1751-1812), is a fairy tale story with a good prince, a captured princess, a wicked Queen, a male authority, and a happy-ever-after ending. <a href="https://bridgerecords.com/products/9515"><em>Le Dernier Sorcier</em></a>, composed by <a href="https://www.amodernreveal.com/pauline-viardotgarcia">Pauline Viardot</a> (1821-1910) with librettist <a href="https://study.com/academy/lesson/ivan-turgenev-biography-books.html">Ivan Turgenev</a> (1818-1883) is a fairy tale with a significant twist in who gets steer the moral ship. As in <em>The Magic Flute</em>, [<em>Le Dernier Sorcier</em>] offers a model of power to follow and view as acceptable. But that model is a woman and she that stands outside the two historically accepted possibilities for females, the aggressive villain or passive heroine. Let’s first look at the queen from <em>The Magic Flute</em>, in the villain role women inherited from the fairy tales.</p>
<p>We first encounter the Queen of the Night when she asks the prince, Tamino, to rescue her daughter Pamina from the clutches of Sarastro, her kidnapper. In Sarastro’s domain, Tamino and the audience learn that they’ve been rooting for the wrong person and gender in power. Clues pointing to Sarastro being a good guy, include the gravity of his voice (played by a bass) and the fact that his house is a temple. The two realms turn out to be squarely divided into the <a href="https://www-jstor-org.accesdistant.sorbonne-universite.fr/stable/25002242">light and the dark</a>, and the Queen of the Night is the ruler of the wrong 12 hours.</p>
<p><em>Le Dernier Sorcier</em>, which premiered in 1869, is also a fairy tale and presents a similar group of characters – a magical Queen, a male lead and two young lovers. The Queen of the Elves embodies the natural world but challenges the “otherness” generally assigned to women. She takes on the role of protector to the female protagonist, Stella, yet her dominance isn’t undercut over the course of the opera. The queen’s forest kingdom has been stolen by Krakamiche, a sorcerer and Stella’s father, but her loss of sovereignty is temporary, and her strength undiminished. In text and music, Krakamiche is portrayed as deceptive and power hungry, much like the Queen of the Night. Weakened by years of misused power in a kingdom he stole, his once mighty castle is now a humble hut, protected by an ever thinning protective spell. His immoral role is confirmed by his musical lines; often quickly rising and falling in dissonant melodies.</p>
<h2>Strong and steady</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301560/original/file-20191113-77291-eu8wwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301560/original/file-20191113-77291-eu8wwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301560/original/file-20191113-77291-eu8wwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301560/original/file-20191113-77291-eu8wwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301560/original/file-20191113-77291-eu8wwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301560/original/file-20191113-77291-eu8wwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301560/original/file-20191113-77291-eu8wwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301560/original/file-20191113-77291-eu8wwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Composer Viardot Pluchart (1821-1910).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_dernier_sorcier#/media/File:Viardot_Pluchart.jpg">Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Pauline Viardot’s opera, the queen takes the role protector and moral authority. She orchestrates the union of the two lovers with a steady and calm influence, not by force. This authority is substantiated musically through the use of a meter that is exclusively hers: <a href="https://www.key-notes.com/blog/time-signatures">4/4</a>. All of the music in <em>Le Dernier Sorcier</em> that contains four beats per measure either honours the queen or is sung by the queen herself. Both the introduction and the finale are both written in 4/4 as well, a quiet yet omnipresent assertion of the queen’s dominance in the operetta.</p>
<p>This choice of meter is significant, because of its prevalence in our musical world. Most of the songs you and I know, whether in popular or classical genres, are in 4/4. Giving a strong female character exclusive use of our culture’s dominant rhythmic pattern places her squarely in a place where we can view her as a positive female leader. Viardot further asserts the queen’s power in fluid, yet assertive and undulating waves of melody in her melodrama “Ramasse cette Rose”. This method paints the texture characteristic of the natural world which she rules.</p>
<p>In <em>The Magic Flute</em>, the Queen of the Night presents the type of female dominance found in most fairy tales and operas: imperious, cruel, destroying all in her path. When the Queen visits Pamina at night and sings her famous aria <a href="https://youtu.be/5U5fqO8oMw0">“Der Hölle Rache”</a> (translated as “Hell’s revenge”), her audacity equals moral depravity. Not only is the queen invading a place that is not hers – and one she wants to claim as her own – but she also confirms her desire by commanding the execution of her rival. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, this is a moment of female power. In the extreme high notes of her coloratura cadenzas, for a brief moment the Queen asserts herself and embraces her “otherness” and her separation from the world of Sarastro. Like the mad scenes in tragic operas, it is a brief glimpse that women <em>are</em> capable of power. Even if female power almost always precedes death (sometimes these ladies just get banished, but that’s mostly in comic operas), it is often as good as it gets in opera. Pamina, the princess, embodies acceptable womanhood in opera: submissive, but also willing to take her life for the man she loves – moments after meeting him.</p>
<h2>A new image of female strength</h2>
<p>In <em>Le Dernier Sorcier</em>, however, Stella hints at a new image of female strength. In her duet with her father, she sings; “La vie est devant moi, Je veux, j'espère vivre, mes ailes ont poussé” (“Life is before me, I want to, I hope to live, my wings have emerged”). Her final declaration of independence is underscored by a key signature that is associated with <em>her</em> and not her father, with bold, fluid ascending lines that span an octave or more. Stella’s independence is just emerging, but her character a world away from meek Pamina. Viardot and Turgenev’s opera presents an intriguing contrast to our usual menu of weak acceptable female roles or strong yet self destructive ones. The roles of the Queen of the Elves and Stella present a departure from the stereotype through melody, rhythm and the script.</p>
<p>Opera as an creative form still has <a href="https://www-jstor-org.accesdistant.sorbonne-universite.fr/stable/26376112">much to offer</a> to the artistic world, but it is time for a paradigm shift and a recognition of the unbalanced gender portrayals of the past. The remedy lies in not only a new view of beloved well known works, but a much needed exploration of the works by women composers. Composers like Pauline Viardot allow us to flip the script on the portrayal of strong women and breathe new life into the genre.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Lorette Damron Kyle est membre du Bureau des Jeunes Chercheurs de L'IreMus Institut de recherche en Musicologie. Doctorante en musicologie à Sorbonne Universitè.</span></em></p>
Princess movies and opera alike reveal the limited number of models available to women. “Le Dernier Sorcier”, composed by Pauline Viardot in 1869, shows that a much richer world is possible.
Amy Lorette Damron Kyle, Musicologue et chanteuse lyrique , Sorbonne Université
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/117807
2019-05-27T06:58:20Z
2019-05-27T06:58:20Z
A night at the opera: art comes alive in a modern twist on Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276520/original/file-20190527-40042-welioz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Juan de Dios Mateos as Cavalier Belfiore and Ruth Iniesta as Corinna in Opera Australia's 2019 production of Il Viaggio a Reims at Arts Centre Melbourne. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Busby</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Il Viaggio a Reims, Opera Australia</em></p>
<p>In 1864, four years before his death, Italian composer Gioachino Rossini <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=wPzJ3nEwiJUC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=Alexis+Azevedo+biographer&source=bl&ots=Bq-jf9nJrr&sig=ACfU3U1SDovopUXUcYjqlxxH5_GZrq_lFw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq1N61hLviAhWE73MBHZJiAxAQ6AEwCHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Alexis%20Azevedo%20biographer&f=false">recalled to his biographer</a> Alexis Azevedo that he would probably have ended up a “chemist or an olive oil salesman” had it not been for the French invasion of Italy. That invasion had begun in 1792, the year of Rossini’s birth.</p>
<p>By 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte had established the short-lived <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisalpine_Republic">Cisalpine Republic</a> in Northern Italy, in turn raising hopes a unified Italian state might soon emerge. Only two years later, however, an Austro-Russian coalition mounted a successful counter-offensive. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_unification">Italian unification</a> would not come until 1871. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, in Italy as elsewhere in Western Europe, the Napoleonic age heralded great social and cultural change. Opera houses became places of mass entertainment – Rossini could now contemplate a career as a freelance composer on a scale that had been denied to his forbears such as Handel and Mozart.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sian Sharp as Marchesa Melibea and Shanul Sharma as Conte di Libenskof in Opera Australia’s 2019 production of Il Viaggio a Reims.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At first it seems ironic that Rossini would eventually compose one of his finest works to celebrate a restored French monarchy. <a href="https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/il-viaggio-a-reims-melbourne">Il Viaggio a Reims</a> (The Journey to Rheims) was conceived as a celebratory cantata (essentially a set of hymns of praise set to music) to mark the coronation of Charles X (1757–1836) and was first performed in Paris on June 19 1825. </p>
<p>Rossini never expected Il Viaggio a Reims to become a repertoire staple. Despite it being a popular triumph at its premiere, it received only four performances. Rossini instead repurposed about half of the music for his later opera <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_comte_Ory">Le comte Ory </a>(1828).</p>
<p>It was only through musicological detective work that the original score was returned to life, receiving its first modern performance in 1984. But as a result, we can now appreciate how much Il Viaggio a Reims is as much a work of political satire as political propaganda. </p>
<p>The work is now receiving its first complete staging in Australia in a collaboration between Opera Australia, Dutch National Opera, and the Royal Danish Theatre. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Conal Coad as Don Prudenzio, Christopher Hillier as Antonio and The Opera Australia Chorus in Opera Australia’s production of Il Viaggio a Reims.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The opera’s plot setup is one familiar to us due to murder mysteries such as Agatha Christie’s, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7981885-murder-on-the-orient-express-and-other-destinations?from_search=true">Murder on the Orient Express</a>, or Quentin Tarantino’s, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3460252/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Hateful Eight</a>. In these, an ensemble of eccentric characters are forced to spend time with each other due to unforeseen circumstances. </p>
<p>In the original work, a group of aristocrats from Germany, Poland, Russia, Spain, England, Italy and France arrive at a hotel in the spa town of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plombi%C3%A8res-les-Bains">Plombières-les-Bains</a>, on their way to Rheims Cathedral for Charles’ coronation. A lack of available horses to take them the remaining 300 odd kilometres, however, thwarts their plans. </p>
<p>But their sojourn provides the excuse for a kind of allegorical diplomatic convention in song; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_of_Europe">the Concert of Europe</a> in concert, no less.</p>
<p>The fact that the desired journey to Rheims never actually eventuates is one of a number of elements that suggests Rossini, and his librettist Luigi Balocchi, set out to subtly satirise some of the political pretensions of royalist France. </p>
<p>Charles’ decision to be crowned in Rheims was a deliberate act of provocation to his anti-royalist enemies. The last French king to have been crowned there had been the ill-fated Louis XVI. Constructing a commemorative work of theatre in which an imagined group of guests did <em>not</em> make it to Rheims for the occasion suggested an implied commentary concerning the credibility of Charles’ enthronement.</p>
<h2>A new interpretation</h2>
<p>Perhaps unsure how to engage a modern audience with such elements of historical political intrigue, director Damiano Michieletto’s production instead shifts the time and place to a present-day art museum on the cusp of a major exhibition opening. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julie Lea Goodwin as Madama Cortese in Il Viaggio a Reims.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Madama Cortese, the “Tyrolean hostess” in the original setting, now becomes the museum’s curator (here sung by Julie Lea Goodwin channelling Meryl Streep in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458352/?ref_=nv_sr_2?ref_=nv_sr_2">The Devil Wears Prada</a>). The scholarly Don Profondo (superbly sung and acted by Giorgio Caoduro) becomes an art auctioneer; the Englishman Lord Sidney (charismatically portrayed by Teddy Tahu Rhodes) an art restorer, and so on. </p>
<p>The remaining assemblage of foreign nationals are transformed into the subjects of paintings that progressively emerge from their frames or their packing cases in a manner reminiscent of Shawn Levy’s film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477347/?ref_=nv_sr_4?ref_=nv_sr_4">Night at the Museum</a>, or Gilbert and Sullivan’s satirical opera <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruddigore">Ruddigore</a>.</p>
<p>While this directorial fancy does nothing to alleviate the work’s already episodic nature, there is no doubt it also makes for a very entertaining evening on the stage.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Lord Sidney in Il Viaggio a Reims. The Opera Australia production includes a Night at the Museum-esque element.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The original context of the work is nevertheless eventually acknowledged, in spectacular fashion, when Paolo Fantin’s lavish set and the whole ensemble combined to recreate the painting “The coronation of Charles X” (1827) by François Gérard at the opera’s conclusion.</p>
<p>Standouts among the 14 principals include baritone Warwick Fyfe, who gave a marvellous comic turn as the Barone di Trombonok, and tenor Juan de Dios Mateos (Cavalier Belfiore) and sopranos Ruth Iniesta (Corinna) and Emma Pearson (Contessa di Folleville), who each sang with great beauty and virtuosity. </p>
<p>Orchestra Victoria delivered Rossini’s sophisticated score with great style, thanks to the superb direction of Daniel Smith (making a well overdue debut in his native Australia), fine <a href="https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basso_continuo">continuo</a> accompaniment work from Anthony Hunt on a fortepiano, and some terrific solo work from Lisa-Maree Amos (flute) and Megan Reeve (harp). </p>
<p>The latter’s two ravishing duets, with Ruth Iniesta and Emma Pearson respectively, were a particular musical highlight. </p>
<p>The second of these forms the inevitable song of praise to Charles which closes the opera. But it is the first (which itself slyly references the contemporaneous Greek struggle for liberation from Ottoman rule) that I suspect directs us to the more universal political message that Rossini wished to convey: the hope that “one day the dawn of the golden age will reappear, and fraternal love will reign in human hearts.”</p>
<p><em><a href="https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/il-viaggio-a-reims-melbourne">Il Viaggio a Reims</a> is on at Arts Centre Melbourne until June 1.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Tregear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Gioachino Rossini’s opera was originally meant as a satire of royalist France. A new production updates the work for a modern audience, setting the drama in a museum where the paintings come to life.
Peter Tregear, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/111901
2019-03-18T10:47:00Z
2019-03-18T10:47:00Z
From ‘Wild Horses’ to ‘Wild Things,’ a window into Maurice Sendak’s creative process
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262482/original/file-20190306-100805-xnhs5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Preliminary drawing of title page for 'Where the Wild Things Are' (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 26:7, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fans of “Where the Wild Things Are,” Maurice Sendak’s most famous book, might know every page by heart. </p>
<p>But few know the winding path it took from idea to published book – a gestation process that involved experimentation, playfulness and persistence.</p>
<p>As professors of <a href="https://english.uconn.edu/katharine-capshaw/">children’s literature</a> and <a href="https://art.uconn.edu/person/cora-lynn-deibler/">illustration</a>, we have been thrilled to witness the arrival of The Maurice Sendak Collection at the University of Connecticut’s Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Center. The collection – which contains Sendak’s original sketches, book dummies, artwork and final drafts of his work, amounting to nearly 10,000 items – allows us to begin to trace the trajectory of Sendak’s creative process.</p>
<p>It contains evidence of Sendak’s prodigious imagination and lifelong intellectual curiosity, and offers insight into how Sendak developed his ideas over time.</p>
<p>The making of “Where the Wild Things Are” was a journey, and the vivid materials in Sendak’s archive illuminate the level of investment that was required to complete it.</p>
<h2>A years-long process</h2>
<p>One of the items in the collection is a small, horizontal book dummy dated Nov. 17, 1955, titled “Where the Wild Horses Are.” As one of the earliest forms of what would become “Where the Wild Things Are,” the book dummy contains many of the elements that would appear in the final version, including a boy who takes a journey, gets chased by monsters and sails a boat to an island. </p>
<p>But what’s with the horses? </p>
<p>This earliest version includes images of the child pulling the animals’ tails. In response, they kick him into the air – and out of his clothes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=83&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=83&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=83&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=104&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=104&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262251/original/file-20190305-48441-1vw5b1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=104&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dummy for ‘Where the Wild Horses Are’ (1955), 26:9, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In interviews, Sendak claimed that, when revising the story, he gave up on horses because he couldn’t draw them. But Sendak spent his life immersing himself in a variety of art styles, from romantic painters <a href="https://artuk.org/discover/stories/william-blake-the-romantic-visionary">William Blake</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/giovanni-domenico-tiepolo">Domenico Tiepolo</a> to American cartoonist <a href="https://www.illustrationhistory.org/artists/winsor-mccay">Winsor McCay</a>. Sendak possessed immense skill. </p>
<p>So if he wanted to illustrate horses, he probably would have. In fact, in 1955 he handily illustrated “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JuDHxk8R1jwC&lpg=PP1&dq=charlotte%20and%20the%20white%20horse&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Charlotte and The White Horse</a>,” a children’s book authored by Ruth Krauss, with whom he had a longstanding collaborative relationship. </p>
<p>But Sendak must have decided horses weren’t right for this story, and he took time to let his ideas percolate.</p>
<p>The wild things do appear in his other surviving book dummy, which is entirely recognizable as an early stage of the finished book we now know. Appearing eight years after the first dummy, this one, square and slightly larger than the first, shows the evolution of the book’s characters and visual rhythm. The changing borders – think of the page in which the trees take over Max’s bedroom – compel the reader to turn the pages.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261983/original/file-20190304-92301-1av0xu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dummy for Where the Wild Things Are (1963), 26:9, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“I had never seen fantasy depicted in American children’s books in illustrations that were so powerfully in motion,” <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/01/22/among-the-wild-things">critic Nat Hentoff wrote in the New Yorker</a> in 1966, a few years after the book’s publication. </p>
<h2>Curiosity and creation</h2>
<p>But what happened during the preceding eight years?</p>
<p>Much of the time was spent focusing on other projects. Sendak illustrated other picture books for his publisher, Harper and Row, and collaborated with Else Holmelund Minarik on her “Little Bear” series and with Ruth Krauss on books like “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-0oPfoSK_U0C&lpg=PP1&dq=I%20Want%20to%20Paint%20my%20Bathroom%20Blue&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">I Want to Paint my Bathroom Blue</a>.” </p>
<p>He also published his own picture books during this period, from “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JYbWzxN7hSgC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22Kenny's%20Window%22&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Kenny’s Window</a>” in 1956 to “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3EI5YYS_BEMC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22The%20Sign%20on%20Rosie%E2%80%99s%20Door%22&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Sign on Rosie’s Door</a>” in 1960. </p>
<p>Yet most picture book authors and illustrators work diligently and juggle multiple projects. How was Sendak different? </p>
<p>Unlike illustrators who use a singular style that appears throughout their work, Sendak developed a unique visual approach for each project. He was always seeking out inspiration from other artists whom he admired.</p>
<p>“Wild Things,” for example, owes a great deal to the influence of French post-impressionist painter <a href="https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/henri-rousseau.html">Henri Rousseau</a>. You can see the influence of Swiss painter <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/henry-fuseli-198">Henry Fuseli</a> on “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Outside_Over_There.html?id=rWm3amQiulwC">Outside Over There</a>” and the influences of British caricaturist <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/thomas-rowlandson-463">Thomas Rowlandson</a> and Czech painter <a href="https://www.joseflada.cz/en/josef-lada/work/">Josef Lada</a> on the recently published “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/whats-surprising--and-familiar--in-maurice-sendaks-newly-discovered-book/2018/09/04/b88b6ad6-b04e-11e8-9a6a-565d92a3585d_story.html?utm_term=.073c1740efe8">Presto and Zesto in Limboland</a>,” which Sendak created with friend and collaborator Arthur Yorinks. </p>
<p>He also read widely – he especially loved Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson and John Keats – and as he worked he played music in the background, choosing songs and albums that reflected his creative moods.</p>
<p>“Sketching to music is a marvelous stimulant to my imagination,” he said during his <a href="http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/132778/8931276/1286899495900/caldecott_medal_acceptance.pdf?token=fKLvcZYIBINetOSi0UC2vE4oCr4%3D">Caldecott award speech</a> in 1964.</p>
<p>And he was always trying to become a better artist; he was, as Yorinks explained in an interview, “constantly teaching himself.” In the long gestation period between the dummy and the publication of “Where the Wild Things Are,” Sendak was able to learn a range of new styles, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatching">the crosshatching technique</a> that would appear in “Wild Things.” </p>
<p>As Jonathan Weinberg, curator and director of research at The Maurice Sendak Foundation, told us, “I can think of no other artist – illustrator or otherwise – who has employed so many different forms of expression, not only over time but often on projects that were in production simultaneously.” </p>
<h2>The wild things emerge</h2>
<p>During the period in which “Wild Horses” became “Wild Things,” Sendak enlarged the interpretive possibilities of his subject. </p>
<p>Just as Sendak fertilized his imagination with a range of artists and sensory experiences, from Mozart to Melville, the wild things themselves are hybrid creatures that possess qualities that are both human-like and animal-like. They roar but speak English, walk upright but have horns sprouting from their heads.</p>
<p>By drawing and redrawing the creatures, Sendak could play with their expressions and postures, toying with the ways they might move and engage the reader. </p>
<p>The Sendak Collection contains multiple versions of what would become the book’s jacket. Many of them focused on a particular wild thing wearing a striped sweater. In one version, he looks to the side as he waves to the reader.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262484/original/file-20190306-100802-1o8wu82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Preliminary drawing of dust jacket for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 26:2, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In another, he creeps out from the underbrush, hands and foot raised in motion.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262485/original/file-20190306-100790-1prqf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Preliminary drawing of dust jacket for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 26:1, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a third, he seems to dance, arms locked with another creature, a smile on his face. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262487/original/file-20190306-100799-1auznpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Preliminary drawing of dust jacket for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 26:1, The Maurice Sendak Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even though these drafts don’t appear in the final version, they offer a window into Sendak’s imagination. Yes, attempting multiple drafts is a form of diligence. But it’s also creative play – a fusion of discipline with dynamism.</p>
<p>According to Lynn Caponera, president of The Maurice Sendak Foundation, the artist couldn’t have known that this book would eventually become his most significant work. But she can see why kids are so drawn to the book’s characters. The wild things, she noted – with their large heads, stumbling gait and round bodies – “have the proportions of toddlers, of King Kong, of Mickey Mouse.” </p>
<p>Perhaps that is why the wild things seem so fully to capture the humanity of the young – their longings and rage, their imagination and joy.</p>
<p>Picture books, Yorinks explained, are a medium that the “world doesn’t take seriously.” Yet Sendak decided to make them because they’re “the simplest form to express the most complicated thoughts and feelings.”</p>
<p>The materials at the University of Connecticut show how the work of writing and illustrating a book is a kind of journey, not unlike Max’s, into the deepest recesses of the imagination.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111901/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharine Capshaw is President of the Children's Literature Association.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cora Lynn Deibler is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Society of Illustrators, and the Low Illustration Committee at the New Britain Museum of American Art.</span></em></p>
The book took eight years from conception to publication. In the earliest dummy, the monsters that millions have grown to love actually started out as horses.
Katharine Capshaw, Professor of English, University of Connecticut
Cora Lynn Deibler, Professor of Illustration, University of Connecticut
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112284
2019-02-22T04:26:38Z
2019-02-22T04:26:38Z
Barrie Kosky’s The Magic Flute is a contemporary spectacle, despite the opera’s outdated attitudes
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260312/original/file-20190222-195873-149zyic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A unique production of Mozart's The Magic Flute is playing at this year's Perth Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Toni Wilkinson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Magic Flute, Perth Festival 2019</em></p>
<hr>
<p>As the overture ends, the red curtains at His Majesty’s Theatre rise to reveal a flat, white floor-to-ceiling wall. This suddenly transforms to show a young man being chased through a forest by a red dragon-like serpent. But the performer on stage is not really running; he is standing still, with a pair of comic, animated legs projected onto a white board from his waist down.</p>
<p>This opening sequence sets the tone for the <a href="https://www.komische-oper-berlin.de/">Komische Oper Berlin</a>’s cinematic production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. </p>
<p>Barrie Kosky and Suzanne Andrade’s interpretation of this popular and oft-performed opera (first performed in 1791) is unlike any previous production staged in Australia. Teaming up with animator Paul Barrit and co-director Andrade, both from UK theatre company 1927, Kosky’s version captures the vaudeville anarchy of the original opera.</p>
<p>The singers inhabit a world filled with monsters, magic, revenge, death, love and lust: a perfect fairy tale scenario. The colour-filled era of 1930s German expressionism and the black and white of the popular silent movies of the 1920s provide consistent design motifs for Barritt’s exquisite, hand-drawn animation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260316/original/file-20190222-195883-1ir454n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260316/original/file-20190222-195883-1ir454n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260316/original/file-20190222-195883-1ir454n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260316/original/file-20190222-195883-1ir454n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260316/original/file-20190222-195883-1ir454n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260316/original/file-20190222-195883-1ir454n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260316/original/file-20190222-195883-1ir454n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260316/original/file-20190222-195883-1ir454n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Barritt’s animation draws upon the aesthetics of German expressionism and silent films of the 1920s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Toni Wilkinson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>German expressionism emphasised the artist’s feelings over reality, and the more fantastical elements of this opera are well-suited to this style, full of bright colours and simple shapes. Blending this with live action and live music (Western Australian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hendrik Vestmann) makes the production quite unique. The performers add to this with stylistic movements straight out of silent film, including wide-eyes and exaggerated tip-toeing steps. </p>
<p>The opera’s protaganist, the young prince Tamino, was sympathetically portrayed by Aaron Blake on opening night (most roles are rotated between two performers). He has a compelling presence on stage, and there is a wonderful sequence where his soaring tenor voice is accompanied by animated creatures from the constellations, charmed by his magic flute. </p>
<p>Tamino’s unlikely companion, the bird-catcher, Papageno, was performed in a canary-yellow suit by Joan Martín-Royo. He is wonderfully entertaining, and shows a versatile emotional range moving from alcoholic euphoria through suicidal despair, to undying, stuttering love. The duet when Papageno is finally together with his love Papagena, played as a stockinged chorus girl by Talya Lieberman, is delightful and made even funnier by the exaggerated animation.</p>
<p>No Magic Flute review would be complete without comment on the Queen of the Night and her rendition of the famous aria, “Der Hölle Rache” (Hell’s Revenge). Kosky and Andrade depict the queen as a spider with coloratura soprano, Christina Poulitsi, placed high up on a platform. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xCwB4jeaIH4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Queen of the Night is depicted as a spider in Barrie Kosky’s production.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the screen is filled with her prodding, spindly legs, the singer is confined in a body sleeve. Nonetheless, she displays her range and virtuosity with a note-perfect performance.</p>
<p>The woman Tamino falls desperately in love with is Pamina, sung beautifully by Soprano Iwona Sobotka on opening night. She played the heroine-in-need-of-rescue to perfection, but despite the sexism spouted by some characters, Pamina showed courage, determination and integrity. </p>
<p>That said, she does fall into despair when she believes she is no longer loved by Tamino, and Sobotka sings Pamina’s aria with great feeling as she contemplates suicide.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260320/original/file-20190222-195876-sad0bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260320/original/file-20190222-195876-sad0bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260320/original/file-20190222-195876-sad0bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260320/original/file-20190222-195876-sad0bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260320/original/file-20190222-195876-sad0bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260320/original/file-20190222-195876-sad0bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260320/original/file-20190222-195876-sad0bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260320/original/file-20190222-195876-sad0bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pamina and Papageno in The Magic Flute.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Toni Wilkinson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, The Magic Flute is a problematic work when to comes to the portrayal of women. For example, the Three Ladies who serve the Queen of the Night start complaining about each other in the first scene.</p>
<p>Male characters make generalised statements about women’s failings: when Pamino’s captor, Sarastro states that “women do little but talk a lot” there was an audible groan from the audience; and Papageno dreams of catching a thousand women by bewitching them with his pipes. </p>
<p>However, these attitudes are countered by the suggestion that if a woman has no fear of death or night, then she is worthy to enter Sarastro’s Temple. Pamina earns this respect from the Temple knights by accompanying Tamino on his trail of Fire and Water, wonderfully realised through animation with images of skeletons in the bowels of the earth and deep-ocean creatures. </p>
<p>The original opera also has racist elements, with the black slave, Monstatos, depicted as a self-loathing, sexual predator. This production side-steps this by making this character look like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu">Nosferatu</a> from the 1922 silent horror movie. He is played so villainously by Ivan Tursic that he provoked pantomime “boos” during his curtain call.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260333/original/file-20190222-195853-rv3fba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260333/original/file-20190222-195853-rv3fba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260333/original/file-20190222-195853-rv3fba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260333/original/file-20190222-195853-rv3fba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260333/original/file-20190222-195853-rv3fba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260333/original/file-20190222-195853-rv3fba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260333/original/file-20190222-195853-rv3fba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260333/original/file-20190222-195853-rv3fba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Monstatos is portrayed villainously by Ivan Tursic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Toni Wilkinson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the historical problems with this 200-year-old opera, Kosky and Andrade have created a visual spectacle that, along with the fine performances, provides an enjoyable and accessible night of opera.</p>
<p>However, there are limitations to the staging. The flat wall across the stage onto which the amazing animation is projected includes five access doors placed high up, each with one-person-sized platforms in front. Another door is in the centre at the stage level. This means that characters can only be positioned across the front of the stage or on these platforms. </p>
<p>Efforts are made to break up the staging by having the characters bring on hand-held projector screens, but at times it felt a little repetitive. Yet that is a minor quibble. With a packed house on opening night, it seems audiences will never tire of this fantastical tale.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.perthfestival.com.au/event/mozarts-magic-flute">The Magic Flute</a> is playing at Perth Festival until February 23.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112284/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vivienne Glance is affiliated with the Australian Writers Guild, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and is a member of the Australian Greens</span></em></p>
A new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute uses animation to bring the fantastical opera to life.
Vivienne Glance, Hon Research Fellow in Poetry and Theatre studies, The University of Western Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/108632
2019-02-11T14:07:14Z
2019-02-11T14:07:14Z
Editing unfinished music by a great composer is controversial – but sometimes it needs to be done
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250051/original/file-20181211-76971-bn4k2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C62%2C1482%2C1188&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">First page of Liszt's opera Sardanapalo, GSA 60 / N4. Photo © Klassik Stiftung Weimar</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Unfinished works of art have long had a <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2016/unfinished">poetic allure</a>. Such works are attractive to us today, in part, because of the curiosity and sadness that inevitably accompany fragments. What have we lost? What might it have become? Perhaps more importantly, unfinished works promise to open a window into the creative process more transparently than “finished” ones. They can provide insight into both the intellectual decisions and technical means by which the artist sought to create something.</p>
<p>For Pliny the Elder, artists’ unfinished pictures were “more admired than those which they finished, because in them are seen the preliminary drawings left visible and the artists’ actual thoughts”. Similarly, in the 19th century, sketches became central to models of the creative imagination, appearing to grant privileged access to this <a href="https://www.everywritersresource.com/in-defence-of-poetry-by-percy-bysshe-shelley">moment of inspiration</a>. </p>
<p>While certain genres celebrate the fragmentary, scholars are often squeamish about dealing with incomplete works, and significant funding to undo unsavoury past <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/uk-exhibition-costs-statue-an-arm-and-a-legin-a-good-way">attempts to restore sculptures</a> sits alongside occasional outbreaks of public vitriol at botched restorations of <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/9491391/Elderly-woman-destroys-19th-century-fresco-with-DIY-restoration.html">paintings</a> and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/26/second-spanish-church-hit-botched-restoration-job/">carvings</a>. </p>
<p>Nor are these arguments new. The archaeologist Ludwig Pollak discovered in 1905 that the famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laoco%C3%B6n_and_His_Sons">Laocoön</a> sculpture — unearthed in 1506 — had been supplied with a new, outstretched arm, the result of a competition in 1532, judged by Raphael, no less. When the original arm was unearthed, and shown not to be outstretched, it was <a href="http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/a-curators-keen-eye-reunites-statues-head-with-body/">reunited</a> with the sculpture, which had looked different for the past <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/92168/why-laocoon-sculpture-had-wrong-arm-four-centuries">four centuries</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253662/original/file-20190114-43520-lij4m9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253662/original/file-20190114-43520-lij4m9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253662/original/file-20190114-43520-lij4m9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253662/original/file-20190114-43520-lij4m9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253662/original/file-20190114-43520-lij4m9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253662/original/file-20190114-43520-lij4m9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253662/original/file-20190114-43520-lij4m9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Laocoön’s arm after refixing, 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laoco%C3%B6n_and_His_Sons#/media/File:Laocoon-arm.JPG">Gentil Hibou/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The problem of time</h2>
<p>I am a musicologist and so my interest is primarily in musical sketches. These can pose challenges of presentation that scraps of poetry or incomplete drawings do not. However beguiling incomplete art may be, what are we to do with unfinished music? </p>
<p>Writing with the statue of Laocoön in mind, the 18th-century writer Gottfried Lessing <a href="https://archive.org/details/laocoonessayupon00lessrich/page/n7">famously drew a distinction</a> between the arts that work in time (nacheinander) and those that work in space (nebeneinander). While we can read an incomplete verse, or take pleasure from contemplating the unfinished strokes of a pencil, music exists in time. It needs performance: active realisation in sound. The pleasure of reading a musical fragment in an archive is essentially antiquarian. It excludes those who cannot read scores silently. Music’s sensory realisation in time sets it apart in this context. </p>
<p>Many “pieces” remain incomplete, from fragments of chant to Bach’s St Mark Passion and Mozart’s Requiem, from symphonies by Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler and Elgar to operas by Weber, Donizetti, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Liszt, Puccini and Berg. Some, such as the Requiem or Mahler’s Tenth, have been completed multiple times <a href="https://www.gramophone.co.uk/forum/general-discussion/which-mahler-10th">by multiple people</a>. In several cases, we’ve become comfortable with these “completions”, many of which date from the second half of the 20th century, and have been recorded by the world’s top conductors and orchestras. But this is not always the case.</p>
<p>In 1966, musicologist Paul Henry Lang poured scorn on the first “completion” of Mahler’s Tenth symphony by Deryck Cooke, <a href="http://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1966feb26-00050/">writing</a>: “One never hears of an archaeologist adding a missing arm of his own making to a recovered Venus, nor would his musicologist colleague do any such thing to a symphony.” While there are many such additions to sculpture, perhaps the point is whether the restoration is faked up so you can’t see it. </p>
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<p>Cooke’s work was blessed by Mahler’s wife Alma, yet — in at least one respect — Lang’s reasoning is sound: no two creative personalities can be alike, meaning that even with all the expertise in the world, some level of creative difference creeps into any such “completion”. And attitudes haven’t changed much. The classic example of such a debate may be the speculative completion of Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony in 1988, where the exaggeration of evidence in Beethoven’s manuscript generated similarly <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/766496?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=winter&searchText=beethoven%2527s&searchText=tenth&searchUri=%252Faction%252FdoBasicSearch%253Ffilter%253D%2526amp%253BQuery%253Dwinter%252Bbeethoven%252527s%252Btenth&refreqid=search%253A4ce0">fierce reactions</a>. </p>
<p>From this arises the question of whether we should simply leave unfinished works alone in silence. Where existing notation can be performed to a point, should we stop dead in performances (“and here, ladies and gentlemen, the master died”)? Should we relegate knowledge of such works to specialists, as Lang suggested? And could we bear to forego Mozart’s Requiem and Bach’s Art of Fugue in this way? </p>
<p>It seems clear that latter-day performers and scholars ought not to intrude arbitrarily on the integrity of any particular composer’s materials. But consider the flipside. If performable music fragments are present, can we allow them to sit in silence, or is there an ethical obligation to bring the music into the world, as a kind of social property? </p>
<p>For me, everything depends on the detail and state of completion of what is notated by the composer. The line between editing, realising and reconstructing is drawn on this basis.</p>
<h2>Sardanapalo</h2>
<p>My interest in this debate concerns my recent work towards an edition and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/17/sardanapalo-lost-liszt-opera-premiered">first performance</a> of Liszt’s <a href="https://www.sardanapalo.org/">Sardanapalo</a>, an opera assumed to be fragmentary and irretrievable, but which — <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02690403.2018.1507120">on closer investigation</a> — proved to be a continuous piano-vocal score of the first act. It is occasionally written in shorthand, but otherwise specifies the music’s cardinal parameters virtually in full: pitch, rhythm, melody, harmony, counterpoint, texture. For nearly two centuries, the hard-to-decipher notation concealed some <a href="https://www.audite.de/en/product/CD/97764-mazeppa_sardanapalo.html">52 minutes of music</a> by one of the most famous musicians of the 19th century.</p>
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<p>Simply put, I felt an obligation to bring this into the world. The score still needed orchestrating according to Liszt’s instrumental cues (a task he remitted to an assistant in 1851, but which never took place). With the exception of this and the final 20 bars – which I supplied based on his earlier closing material – <a href="http://www.classical-music.com/blog/story-behind-liszts-unheard-opera">no “compositional” input was needed</a>: Liszt notated or otherwise abbreviated a full conception of the music. But to be realised, it needed to be read in the context of conventions of Italian opera and Liszt’s notational practices. </p>
<p>And the resulting music? According to critics it is “<a href="https://www.welt.de/kultur/buehne-konzert/article181329434/Urauffuehrung-von-Sardanapalo-So-gut-ist-die-bisher-unbekannte-Oper-von-Franz-Liszt.html">absolutely fascinating</a>”, “<a href="http://operacanada.ca/sardanapalo/">a thrilling piece of music</a>” – “think Bellini reimagined by Wagner and you have some idea of the vast emotional sweep of <a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-liszt-sardanapalo-bruno-hovhannisyan-suoni-dal-golfo-lerici-august-2018">this gripping music</a>”.</p>
<p>Faced with a similar situation to my own, the composer Ernst Krenek <a href="https://www.gustav-mahler.eu/index.php/familie/286-generation-7-sons-in-law/561-krenek-ernst-1900-1991">argued</a> that: “Completing the unfinished work of a great master … can honestly be undertaken only if the original fragment contains all of the main ideas of the unfinished work.” What is meant by “all the main ideas” depends a lot on the source situation, and the reliability and clarity of the individuals’ notational habits. The modern, free composition of an absent bridge passage, a missing theme or even an omitted movement would never warrant publication under the name of a historical composer, in my view.</p>
<p>We trust scholars implicitly in this regard. And musicological work depends in large part on reliable scholarly editions. In the end, then, clarity about how extensively “all the main ideas” exist can offer balm against concerns about editing “unfinished” music. Facsimiles, particularly open-access online facsimiles of original manuscripts, can offer full transparency for those with eyes to see and an inclination to investigate. Maybe this would allow our beguilement at unfinished art to be shared, unguarded, with unfinished music.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108632/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Trippett's research is supported by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council.</span></em></p>
Should unfinished art remain so?
David Trippett, Senior University Lecturer, University of Cambridge
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105569
2018-10-25T01:16:21Z
2018-10-25T01:16:21Z
Pianist Sir András Schiff returns to Sydney for a sublime recital
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241948/original/file-20181024-169816-82mvc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">András Schiff performing: his utmost focus is on effectuating his singularly unique sense of musical style.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yutaka Suzuki</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: András Schiff, Sydney</em></p>
<hr>
<p>On top of its usual, high quality series of chamber music concerts, Musica Viva presented its audiences with a special event this week. After an absence of more than 20 years, pianist András Schiff gave two gala concerts with different programs in Melbourne and Sydney.</p>
<p>Schiff’s solo concerts always follow a carefully designed plan. For example, in recent years, he was touring the world with a program that consisted of the last sonatas by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. After the success of this program, he created a similar one of the second-last sonatas by the same Viennese masters.</p>
<p>The Sydney recital paid homage to the late piano pieces of Johannes Brahms, complemented with compositions by other composers, whom Brahms held in high esteem, such as Bach, Mozart and Schumann. Appealingly, there was also a tonal relationship between the individual works; the last movement of one piece was in the same or closely related key as the first one of the next.</p>
<p>In order to appreciate these harmonic connections, Schiff politely but emphatically asked his audience in a short speech before he sat at the piano, that they hold their applause until he, the artist, indicated the appropriate time.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-beethovens-mistake-became-one-of-our-most-famous-tunes-93055">How Beethoven's 'mistake' became one of our most famous tunes</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>Random, tentative clapping between movements has often disturbed the atmosphere of a performance at the Opera House’s Concert Hall. By explaining his attempt to achieve the intimacy of a recital in a living room, Schiff persuaded his near-capacity audience to remain completely silent until the very end of each half of the program – a major coup in itself. </p>
<p>He didn’t stand or take any break between the various compositions, forming a majestic arch of sixteen continuous movements in the first half of the concert, lasting over an hour, and only marginally less in the second. While this created an ethereal atmosphere and the intimacy of the recital was almost tangible, at the same time, the unremitting focus on music, and the music alone, demanded an extreme level of concentration from the audience, one that few music lovers are ever exposed to.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241974/original/file-20181024-48700-p2m2tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241974/original/file-20181024-48700-p2m2tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241974/original/file-20181024-48700-p2m2tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241974/original/file-20181024-48700-p2m2tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241974/original/file-20181024-48700-p2m2tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241974/original/file-20181024-48700-p2m2tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241974/original/file-20181024-48700-p2m2tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241974/original/file-20181024-48700-p2m2tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Schumann in 1850.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Schumann#/media/File:Schumann-photo1850.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The sense of intimacy was both appropriate and palpable in the opening item of the concert, the seldom performed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geistervariationen">Theme and Variations in E-flat major</a>, “Ghost Variations”, the very last composition of Robert Schumann. The composer attempted suicide after writing the first few variations, then completed the work the following day, before he was admitted to an asylum for the mentally disturbed, never to write music again.</p>
<p>Schiff’s reading of this poignant work was indeed “quiet and inward”, as the theme’s description suggests (<em>leise</em>, <em>innig</em>). It was as if the audience was witnessing a simple, private conversation with a close friend. The atmosphere of the recital was immediately established, with every note clear, a perfect balance between various parts, when dynamics were treated not so much as levels of volume but as sound qualities.</p>
<p>The gentle murmur of the last variation led with no more break than a second, maybe two, into the first of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Intermezzi_for_piano,_Op._117_(Brahms)">Three intermezzi</a> by Johannes Brahms. This cycle is headed by an epigraph, taken from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Gottfried_Herder">Johann Gottfried Herder</a>’s folksongs, starting with “Sleep softly, my child, sleep softly and sweetly!” This, coming immediately after the heartbreaking circumstances around the composition of the Schumann variations, and Beethoven’s “Farewell” (<em>Lebewohl</em>) sonata following later, suggested a possible second connecting thread for the evening: the feeling of departure, dreaming, otherworldliness, an underlying theme of the sublime and surreal.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241975/original/file-20181024-48718-111m8lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241975/original/file-20181024-48718-111m8lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241975/original/file-20181024-48718-111m8lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241975/original/file-20181024-48718-111m8lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241975/original/file-20181024-48718-111m8lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241975/original/file-20181024-48718-111m8lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241975/original/file-20181024-48718-111m8lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241975/original/file-20181024-48718-111m8lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Johannes Brahms in 1889.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Brahms#/media/File:JohannesBrahms.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the most appealing features of Schiff’s artistry is the clarity of texture. In these Intermezzi, soft dynamics prevail. (In the first one of them, extraordinarily, the composer’s dynamic instructions oscillate between the softest sounds, “piano” and “pianissimo” in musical notation, and never go louder.) In this performance, every voice was audible and had its own significance, without ever becoming overly strong.</p>
<p>Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rondo_in_A_minor_(Mozart)">Rondo in A minor</a> followed, in a similarly introverted performance; polished and presented as if behind a veil. By now, it was clear to everyone in the hall that Schiff’s appearance on stage may have looked subdued with something bordering on insouciance, but in fact, his utmost focus was on effectuating his singularly unique sense of musical style.</p>
<p>It was not until the first and third of Brahms’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Pieces_for_Piano,_Op._118_(Brahms)">Six Pieces for piano</a>, the last item before the interval, when the audience was exposed to the first outbursts of energy and louder dynamics. They were much needed amongst the regal poise surrounding them.</p>
<p>Johann Sebastian Bach’s final Prelude and Fugue no 24 in B minor from the first volume of his collection <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier">The Well-tempered Clavier</a> opened the second half, exposing Schiff’s esoteric, almost meditative approach at its best. Governed more by a gentle and irreversible flow than a direction towards a musical climactic moment, it was as pleasing as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pieces_for_Piano,_Op._119_(Brahms)">Four pieces for piano</a>, the last compositions written by Brahms for piano.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-bachs-six-solo-cello-suites-83797">Decoding the music masterpieces: Bach’s Six Solo Cello Suites</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>With Ludwig van Beethoven’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._26_(Beethoven)">Piano Sonata in E-flat major</a>, “<em>Les adieux</em>”, Schiff demonstrated that his virtuosity is not burdened by technical difficulties. The turmoils of the work brought out a far greater range of dynamic contrast than ever before in this concert. Even these dynamics were less than sufficient in the enormous cavity of the Concert Hall, serving as a warning that, economic considerations aside, it is an unsatisfactory venue for solo recitals.</p>
<p>The structure of Schiff’s programs, the combination of music and silence, his measured walk onto stage, the careful planning of his playing, his unique sonic world and its faultless execution make his musical personality hugely compelling and an almost cultic one.</p>
<p>However, while fully respecting his artistry, I was rarely touched by emotional upheavals, volatility and an element of surprise during the concert, surely an integral part of great compositions. The pianist’s artistic personality often appeared to be more prominent than that of the composers.</p>
<p>Four encores finished the evening, including truly authentic and touchingly simple readings of two smaller compositions by Schiff’s compatriot, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_Bart%C3%B3k">Béla Bartók</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>András Schiff performed at the Sydney Opera House on October 22.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoltan Szabo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Schiff persuaded his near-capacity audience to remain completely silent until the very end of each half of the program – a major coup.
Zoltan Szabo, Cellist and musicologist, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100459
2018-07-30T19:58:46Z
2018-07-30T19:58:46Z
Opera’s digital revolution may be the key to increasing the artform’s appeal
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229739/original/file-20180730-106502-13k52xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dancers in Opera Australia’s 2018 production of Aida at the Sydney Opera House.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Opera Australia has recently premiered a “digital” production of Verdi’s Aida, a classic of the operatic canon known as much for its expansive musical score as for its obligatory spectacle. In the publicity campaign leading up to opening night, Opera Australia emphasised the cutting-edge nature of its new production. “No other opera company in the world – no other theatre company in the world – is using technology to this extent,” <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/opera/facing-the-music-opera-australia-makes-its-boldest-move-20180709-h12f6j.html">declared Opera Australia artistic director Lyndon Terracini</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229740/original/file-20180730-106514-nuswe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229740/original/file-20180730-106514-nuswe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229740/original/file-20180730-106514-nuswe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229740/original/file-20180730-106514-nuswe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229740/original/file-20180730-106514-nuswe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229740/original/file-20180730-106514-nuswe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229740/original/file-20180730-106514-nuswe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229740/original/file-20180730-106514-nuswe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elena Gabouri as Amneris and Amber Wagner as Aida in Opera Australia’s 2018 production of Aida at the Sydney Opera House.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The production’s set consists of ten movable LED panels that provide digital background scenery ranging from a massive black panther to an ominous, blood-red sky. It has been positively received by critics so far, and Opera Australia reportedly plans to use this digital set-up <a href="http://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/reviews/performing-arts/gina-fairley/review-aida-opera-australia-256129">for other upcoming productions.</a></p>
<p>Yet, while Aida may be a hi-tech departure from the set designs usually seen at Opera Australia, Terracini’s digital revolution is far from new. In 2012, Komische Oper Berlin (run by Australian Barrie Kosky) wowed audiences with its wholly digital set for Mozart’s The Magic Flute. A collaboration with London-based animation company 1927, the production features all encompassing digital environments and even digitised characters.</p>
<p>Through detailed choreography, the live performers also <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14794713.2016.1161955?journalCode=rpdm20">appear to interact</a> with their digital surroundings. This example of what is called “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23322551.2017.1400764">full-synthesis</a>,” sees <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Flute">Tamino </a> fleeing from a digital dragon, the Queen of the Night spouting vengeance with the body of a digital spider, and Monostatos wrestling with unruly digital dogs.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qNY-IjS6ssQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In the same year, San Francisco Opera presented an “all-digital” production of The Magic Flute (2012), with a projected set that featured 1,200 pieces of digital media designed by ceramic artist <a href="http://www.junkaneko.com/artwork/production-design-detail/channel/C47/#/0">Jun Kaneko</a>. </p>
<p>Two years later, Cleveland Orchestra staged The Cunning Little Vixen (2014), in which live performers sang through head-sized windows in a projection screen while their bodies were superimposed with animated forest creatures.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_13TL-7Yn0M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Expand the field to include opera productions that have combined digital projections with physical sets, and the list of innovative productions grows even longer. Royal Opera House’s Don Giovanni (2014) had digital scenery that deteriorated with the title character’s mental state. </p>
<p>The Metropolitan Opera’s Das Rheingold (2010) had its Rhinemaidens emit digital bubbles in real-time. Dallas Opera’s Moby-Dick (2010) had the sailors of the Pequod perching inside digital longboats, to name just a few.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CUOWb40LIuw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Even within Australia, there have been a number of recent productions that used entirely or partially digital sets. Victorian Opera’s <a href="http://motionlab.deakin.edu.au/portfolio/the-flying-dutchman/">The Flying Dutchman</a> (2015), <a href="http://motionlab.deakin.edu.au/portfolio/4-saints-in-3-acts/">Four Saints in Three Acts</a> (2016) and <a href="https://www.victorianopera.com.au/season/the-snow-queen">The Snow Queen</a> (2017) all incorporated 3D stereoscopic scenery which required audience members to wear 3D glasses in order to see the full visual effect.</p>
<p>The Australian International Opera Company similarly <a href="http://invenio.deakin.edu.au/deakin-motion-lab-helps-take-western-opera-to-china/">commissioned digital backdrops</a> for its touring productions of The Magic Flute and Turandot in China in 2016 and 2017.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QQ4sjWizOzc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The real difference between these productions is not the size of the opera company or even the kind of digital technology being used. Rather, it’s a question of how live performers are being integrated with the digital elements on stage. </p>
<p>Is the technology used to create background scenery, like a hi-tech version of traditional painted sets? Or is the production experimenting with the relationship between the live and the digital in a more innovative way? </p>
<p>Digital technology is seen as one possible solution for opera’s seeming <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-opera-deserve-its-privileged-status-within-arts-funding-84761">lack of relevance and sustainability</a>. In fact, <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/sites/g/files/net1761/f/national_opera_review_final_report.pdf">the National Opera Review </a> recommended that Australian companies use digital technology to innovate the art form, appeal to diverse audiences, and lower production costs. </p>
<p>However, using digital technology is more than a matter of mere spectacle or aesthetic but has huge implications for the very processes that make opera what it is. Depending on its scope, digital technology can have a major impact on creative hierarchies, rehearsal processes, and even the performer experience.</p>
<p>As soon as digital projections become more than background scenery, a production needs significantly more planning, more rehearsal time, and potentially more funding to bring everything together on stage. Meanwhile, as digital projections play a more prominent role, so too does the projection and/or video designer and/or animator within the creative hierarchy. </p>
<p>The biggest impact is often on the performer, who may be forced to adjust his or her behaviour on stage in order to make the technology “work.” Consider Barrie Kosky and 1927’s The Magic Flute. While the illusion of interactivity between the performers and the digital elements creates a spectacular effect for the audience, the illusion is only possible if the performers adhere to extremely restrictive choreography. As a result, these kinds of productions have been accused by some of turning live performers into “puppets” for the sake of digital technology.</p>
<p>Despite these obstacles, opera’s digital future is already well underway. The first step for opera companies is to join the party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlin Vincent does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Opera Australia’s new production of Aida features movable LED panels with digital scenery. It’s part of a revolution transforming the art form.
Caitlin Vincent, PhD researcher in performance and technology, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/91554
2018-05-03T10:42:10Z
2018-05-03T10:42:10Z
#MeToo in the art world: Genius should not excuse sexual harassment
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217341/original/file-20180502-153884-1x2vxd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mosaics by artist Chuck Close on the walls of the new 86th Street subway station on the Second Avenue line in New York.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This May, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was to showcase the work of two famous artists: one of painter Chuck Close and another of photographer Thomas Roma. Both exhibitions, however were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2018/01/25/national-gallery-cancels-shows-by-artists-accused-of-sexual-harassment/?utm_term=.cee4e27b1328">cancelled</a> due to allegations of sexual harassment. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/arts/design/chuck-close-exhibit-harassment-accusations.html">public debate</a> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/1396127/Red-blooded-Caravaggio-killed-love-rival-in-bungled-castration-attempt.html">sparked</a> by the cancellations has centered around the question, is it possible to separate the value of art from the personal conduct of the artist? </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7voeCdwAAAAJ&hl=enhttps://stamps.umich.edu">scholar of aesthetics and gender studies</a>, I believe, in the wake of #MeToo this is a good time to revisit the argument of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/pushkin/aleksandr/p98mo/">about the incompatibility of genius and evil.</a></p>
<h2>Genius and evil</h2>
<p>In his short play from 1830, “Mozart and Salieri,” Pushkin fictionalizes an encounter between the composer Antonio Salieri and his younger friend, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in Vienna, Austria. Based on existing rumors at the time, Pushkin presents Salieri as envious of Mozart’s genius to the point of poisoning him at the meeting. </p>
<p>Pushkin’s claim in this play was that the human value of good defines genius, and hence committing a crime disqualifies one from being a genius. Based on this presentation of Salieri as evil, his reputation as a composer was tarnished. </p>
<p>After new research suggested that Mozart died from natural causes, most probably a strep infection, views on Salieri’s music also changed. With this new information, Pushkin’s argument was <a href="http://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/744666/death-wolfgang-amadeus-mozart-epidemiologic-perspective">revisited</a>, and Salieri’s reputation in the music community <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2003/dec/19/classicalmusicandopera.italy">started to improve, demonstrated by recorded albums and staging of his operas.</a> </p>
<p>This goes to show how art makers and their audiences become emotionally attached to artists and composers as individuals, and not just to their music or painting. Pushkin himself identified strongly with Mozart. </p>
<p>And the change in attitudes to Salieri also supports Pushkin’s original argument that how genius is understood is strongly correlated with human values, where good and genius reinforce each other. </p>
<h2>The debate</h2>
<p>In the current debate in the art world over this issue, several experts have said that the value of art should not be associated with the personal conduct of its maker. For example, Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/arts/design/chuck-close-exhibit-harassment-accusations.html">suggested</a> that “we can’t not show artists because we don’t agree with them morally; we’d have fairly bare walls.” An example would be be that of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/1396127/Red-blooded-Caravaggio-killed-love-rival-in-bungled-castration-attempt.html">the famous painter Caravaggio</a>, who was accused of murder and whose works continue to be on display. </p>
<p>However, James Rondeau, the president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, disagreed that museums could present their decisions about the value of the artwork as totally separate from today’s ethics. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/arts/design/chuck-close-exhibit-harassment-accusations.html">Rondeau said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The typical ‘we don’t judge, we don’t endorse, we just put it up for people to experience and decide’ falls very flat in this political and cultural
moment.” </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The #MeToo ethical challenge</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217343/original/file-20180502-153888-1lpwg3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217343/original/file-20180502-153888-1lpwg3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217343/original/file-20180502-153888-1lpwg3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217343/original/file-20180502-153888-1lpwg3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217343/original/file-20180502-153888-1lpwg3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217343/original/file-20180502-153888-1lpwg3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217343/original/file-20180502-153888-1lpwg3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The #MeToo movement has redefined sexual harassment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ted S. Warren</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This public debate has gained significant traction in the art world because the #MeToo movement has redefined sexual harassment as evil. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-me-too-timeline-20171208-htmlstory.html">Started</a> by Tarana Burke, an African-American civil rights activist in 2006 and spread by Alyssa Milano, an American actress and activist, as a Twitter campaign in 2017, the #MeToo movement has become a social media-driven collective voice. It has presented sexual harassment and sexual violence as harm serious enough to warrant recognition and social change. </p>
<p>Consequently, a number of artists have come out with their experience of sexual harassment. Five women came forward <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/arts/design/thomas-roma-sexual-misconduct.html">accusing Thomas Roma</a>, a photographer and professor, of sexual misconduct. In the case of Chuck Close, artists <a href="https://cargocollective.com/langdongraves">Langdon Graves</a>, <a href="http://www.deliabrown.net/Delia_Brown/Home.html">Delia Brown</a> and <a href="http://officemagazine.net/interview/julia-fox">Julia Fox</a> described in interviews and on social media platforms the anguish and self-doubt his actions had caused them as individuals and also as artists. </p>
<p>Delia Brown, for example, described how Chuck Close told her at a dinner that he was a fan of her work and asked her to pose for a portrait at his studio. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/arts/design/chuck-close-sexual-harassment.html">She said</a> she was “over the moon” and excited “because having your portrait done as an artist by Chuck Close is tantamount to being canonized.” </p>
<p>However, she was shocked when he asked her to model topless, not a practice that he pursued with other famous artists. Brown refused. Explaining her anguish, she felt he saw her only as a body rather than an important artist and <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chuck-close-sexual-harassment_us_59f877dee4b09b5c2568fd88">felt manipulated</a>. She said “a sense of distrust and disgust” has stayed with her. Other artists made similar allegations of having been invited to Close’s studio to pose for him and being shocked by his behavior.</p>
<p>Chuck Close chose to downplay the harm done to them as persons and artists by dismissing their words. <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/418322/chuck-closes-sexual-misconduct-response">He said</a> the “last time I looked, discomfort was not a major offense.” </p>
<h2>Genius redefined</h2>
<p>The point this reinforces is that if sexual harassment is wrong then the value of artwork being exhibited in a public museum is questionable.</p>
<p>Scholar <a href="https://www.cla.purdue.edu/facultystaff/profiles/new/newfaculty-14/Gay._Roxane.html">Roxane Gay</a>, the best-selling author of the essay collection <a href="http://www.roxanegay.com/bad-feminist/">“Bad Feminist,”</a> sums up why it is so evil, when <a href="https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a16105931/roxane-gay-on-predator-legacies/">she explains the cost to women. She says</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I remember how many women’s careers were ruined; I think of those who gave up their dreams because some ‘genius’ decided indulging his thirst for power and control mattered more than her ambition and dignity. I remember all the silence, decades and decades of enforced silence, intimidation, and manipulation, that enabled bad men to flourish. When I do that, it’s quite easy for me to think nothing of the supposedly great art of bad men.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This debate has also shown how the definitions of evil in Pushkin’s “genius and evil” argument are also subjective and depend on human values at a particular time. #MeToo has changed the public view on sexual harassment. Indeed, the public debate surrounding the decision by the National Gallery of Art to cancel two exhibitions has been as much about the value of human beings as it has been about the value of art.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91554/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Irina Aristarkhova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In his short play from 1830, ‘Mozart and Salieri,’
Russian poet Alexander Pushkin proposed that genius and evil are incompatible. Here’s why this argument is worth revisiting in light of #MeToo.
Irina Aristarkhova, Associate Professor, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/93237
2018-03-28T14:19:31Z
2018-03-28T14:19:31Z
Reflections on the historic recordings of an iconic South African composer
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211156/original/file-20180320-31596-1qom7gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African born pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephanus Muller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the outside, it looks like a barn. But on entering, you step into a spacious hall with a <a href="http://www.steinway.com/pianos/steinway/grand/model-d">Model D Steinway piano</a> and small recording studio. <a href="http://www.pottonhallltd.co.uk">Potton Hall</a> on the UK’s Suffolk coast is located in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/49ae5227-605a-47a8-9b8e-cd89bf01a97c">Benjamin Britten</a> country. To the north, it’s half an hour from Lowestoft where the composer was born in 1913; to the south, 20 minutes from Aldeburgh where he died in 1976. </p>
<p>It was here, on 15 and 16 February, where <a href="http://danielbenpienaar.com">Daniel-Ben Pienaar</a> sat down to record, for the first time ever, the complete solo piano music of pioneering South African composer <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25434572?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Arnold van Wyk</a>. Pienaar’s work has been critically acclaimed in <a href="https://www.gramophone.co.uk/">Gramophone Magazine</a> (Editor’s Choice), <a href="http://www.classical-music.com/">BBC Music Magazine </a>(Instrumental Recording of the Month), Britain’s <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/">Sunday Times</a> (Top 5 Recordings of 2011), <a href="https://www.diapasonmag.fr/">Diapason</a> and <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/">Der Spiegel</a>. Van Wyk was part of the beginnings of Western composition in South Africa in the early decades of the twentieth century. He contributed major works to the local classical music canon. </p>
<p>Van Wyk was Britten’s contemporary. He was born in 1916 in the small South African town of Calvinia and died in 1983 in Bellville, near Cape Town. Although he displays influences of Britten in some of his works, he was never part of Britten’s circle. Studying at the <a href="https://www.ram.ac.uk/">Royal Academy of Music</a>, Van Wyk encountered other important British composers and musicians. Most significant of these to Van Wyk was composer and editor <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/nov/03/guardianobituaries1">Howard Ferguson</a>, who became a life-long friend who supported Van Wyk emotionally and financially. Ferguson also edited and published some of Van Wyk’s work after his death.</p>
<p>Pienaar, who was born in South Africa, has been a <a href="https://www.ram.ac.uk/about-us/staff/daniel-ben-pienaar">member</a> of the Royal Academy of Music’s teaching faculty since 2005. As he explains on his <a href="http://danielbenpienaar.com">website</a>, he views the canonic classical repertoire as,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>radically ‘late’ – both with respect to the works themselves, and to the performance traditions and great recorded performances that surround them – demanding an active intervention from the performer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This approach, of which <a href="http://www.glenngould.com/biography/">Glenn Gould</a> is perhaps the most famous historical pianistic reference point, situates Pienaar outside conventional notions of “interpretation” that depend on the normative authority of the composer and score. Instead, Pienaar embraces performances, and especially recordings, as radical acts of text creation.</p>
<h2>Against pianism</h2>
<p>Pienaar has recorded extensively, including the complete Beethoven 32 Piano Sonatas, the Bach Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2 and the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas. He is the first South African to have done this. </p>
<p>Visiting the Royal Academy of Music in 2014 I was struck by how, during a public lecture, he traversed an expansive piano repertoire without any reference to “style” or “tradition”. Instead, he was concerned with “light” notes and “heavy” notes, and the effect the performer’s choices in this regard had on the logic and creative possibilities of the music. </p>
<p>In a series of lectures in 2017 in Stellenbosch he <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213191062032812&set=a.10203655390326979.1073741841.1283378338&type=3&theater">expounded</a> on these ideas. They represented, to my mind, a fundamental challenge to the 19th century construct of concert <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pianism">“pianism”</a>, a practice born from the crucible of virtuosity, composer geniuses and the development of a concert hall tradition.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Aryan Kaganof’s shortfilm ‘Daniel-Ben Pienaar: Removing the Room’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Potton Hall recordings</h2>
<p>Van Wyk’s mature solo piano music comprises five works: Pastorale e Capriccio (1948, revised 1955), Night Music (1945-1958), Four Piano Pieces (1965), Tristia (1968-1978) and Ricordanza (1973-1979). Of these, Night Music is the major work. Pienaar’s recording of the solo piano music became the first project of the Arnold van Wyk Centenary Fund which was established in 2016 by the Africa Open Institute. </p>
<p>Pienaar explained to me that he wanted to approach the Van Wyk piano music “on the wilder side of control”, much like Van Wyk himself played the piano. Agreeing with recording engineer Philip Hobbs that they would emulate the sound of the Chopin recording they had produced the previous year in the same hall with the same instrument, Pienaar started the recording session with the Four Piano Pieces. </p>
<p>The Potton Hall Steinway is not an instrument with a transparent, projecting brilliance. It requires hard work to achieve the effortless floating of cantabile (songlike) lines. That makes it difficult to discard some of the weight of attack required for the the fast music.</p>
<p>And it was Van Wyk’s fast music that saw the most perceptible reinvention of Van Wyk in Pienaar’s readings. His tempi were furiously fast, exceeding any of the extant recordings of these pieces by a wide margin. </p>
<p>It was the choice of these tempi that allowed Pienaar to test pianistic control against the energy and rhythmic definition imparted by speed. Whereas Van Wyk’s own technically limited pianism often sacrificed “correct” playing for characterful sculpting of sound, Pienaar’s much superior technique could only approach this pervading sense of musical fragility by exceeding the speed limit, as it were. </p>
<p>In the slower music Pienaar took care to differentiate various characters of slowness: the ruminative <a href="https://www.thefreedictionary.com/parlando">parlando</a> (“music to be performed as though speaking”) of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/8191679/My_country_my_dry_forsaken_country_On_exile_in_Arnold_van_Wyks_NP_van_Wyk_Louws_and_Ovids_Tristia">Tristia</a>, for example, versus the nostalgic lines of <a href="http://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/50602">Ricordanza</a> or the ethereally distant qualities of the coda of Night Music. </p>
<h2>Repository of “lateness”</h2>
<p>In a correspondence preceding the historical recording of Van Wyk’s solo piano music, Pienaar wrote to me that he felt a similarity of approach to performing Van Wyk as he did to performing Beethoven or Bach. Even though the solo piano music had never been recorded as a whole, he felt that, as a performer, he was coming “late” to Van Wyk. He was engaging the music at a contemporary point in time as if it had proliferated in meanings and interpretive possibilities. In imagining the realization of these possibilities in Van Wyk’s music (with single exceptions in lieu of a powerful recorded tradition), he rejected certain fictional readings and embraced others. Ricordanza could therefore become a study in musical line (rather than sonority), and the ‘Scherzino’ from Four Piano Pieces an ironic rather than pedagogic study.</p>
<p>It’s an approach that might serve, when the recordings are released and become known, to draw Van Wyk closer to Britten than to the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1q31scq">English pastoralism</a> with which he has been associated. It is also an illustration that goes beyond the naïve and gauche notions of “interpretation” or “entertainment” associated with pianism. It’s therefore set to give full expression to the performer as creative artist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Africa Open Institute receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Nussbaum Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation. The recording of the Van Wyk piano music was made possible by a grant from the Rupert Music Foundation.</span></em></p>
A new recording of South African composer Arnold van Wyk’s complete solo piano music explores new perspectives.
Stephanus Muller, Musicology, Stellenbosch University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/92241
2018-02-22T16:54:37Z
2018-02-22T16:54:37Z
Classical music’s divorce from God has been one of the great failures of our times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207507/original/file-20180222-152375-gwyml0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Road to nowhere?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/music-score-pages-504817093?src=abvShtqspKJ6A9BnBCinAg-2-65">Sergio Delle Vedove</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Reverend Jonathan Arnold, dean of divinity at Magdalen college, Oxford, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sacred-Music-in-Secular-Society/Arnold/p/book/9781409451709">has written</a> about the “seeming paradox that, in today’s so-called secular society, sacred choral music is as powerful, compelling and popular as it has ever been”. </p>
<p>But is this a paradox? Arguably the power of this music derives from having been written by supremely talented, well-trained composers who just happened to live in a Christian tradition, writing mainly for the church. If the dominant religion over the past millennium had been atheist secularism, say, talented composers might still have written equally compelling music. </p>
<p>The same might also be true elsewhere in the arts – not just for Christian composers such as Mozart, but also for Christian poets like Dante, and Christian artists like Beato Angelico. If so, the power of Mozart’s famous Ave Verum has nothing to do with the mystical body of Christ in the Eucharist and everything to do with the innate genius of the composer. </p>
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</figure>
<p>A problem with such counter-factual hypotheses, however, is that this is all they are: hypotheses. By contrast, sacred music and extraordinary Christian art is a reality. Many of these Christian artists also experienced their own creative process as “inspired”, believing God had had a hand in their work. </p>
<p>Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI <a href="http://www.anglican.ink/article/benedict-music-encounter-divine">claimed that</a> “in no other cultural domain is there a music of a greatness equal to that which was born in the domain of the Christian faith”. He even added that “this music, for me, is a demonstration of the truth of Christianity”. </p>
<p>Many others have touched on this sense that music springs from faith and can only be artificially separated from it. This includes non-religious people, who often speak of their experience of music in spiritually inflected terms, describing it as “soulful” or “transcendent” or “mystical” or whatever. This is where there really might be a paradox: secular people being moved by the sacred through music. </p>
<h2>The God exclusion</h2>
<p>Classical composers in the post-war period sought to make a clear break with tradition, including with the cultural baggage of Christianity. The Scottish composer James MacMillan, who is also a professor at the University of St Andrews divinity school, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Composing_Music_for_Worship.html?id=ffeTAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">lamented</a> the divorce of music from extra-musical inspiration in this period: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Composers like Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio and the young Turks of the post-war generation wanted to start afresh from year zero, to write a music that was untainted by tradition.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>British music departments and conservatoires of MacMillan’s generation in the 1970s saw music as “complete in itself” and that “anything else was extraneous and irrelevant”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207539/original/file-20180222-152379-1t97xhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James MacMillan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/konserthuset/5729040883/in/photolist-o5Whkf-7hfJ6M-JFgB7H-okp2Pm-okp3Rm-onqY2p-onqUna-9JfQfX-apkJae-9a5Y9U-FEQYMB-SRK6nA-SUfx9K-RP5f9J-rxuXSH">Helsingborgs Konserthus</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The English-Polish composer Roxanna Panufnik <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Composing_Music_for_Worship.html?id=ffeTAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">described</a> something similar:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I left music college swearing never to write another note again … It was during the mid-1980s when esoteric and cerebral avant-garde music was still considered the right kind of music to be writing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Classical music in this era became ultimately sterile, delighted with its own inaccessibility and unpopularity; a cerebral playing around with notes on the page. MacMillan and Panufnik only discovered their own compositional voices by being true to themselves; allowing the “spiritual dimension to emerge” and reacting against the culture of the time. </p>
<p>The irony, as MacMillan has <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Composing_Music_for_Worship.html?id=ffeTAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">pointed out</a> before, is that mainstream modernist music has often been more plugged into the Judeo-Christian tradition than is sometimes appreciated. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arnold-Schoenberg">Arnold Schoenberg</a> reconverted to Judaism after the Holocaust. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Igor-Stravinsky">Igor Stravinsky</a> was Russian Orthodox, Olivier Messaien was Catholic. From this perspective, Christianity is an extraordinary source of artistic originality; rejecting a search for the sacred leads ultimately to a dead end. </p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<h2>21st century composition</h2>
<p>Today, if you go to a concert even of sacred music, you are unlikely to find reference in the programme notes to religious inspiration. There remains a snooty condescension in intellectual circles towards the “extra-musical”, and a privileging of pure musical analysis. </p>
<p>The recording industry is driving technical perfection, while the notion of <a href="https://sohipboston.squarespace.com/what-is-hip/">“historically informed performance”</a> is becoming ever more dominant as part of a wider focus on achieving a supposedly “correct” style. All too easily these become goals, rather than the means to express something deeper. </p>
<p>Our response at St Andrews has been to try to introduce the next generation of composers to the creative power of Christianity, pioneering what we call theologically informed programming and performance. We paired six of the best upcoming composers from around the UK and Ireland with doctoral theologians from the university. </p>
<p>The theologians were tasked with researching passages from scripture that could be set to music by the composers. Participants didn’t need any faith, and were encouraged to engage with the Christian tradition however they wanted. Mentored by MacMillan and part of our wider <a href="http://theoartistry.org">TheoArtistry</a> project, the collaborations have produced six wonderful new works of sacred music, which are available on the CD Annunciations: Sacred Music for the 21st Century.</p>
<p>One great example is by Rebekah Dyer and Kerensa Briggs. Dyer’s research on fire in theology, combined with her hobby as a fire spinner, gave talented composer Briggs a fresh perspective on <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+3">Moses’ encounter</a> with God through the Burning Bush. Using textured sounds of choir and organ, the composition conveys a meeting between earth and heaven, history and eternity. </p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>When music encounters religion, I see the result as being like the scriptural image of water and wine: the art can be transformed and come not to serve theology, but to be theology – or more exactly theoartistry, insofar as it may reveal God in a new way through artistry. </p>
<p>From the earliest Gregorian chants through Bach and Mozart to the very different contemporary sacred music of MacMillan and Arvo Pärt, there are so many examples of the great beauty that this can achieve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92241/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Corbett is part of the TheoArtistry project. Annunciations: Sacred Music for the 21st Century is launching at the TheoArtistry Festival n St Andrews in March.</span></em></p>
Divine inspiration was at the centre of music for thousands of years – until post-war conservatoires got other ideas.
George Corbett, Lecturer in Theology, Imagination and the Arts, University of St Andrews
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86952
2017-11-09T09:54:24Z
2017-11-09T09:54:24Z
Music only helps you concentrate if you’re doing the right kind of task
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193606/original/file-20171107-1017-5pm1sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Music and work don't always mix.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hipster-student-studying-library-university-340653119?src=QzwYyaR96cElh1N0RNobwA-2-18">wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many of us listen to music while we work, thinking that it will help us to concentrate on the task at hand. And in fact, recent research has found that music can have <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0182210">beneficial effects on creativity</a>. When it comes to other areas of performance, however, the impact of background music is more complicated.</p>
<p>The assumption that listening to music when working is beneficial to output likely has its roots in the so-called “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8413624">Mozart effect</a>”, which gained wide media attention in the early 1990s. Put simply, this is the finding that spatial rotation performance (mentally rotating a 3D dimensional shape to determine whether it matches another or not) is increased immediately after listening to the music of Mozart, compared to relaxation instructions or no sound at all. Such was the attention that this finding garnered that the then US governor of Georgia, Zell Miller, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/15/us/georgia-s-governor-seeks-musical-start-for-babies.html">proposed giving free cassettes or CDs</a> of Mozart’s music to prospective parents.</p>
<p>Subsequent studies have cast doubt on the necessity of the music of Mozart to produce this effect – a “<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9280.00170">Schubert effect</a>”, a “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16597767">Blur effect</a>”, and even a “<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9280.00170">Stephen King effect</a>” (his audiobook rather than his singing) have all been observed. In addition, musicians could show the effect <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-014-9232-7">purely from imagining the music</a> rather than actually listening to it.</p>
<p>So researchers then suggested that the “Mozart effect” was not due to his music as such, but rather to people’s optimum levels of mood and arousal. And so it became the “<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9280.00170">mood and arousal effect</a>”. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the situations in which most mood and arousal effects are observed are slightly unrealistic. Do we really sit and listen to music, switch it off, and then engage in our work in silence? More likely is that we work with our favourite tunes playing in the background. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193809/original/file-20171108-14199-1h15svh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193809/original/file-20171108-14199-1h15svh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193809/original/file-20171108-14199-1h15svh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193809/original/file-20171108-14199-1h15svh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193809/original/file-20171108-14199-1h15svh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193809/original/file-20171108-14199-1h15svh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193809/original/file-20171108-14199-1h15svh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Distracted at work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cheerful-african-american-businessman-listening-music-615313214?src=u7_Nu2-ZKXkExf1TgKe_EA-1-4">Pressmaster/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How sound affects performance has been the topic of laboratory research for over 40 years, and is observed through a phenomenon called the irrelevant sound effect. Basically, this effect means that <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pchj.44/abstract">performance is poorer</a> when a task is undertaken in the presence of background sound (irrelevant sound that you are ignoring), in comparison to quiet.</p>
<p>To study irrelevant sound effect, participants are asked to complete a simple task which requires them to recall a series of numbers or letters in the exact order in which they saw them – similar to trying to memorise a telephone number when you have no means to write it down. In general, people achieve this by rehearsing the items either aloud or under their breath. The tricky thing is being able to do this while ignoring any background noise. </p>
<p>Two key characteristics of the irrelevant sound effect are required for its observation. First, the task must require the person to use their rehearsal abilities, and second, the sound must contain acoustical variation – for example, sounds such as “n, r, p” as opposed to “c, c, c”. Where the sound does not vary much acoustically, then performance of the task is much closer to that observed in quiet conditions. Interestingly, it does not matter whether the person likes the sound or not. <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.1731/abstract">Performance is equally as poor</a> whether the background sound is music the person likes or dislikes.</p>
<p>The irrelevant sound effect itself comes from attempting to process two sources of ordered information at the same time – one from the task and one from the sound. Unfortunately, only the former is required to successfully perform the serial recall task, and the effort expended in ensuring that irrelevant order information from the sound is not processed actually impedes this ability. </p>
<p>A similar conflict is also seen when reading while in the presence of lyrical music. In this situation, the two sources of words – from the task and the sound – are in conflict. The subsequent cost is poorer performance of the task in the presence of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.2994/abstract">music with lyrics</a>.</p>
<p>What this all means is that whether having music playing in the background helps or hinders performance depends on the task and on the type of music, and only understanding this relationship will help people maximise their productivity levels. If the task requires creativity or some element of mental rotation then listening to music one likes can increase performance. In contrast, if the task requires one to rehearse information in order then quiet is best, or, in the case of reading comprehension, quiet or instrumental music.</p>
<p>One promising area of the impact of music on cognitive abilities stems from actually learning to play a musical instrument. Studies show that children who are being musically trained show an <a href="http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/%7Ew3psygs/SchellenbergCDPS2005.pdf">improvement in intellectual abilities</a>. However, the reasons behind this are, at present, unknown and likely to be complex. It may not be the music per se that produces this effect but more the activities associated with studying music, such as concentration, repeated practice, lessons and homework.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86952/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Perham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Listening to your favourite album might not be the best idea if you’ve got something to do.
Nick Perham, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Cardiff Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86776
2017-11-06T19:21:01Z
2017-11-06T19:21:01Z
How to use music to fine tune your child for school
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193116/original/file-20171102-26438-11r0st4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Babies start their musical development in the womb.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Can music actually make us smarter? Research suggests that from as early as 16 weeks of pregnancy, when auditory function is forming, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4768527/">babies begin their musical development</a>. Their early adaptive exposure to sounds, including those familiar sounds of parents’ voices, enhance extraordinary processing skills. </p>
<p>Neuroscience teaches us that a child’s <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_merzenich_on_the_elastic_brain">brain is plastic</a>. By this, we mean it is malleable and has the ability to change. The first year of life, more than any other year, will see the most rapid change in brain size and function as all the sensory receptors activate. Intriguingly, neuro-imaging <a href="http://research.acer.edu.au/research_conference/RC2013/6august/8/">shows</a> that music alone turns on large sectors of a child’s brain, opening <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueqgenARzlE">crucial neural pathways</a> that will become the highways and byways for every piece of information the process. </p>
<p>We’d all love to think our children will grow up intelligent, blissfully free from academic struggle. Truth is, the learning journey is speckled with challenges, and each child will have a unique intelligence and learner disposition. One thing we know is that parental involvement in cognitive stimulation from the earliest years will help form solid foundations that underpin a more successful schooling journey. </p>
<p>So, what can parents do to prepare young learners for school?</p>
<h2>Sing like no one’s listening</h2>
<p>Singing nursery rhymes to your child, however old fashioned you may think it is, will get them off to a flying start. Children become particularly responsive because <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4768527/">reciprocal communication </a>occurs as they begin to mimic you - pre-empting certain sounds, tones or words that they recognise. Using pitch and rhythm in the rhymes and lullabies we introduce to our children will begin to create neural stimulation that develops the brain’s auditory cortex, transforming their ability to communicate. </p>
<h2>Bang on those pots and pans</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193123/original/file-20171102-26438-1rk48re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193123/original/file-20171102-26438-1rk48re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193123/original/file-20171102-26438-1rk48re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193123/original/file-20171102-26438-1rk48re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193123/original/file-20171102-26438-1rk48re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193123/original/file-20171102-26438-1rk48re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193123/original/file-20171102-26438-1rk48re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While it may fray the nerves, banging on the pots and pans is a fantastic way to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-music-education/article/timespace-structuring-in-spontaneous-play-on-educational-percussion-instruments-among-three-and-four-year-olds/47CE835FBF1B938421EDBD4FF74F737A">improve spatial reasoning</a>. With background music blaring, children first develop the coordination required to hit the metallic targets, and as their sensory cortex develops, they begin to keep in time. <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1360.015/full%20shows">Research</a>shows that spatial reasoning, along with a sense of beat and rhythm (which invariably includes an aural and tactile sense of measure and counting) will enhance mathematical abilities.</p>
<h2>Join a children’s music group</h2>
<p>Early childhood music-based playgroups offer a unique learning context for children. The songs and activities employ beat patterns, movement, repeated chorus lines and echo singing to engage with young participants. The cerebellum at the base of our brains is responsible for movement and balance, and interestingly, is where <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3227856/">emotional reactions to music form</a>. Universally, early childhood educators use rhyme and song to teach children how language is constructed, and with good reason. Movement, foot tapping and dancing to a beat are also good ways of developing the brain’s motor cortex.</p>
<h2>The ‘Mozart Effect’</h2>
<p>There is a popular hypothesis that listening to Mozart makes you smarter. The <a href="http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/lerch1/edpsy/mozart_effect.html">“Mozart Effect”</a> refers primarily to a landmark study in 1993, where participants listening to Mozart’s music (rather than to relaxation music or silence) achieved higher <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9280.00345">spatial-temporal results</a>. Importantly, spatial-temporal reasoning is crucially active when children are performing science and maths tasks. Listening to music in any capacity induces endorphin production in the brain, causing improvement in mood and creative problem solving.</p>
<h2>Learn an instrument</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193124/original/file-20171102-26448-1pdmvll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193124/original/file-20171102-26448-1pdmvll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193124/original/file-20171102-26448-1pdmvll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193124/original/file-20171102-26448-1pdmvll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193124/original/file-20171102-26448-1pdmvll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193124/original/file-20171102-26448-1pdmvll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193124/original/file-20171102-26448-1pdmvll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many parents wonder when a child should start learning their first musical instrument. Importantly, instrumental tuition is not about producing the next Mozart or Delta Goodrem. Music lessons, for even the briefest of periods, are enjoyable and establish a life-long skill. It has also been noted that musicians’ brains develop a <a href="http://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/10/3019/tab-figures-data">thickened pre-frontal cortex</a> - their brains are actually bigger. And this is the area of the brain most crucially involved in memory. One thing researchers and music educators endorse is the amazing impact it has on the development of executive functions <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/19/3/712/436400">such as working memory, attention span and cognition</a>.</p>
<p>Many schools are putting research into practice, and Queensland is leading the way with <a href="http://musicaustralia.org.au/discover/music-education/music-education-in-australia/">music taught in 87% of schools</a>. Immersion music programs, where all students learn an instrument for a one-year minimum, have become commonplace. The results speak for themselves. </p>
<p>Psychologists from a Californian University <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01616412.1997.11740765">conducted research</a> on pre-school aged children, and proved that those who had weekly keyboard lessons improved their spatial-temporal skills 34% more than those who didn’t. The benefits did not stop there. Children developed fine motor skills, reading, auditory recognition, resilience, and increased their memory capacity. All of these benefits of instrumental tuition bode well for the classroom journey ahead.</p>
<p>You may never have considered the impact of music on the development of your child’s brain, but it’s not too late to start. Just because you can’t sing, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Your little one’s brain is far more malleable during infancy, and there is a “window of opportunity” where <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2uhP2CBnaGwC&oi=fnd&pg=PP6&dq=huttonlocher+neural+plasticity&ots=O6g8TZherH&sig=pTZRW3KxoR3ijNIZODNBuWJrtoQ#v=onepage&q=huttonlocher%20neural%20plasticity&f=false">intervention is most effective</a>. If you engage your child in musical activities, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4768527/">then research shows </a>you are directly helping to fine tune them for success in later years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chelsea Harry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There a number of ways you can use music to shape your child’s brain for success, from 16 weeks gestation right up until they start school.
Chelsea Harry, Academic Researcher and Music Educator, University of the Sunshine Coast
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77297
2017-06-13T20:21:18Z
2017-06-13T20:21:18Z
Curious Kids: Who made the alphabet song?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168222/original/file-20170507-19135-3jdfpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Singing helps us remember information.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/twicepix/7923685928/in/photolist-d5bXLC-7pLbkF-dJFJn-52Y2CN-d9Lg2H-8HWGVJ-8SRbHd-8SN7a2-8HThRz-dJZHJU-8HWh81-8HWn5G-d5bXpL-2VmaEM-9Z3mko-pf6TmA-j36PVE-bzPJCK-6rXhiJ-bmUUTG-j3csYs-j3b3cU-bv4AV5-9ej4qZ-5ipkAH-bHYo1p-8SRd6o-8SNaj6-bzPJfZ-j3aoyh-j35mww-5jcXAb-8SN7ZZ-b61dZ-yZ8BX-74xUUL-bv4BcC-bzPKhZ-9FzEjF-6twrjb-j38BeS-cvBqpA-6YLrk4-j387ba-j37omi-nhQHgy-8SRevy-j3aCod-7YpVNb-6SJJWF">Flickr/Martin Abegglen</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an article from <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/curious-kids-36782">Curious Kids</a>, a series aimed at children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky!</em> </p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>Who made the ABC song? <strong>– Hendrix, age 6, Dunsborough, Western Australia.</strong> </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168221/original/file-20170507-19142-s0lnia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168221/original/file-20170507-19142-s0lnia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168221/original/file-20170507-19142-s0lnia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168221/original/file-20170507-19142-s0lnia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168221/original/file-20170507-19142-s0lnia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168221/original/file-20170507-19142-s0lnia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168221/original/file-20170507-19142-s0lnia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168221/original/file-20170507-19142-s0lnia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hendrix, 6, of Dunsborough in Western Australia, had four questions for our Curious Kids experts. Today we are answering his third question. We will try to come back to your other questions another time, Hendrix. Thank you very much for sending them in.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hendrix, 6, of Dunsborough in Western Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A common answer to this question is that the ABC song was first copyrighted under the title <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/sm1834.360770.0?st=gallery">The Schoolmaster</a> in 1834 by an American man named <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=EVninY59ul0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+book+of+world+famous+music-Classical,+popular,+and+folk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8-Zm-mJTUAhUJybwKHeZ8CdAQ6AEIJTAA#v=snippet&q=schoolmaster&f=false">Charles Bradlee</a>. You can see the original sheet music and lyrics <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/sm1834.360770.0?st=gallery">here</a>. </p>
<p>But the history of this famous song goes back a little further than that. Nobody knows exactly who invented this tune, but we have some clues about how it developed and became popular over time.</p>
<p>The ABC song uses the same tune as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and it’s similar to Baa Baa Black Sheep. (Try humming each one to check for yourself.) </p>
<p>The oldest published version of the tune is from <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=EVninY59ul0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=twinkle&f=false">1761</a>, but we don’t know who wrote it and it didn’t have any words. </p>
<p>The Twinkle Twinkle Little Star words were written by an English poet called <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-publication-of-twinkle-twinkle-little-star">Jane Taylor</a> in 1806. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171273/original/file-20170529-25198-153r1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171273/original/file-20170529-25198-153r1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171273/original/file-20170529-25198-153r1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171273/original/file-20170529-25198-153r1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171273/original/file-20170529-25198-153r1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171273/original/file-20170529-25198-153r1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171273/original/file-20170529-25198-153r1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171273/original/file-20170529-25198-153r1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The rhyme is the first stanza of a poem in Rhymes for the Nursery (1806), a volume of verse for children written by poet Jane Taylor in collaboration with her sister Ann.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-publication-of-twinkle-twinkle-little-star#sthash.26LLZNMY.dpuf">British Library.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The tune has also been used by lots of different composers as a basis for their pieces - even a very famous classical music composer called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart wrote <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Twelve-Variations-on-Ah-vous-dirai-je-Maman#ref1185225">Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman</a> (which means “Ah, Mother, if I could tell you” in English) in 1785. It sounds a <em>lot</em> like the ABC song, don’t you think?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sBj8WOJ91Rc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Mozart’s Ah! Vous dirais-je maman.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the ABC song first became popular, not very many children went to school. That meant that <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/literate-and-illiterate-world-population?stackMode=relative">most people never learned to read and write</a>. Over time, as it became more important to learn to read and write, more and more children learned the song when they were young to help them to remember the letters of the alphabet.</p>
<p>Another question that might be worth thinking about is why we sing the alphabet song at all. It has to do with how we learn. </p>
<p>Children have always learnt things from their parents and grandparents. Because most people didn’t read or write they weren’t written down, so it was really important to remember them. Groups of people in different places had their own songs to tell stories and pass down their history from one generation to the next. </p>
<p>Because of the way our brains work, we can remember songs and rhymes much more easily. The reasons are a bit complicated, but it’s partly because we pay more attention to the timing and speed of the sounds. When we do this, we use more of our brain at the same time, which means we remember it better.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R0JKCYZ8hng?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A period of music-learning can improve multiple areas of the brain.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So we don’t really know exactly who wrote the ABC song, but we know that most children who learn to read and write English now sing this song to help them remember the letters. </p>
<hr>
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<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165749/original/image-20170419-32713-1kyojyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p><em>Please tell us your name and age (and, if you want to, which city you live in). You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77297/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael Dwyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Because of the way our brains work, we can remember songs and rhymes much more easily than just words or letters. The ABC song teaches kids the basics of the English language.
Rachael Dwyer, Lecturer in Music Education and Teaching, University of the Sunshine Coast
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77495
2017-05-10T23:04:24Z
2017-05-10T23:04:24Z
What I discovered inside Edinburgh’s museum of musical instruments
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168750/original/file-20170510-28075-1nvsx94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">St Cecilia's Hall.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Cecilia%27s_Hall">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You can’t often travel around the world, traversing six centuries in just ten paces. But that’s the offering at Edinburgh’s Musical Instruments Museum, one of the world’s leading collections of its kind. Situated just off the Royal Mile in the Scottish capital, it reopened on May 11 after three years of refurbishment. </p>
<p>The museum is housed in St Cecilia’s Hall, the oldest purpose-built concert hall in Scotland. This Georgian grande dame of British music history has just completed a <a href="http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/museums-and-galleries/musical-instrument-museums/sch">£6.5m redevelopment project</a>. I arranged a sneak preview of the collection ahead of the opening to see what it has in store. </p>
<p>The study of musical instruments, known as organology, is an often overlooked branch of music. Yet in the age before sound recording, nothing can get us as close to the musical soundscapes of Mozart and Bach as the actual tools of their time. </p>
<p>St Cecilia’s Hall consolidates a collection it previously shared with another building. Spread over four galleries, it displays a selection of some 6,000 instruments (there’s also an online repository of sounds <a href="http://www.euchmi.ed.ac.uk/ujia.html">here</a>). </p>
<h2>Peacocks and sax appeal</h2>
<p>Stepping from the entrance vestibule into the Laigh Hall gallery on the ground floor, you are whisked from the Renaissance to the 21st Century, from North America to Asia and back again. A small violin with no sides, made before the shape we know today became the norm, is by the Bassano family – a famous group of Italian instrument makers employed at the court of Henry VIII. </p>
<p>A few paces to the right is the visually enticing Indian mayuri. From the 19th century, and also probably from a courtly setting, it is carved and richly decorated to look like a peacock to represent <a href="http://www.sanatansociety.org/hindu_gods_and_goddesses/saraswati.htm">Saraswati</a>, the Hindu goddess of music. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168719/original/file-20170510-28078-rkp1th.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168719/original/file-20170510-28078-rkp1th.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168719/original/file-20170510-28078-rkp1th.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168719/original/file-20170510-28078-rkp1th.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168719/original/file-20170510-28078-rkp1th.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168719/original/file-20170510-28078-rkp1th.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168719/original/file-20170510-28078-rkp1th.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168719/original/file-20170510-28078-rkp1th.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 19th-century mayuri.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/UoEart~2~2~73102~164129:Peacock-vina---top-view?qvq=q%3Apeacock%3Bsort%3Awork_creator_details%2Cwork_title%2Cwork_display_date%2Cwork_technique&sort=work_creator_details%2Cwork_title%2Cwork_display_date%2Cwork_technique&mi=16&trs=23#">University of Edinburgh</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Through into the Wolfson gallery, you are accosted by a four-and-a-half-foot serpent: a wind instrument. Originally devised in the late 16th century, it was meant to be used for church music, but was also included in orchestral works by composers such as Mozart and Wagner. This <a href="http://collections.ed.ac.uk/mimed/record/18242?highlight=contrabass+serpent">oversized example</a>, known technically as a contrabass serpent, is a more recent creation made around 1840. </p>
<p>Keeping the serpent company is a quartet of saxophones from the workshop of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antoine-Joseph-Sax">Adolphe Sax</a>, the Belgian who invented them in the 1840s. Like the serpent’s influence on the bass range of the orchestra with the ultimate creation of the tuba, Sax’s invention had most impact on jazz and pop. Behind these somewhat clunky originals is a sad story, however: Sax died in poverty in 1894 at the dawn of jazz.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168723/original/file-20170510-28092-5d0pbr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168723/original/file-20170510-28092-5d0pbr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168723/original/file-20170510-28092-5d0pbr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168723/original/file-20170510-28092-5d0pbr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168723/original/file-20170510-28092-5d0pbr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168723/original/file-20170510-28092-5d0pbr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1299&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168723/original/file-20170510-28092-5d0pbr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168723/original/file-20170510-28092-5d0pbr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1299&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ye olde Gibson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/UoEart~2~2~51942~104337:English-guitar--W-Gibson----FRONT?qvq=q%3Agibson%3Bsort%3Awork_creator_details%2Cwork_title%2Cwork_display_date%2Cwork_technique&sort=work_creator_details%2Cwork_title%2Cwork_display_date%2Cwork_technique&mi=6&trs=101">University of Edinburgh</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the other side of the gallery, a selection of plucked and bowed western instruments display a variety lost to 19th-century orchestral standardisation. An English guitar by William Gibson from 1772 sits beside an electric Fender Telecaster: the former used mainly by women to display their talents and attract an eligible husband, and the latter vice versa two centuries later. </p>
<p>A tiny dancing-master’s fiddle from the mid-17th century, known as a pochette, was used to accompany dance lessons in preparation for the frequent balls and assemblies – essentially an early form of speed dating. </p>
<p>There’s also a clutch of <em>violas d’amore</em>, or violas of love. As well as the name and eye-catching design, additional resonant strings create an unusual sweet and enveloping sound that would undoubtedly have been used to woo the opposite sex. </p>
<h2>Ebony and ivory</h2>
<p>The two upstairs galleries house countless keyboard instruments, many still frequently used in concert. Dressed in slightly unsympathetic red leather panels, the Binks gallery exhibits instruments from the famed <a href="http://www.ruckersgenootschap.be/HIS.php">Ruckers workshop of Antwerp</a>, the <a href="http://aviolinslife.org/stradivari/">Stradivari</a> of the harpsichord world. </p>
<p>Beside these examples of perfection sit fakes and forgeries, such as the Goermans harpsichord of 1764, altered in the 1780s by the French craftsman <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pascal-Taskin">Pascal Taskin</a>. Taskin made the instrument appear not only a hundred years older, but to also hail from the Ruckers family. That Goermans was still making harpsichords in Paris at the time just a short walk from Taskin’s workshop raises questions of his complicity. </p>
<p>Next door in the 1812 gallery is a clavichord made in Hamburg by Johann Adolph Hass, one of the best makers of his generation. Made in 1763 – the year St Cecilia’s Hall was built – it would effectively be impossible to reproduce today with its use of tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, rosewood, kingwood and ivory. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bJyTjttTrGc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>There is also a dinky harpsichord known as an octave spinet. Reminiscent of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuQBjuySvyw">Schroeder’s toy piano</a> in Peanuts, it could be easily transported for use during travel, or moved around the home to accompany singing – quiet instruments such as spinets and clavichords were designed for domestic use. </p>
<p>It sits next to the Burkat Shudi harpsichord of 1766, an impressive instrument with two keyboards. It had a variety of stops to vary its tone, which was used before the more versatile piano became the parlour mainstay. Believed to have been owned by the Duke of Hamilton in Naples, the below painting by the Italian artist Pietro Fabris places the duke and Kenneth MacKenzie, 1st Earl of Seaforth, at a concert party with Mozart and his father Leopold. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168742/original/file-20170510-28100-e9qvmj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168742/original/file-20170510-28100-e9qvmj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168742/original/file-20170510-28100-e9qvmj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168742/original/file-20170510-28100-e9qvmj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168742/original/file-20170510-28100-e9qvmj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168742/original/file-20170510-28100-e9qvmj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168742/original/file-20170510-28100-e9qvmj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168742/original/file-20170510-28100-e9qvmj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pietro Fabris: Kenneth Mackenzie at home in Naples.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Hamiltons were musical, and it is <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2002/mar/04/entertainment/et-swed4">noted that</a> the Mozarts visited their home in 1770 and that Hamilton’s first wife, Catherine, performed on the harpsichord for the great composer. She is likely to have played on this Shudi, which raises the possibility that Mozart himself may have passed his hands over its keys. The instrument is still playable today, so it is possible to briefly inhabit Mozart’s Neapolitan soundscape on a visit to the museum. </p>
<p>In sum, Edinburgh boasts a thrilling collection of bygone instruments. Most museums let us passively observe history, but the musical palettes on display here are a chance to truly step back in time. It shows how organology can improve our understanding of the past from a more cultural perspective than most museum artefacts. This is not just a collection of musical instruments, it is a snapshot of who we were before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77495/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael Durkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Scottish capital is reopening a well kept secret: one of the world’s finest collections of vintage sound machines.
Rachael Durkin, Lecturer in Music, Edinburgh Napier University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74791
2017-04-03T08:33:49Z
2017-04-03T08:33:49Z
Here is what makes some writing ‘world leading’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163307/original/image-20170330-4561-tmjtoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peshkova / Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a wonderful scene in the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086879/">Amadeus</a> that depicts Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dictating, from his death bed, the words and music of his Requiem mass – a piece thought of as a requiem for the composer’s death which is now regarded as one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. Mozart dictates to the rival composer Salieri, who in equal measure admires and hates Mozart. A central theme of Peter Schaffer’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/jan/14/how-we-made-amadeus">original play</a>, which the film is based on, is the originality of genius versus “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086879/quotes">mediocrities everywhere</a>”.</p>
<p>Building on my recent work on the philosophy and history of writing, I’ve been trying to work out what constitutes “world-leading” writing, and effective writing more generally. Over the past three years I’ve analysed interviews with the world’s greatest writers as well as examined renowned guides to writing styles and standards of language. I’ve also been studying young people’s creativity and writing. And, throughout my work, the composition of music has been compared with the composition of written text.</p>
<p>World leading is a big claim. Perhaps we would agree, just as the Nobel Prize committee did, that Peter Higgs’s and François Englert’s work in physics on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/higgs-boson-176">Higgs boson</a> particle was world leading. How about Virginia Woolf’s contribution to literature? Or Andrew Wiles’s mathematical proof that <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/fermat-s-last-theorem-earns-andrew-wiles-the-abel-prize-1.19552">solved the 300-year riddle</a> of Fermat’s last theorem?</p>
<p>In addition to the work of people such as Mozart, Higgs/Englert, Woolf and Wiles, a sense of what is “world leading” is also fundamental to assessing research more generally. For example in the UK’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise, an assessment of research in all the UK’s universities that takes place every few years, <a href="http://www.ref.ac.uk/pubs/201401/">30% of research outputs</a> across all academic disciplines were rated as world leading. These outputs included musical compositions and performances, artefacts and exhibitions, and, of course, journal articles, chapters and books. Across all these different outputs the most important criterion to demonstrate world-leading research quality was “originality”. </p>
<p>But what is originality? And how do people write something original?</p>
<h2>How to be original</h2>
<p>With regard to writing, one source of information about originality is in the words of world-leading writers themselves. For the Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway, writing involved the creation of a whole new thing, a “birth” that – if it succeeded – would be immortal. Hemingway suggested that originality draws from things that already exist but also that the creation must be genuinely new, and even “<a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4825/ernest-hemingway-the-art-of-fiction-no-21-ernest-hemingway">alive</a>”.</p>
<p>Originality is not just the preserve of fiction writers. The biographer Michael Holroyd said he disliked the “non” in non-fiction, preferring instead the descriptions “re-creative writing” or with an addition: “non-fiction stories”. Holroyd felt that there can be originality in the primary research that underpins an outstanding biography as well as the ways in which the story is ultimately told. Primary research is also part of the work of novelists. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/may/30/marilynne-robinson">Marilyn Robinson</a>’s first book, Housekeeping, was revered by critics. This success was achieved in part, according to Robinson, through careful scholarship including reading of primary historical sources.</p>
<p>Another source of information about originality can be found in psychological research on creativity. Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky saw originality emerging from particular kinds of thinking that combined unknown conditions with experiences recorded in memory. And psychologist Morris Stein’s <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&UID=1954-04069-001">definition of creativity</a> included the idea that “the creative work is a novel work that is accepted as tenable or useful or satisfying by a group in some point in time”. So a feature of originality, in writing or other creative outputs, is that ultimately it can only be determined through the judgements of others.</p>
<h2>A writerly ear</h2>
<p>Comparison of musical composition with the composition of words can teach us more about writing. Melodies in music are like themes or lines of argument in writing. And musical metaphors are common in writers’ attempts to explain the more ethereal aspects of creativity. Jack Kerouac <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4260/jack-kerouac-the-art-of-fiction-no-41-jack-kerouac">spoke of</a> “blowing like the tenor man”, describing the improvisation of the saxophonist when playing jazz music, to elucidate his understanding of the improvisational qualities of fiction writing. </p>
<p>The ears and the mind engage with one another in the composition of music. This is also true of the composition of written text. My hypothesis, inspired by my research, is that the “the writer’s ear” is equally as important as that of the musician. </p>
<p>The writer’s ear explains the ability to “read like a writer”, which involves not only admiring writing, and engaging emotionally, but also perceiving the techniques that writers use. The ear of the writer is instrumental in the initial attention to a wide range of relevant sources for writing: for example the previous research in the field. This consideration of previous work is part of the writer’s drive for originality – the writer’s ear supports the selection of the original idea for research. The writer’s ear also ultimately attunes the rhythms of the specific written language, in a paper or book, that is also needed to convince people that the output is world leading.</p>
<p>But even those authors with a good ear for writing would never say the process is easy. When American novelist and essayist William Styron was asked if he enjoyed writing, <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5114/william-styron-the-art-of-fiction-no-5-william-styron">he replied</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I certainly don’t. I get a fine, warm feeling when I’m doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let’s face it, writing is hell.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74791/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Wyse (and colleagues) received funding from the Ministry of Stories for a three-year study of young people's creativity and writing.
In addition, a study leave was made possible by UCL Institute of Education. His book 'How Writing Works' is to be published by Cambridge University Press. </span></em></p>
The conditions for originality in a piece of writing.
Dominic Wyse, Professor of Education, UCL
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/61622
2016-10-18T08:48:58Z
2016-10-18T08:48:58Z
How listening to music could help you beat insomnia
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128091/original/image-20160624-28388-vz2q95.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Spectral-Design/shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In our hectic world, a good night’s sleep is worth its weight in gold when it comes to improving <a href="http://www.apa.org/topics/sleep/why.aspx">physical and mental well-being</a>. Much more than a basic method of energy conservation, sleep is a state during which muscle and bone are generated and repaired, and memories and learning systems are updated. Sleep also allows the body and brain to clear out the toxic byproducts of the day’s waking activity that might otherwise build up and cause harm. <a href="http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/why-do-we-sleep">In short, good sleep is a cornerstone of human health</a>.</p>
<p>Sadly, not all of us are blessed with the bounty of a good night’s slumber after a long and often tiring day. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1978319/">Around 30% of adults</a> experience chronic insomnia at some point in their life – where sleep is disrupted for more than a month. Estimates are even higher in older populations and those who experience regular stress. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/10-results-sleep-loss#1">Insomnia can be devastating</a>, and has been linked to cognitive deficiencies – such as memory lapses, psychological problems including mood and anxiety disorders, and long-term health concerns including obesity and dementia. The most severe cases of chronic insomnia can even increase <a href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/290065.php">the risk of mortality</a>. </p>
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<p>The cost of insomnia goes well beyond just health. According to the National Sleep Foundation, insomniacs are two to four times more likely to have an accident – with over <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdrowsydriving/">72,000 traffic accidents a year</a> in the US alone linked to sleep deprivation. Insomnia also costs US companies an <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12152327/ns/health-sleep/t/chronic-sleep-problems-costing-us-billions/">estimated $150 billion</a> in absenteeism and reduced productivity, every year. </p>
<p>Given our need for regular and deep sleep, it is no surprise then that people with insomnia often reach for the medicine cabinet. Pharmacies in the UK regularly dispense more than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/may/11/nhs-spending-sleeping-pills-50m">15.3m prescriptions for sleep aids</a>. But this is not the safest route to a good night’s slumber, as the use of over the counter and prescription sleep aids can lead to harmful side effects, dependency and withdrawal. </p>
<h2>Music for sleep?</h2>
<p>Research has shown that listening to “self-selected” music – music of your choice – can actually shorten stage two sleep cycles. This means people reach restful <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-listening-to-music-help-you-fall-asleep-49864">REM sleep – the restorative part of our sleep – more quickly</a>. </p>
<p>In the study, students who listened to 45 minutes of <a href="http://lib.semmelweis.hu/sepub/pdf/2008/a18426457">music before bedtime</a> for three weeks saw a cumulative positive effect on multiple measures of sleep efficiency with similar effects reported in older citizens in Singapore. Following all this evidence, the NHS now recommends “<a href="http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Insomnia/Pages/Prevention.aspx">listening to soft music</a>” before bedtime as a method to prevent insomnia.</p>
<p>With all this in mind, <a href="http://musicwellbeing.group.shef.ac.uk/">our research unit</a>, along with colleagues from the Sleep and Cognition Laboratory at the University of Lincoln and Goldsmiths, University of London, has embarked on a new music sleep project, to find out what people listen to when they are nodding off – and why people believe music helps their sleep. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128097/original/image-20160624-28370-8txwwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128097/original/image-20160624-28370-8txwwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128097/original/image-20160624-28370-8txwwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128097/original/image-20160624-28370-8txwwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128097/original/image-20160624-28370-8txwwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128097/original/image-20160624-28370-8txwwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128097/original/image-20160624-28370-8txwwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Entering the land of nod could be easier with music as your guide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ollyy/shutterstock</span></span>
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<p><a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16722236/Final%20sleep%20infographic.pdf">The first phase of our music sleep survey </a> has been completed by 651 people, who have told us a great deal about the music that helps them to sleep. We discovered the top rated composer of sleep music in our sample is Johann Sebastian Bach. He was followed by Ed Sheeran, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Brian Eno, and Coldplay. </p>
<p>Aside from those few top rated artists, there was an enormous variety of individual choices – with 14 different genres and 545 different artists named. And it is this data which will give us the basis to examine the features of effective sleep music. Using computer programs we will be able to pin down the consistent musical features that support sleep among these many diverse musical sounds. </p>
<h2>Face the music</h2>
<p>We also found out a lot about the reasons why people are turning to music in the first place. And they are varied. In our <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16722236/Final%20sleep%20infographic.pdf">research</a>, people highlighted the importance of music for blocking disruptive external (such as traffic) and internal (like tinnitus) sounds, for filling uncomfortable silences, and providing a sense of companionship and security.</p>
<p>This suggests that a one size fits all approach to music for sleep is unlikely to suit all insomniacs, because people are tuning into so many different types of music for so many different reasons.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128098/original/image-20160624-28388-1hbnhkx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128098/original/image-20160624-28388-1hbnhkx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128098/original/image-20160624-28388-1hbnhkx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128098/original/image-20160624-28388-1hbnhkx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128098/original/image-20160624-28388-1hbnhkx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128098/original/image-20160624-28388-1hbnhkx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128098/original/image-20160624-28388-1hbnhkx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sound asleep.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Africa Studio/Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTDDK6goHVg&feature=youtu.be">The next step for our research</a> will be to expand <a href="http://musicpsychology.co.uk/sleep/">our survey</a> to cover as many populations and cultures as possible. We will then test the music that people report to be consistently effective at different stages of sleep using advanced sleep recording techniques. </p>
<p>Our aim is to develop personalised music selection technology, combined with advice on music sleep strategies, as a complete package for people who need to restore their sleep to normal for the sake of their health, quality of life and well-being.</p>
<p>Until then, the best advice we can offer when choosing music to put you to sleep is to trust your own musical choices over generic “sleep” playlists. You know best what you are looking for in a bedtime track – based on what you like and what you need from the music at the time. And in the near future we will be armed with the necessary evidence that will allow us to move from this “instinctive approach” to a more informed and optimised application of music as an effective aid in the battle against insomnia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61622/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Williamson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Non-addictive and cost-effective, music can reduce the time it takes you to fall asleep and lessen sleep disturbances.
Victoria Williamson, Lecturer in Music , University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/64504
2016-08-26T15:49:54Z
2016-08-26T15:49:54Z
Così Fan Tutte: racial and sexual abuse should shock audiences, not the titillation
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135658/original/image-20160826-17847-1gr2lw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Forbidden love. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pascal Victor</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The new production of Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte’s classic opera <a href="http://www.eif.co.uk/2016/cosi">Così Fan Tutte</a> has attracted no shortage of controversy. After its premiere in Aix-en-Provence in France in July, the organisers of the Edinburgh International Festival <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/jul/27/edinburgh-festival-offers-refunds-for-controversial-opera-before-opening">wrote to all ticket holders</a> offering a refund “due to the adult nature of some of the scenes” and its unsuitability for younger audiences. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.allocine.fr/personne/fichepersonne-39017/biographie/">Christophe Honoré</a>, better known as a novelist and auteur film director, also took the bold step of relocating the action from 18th-century Naples to 1930s Eritrea in the era of Italian rule. </p>
<p>We certainly need more gritty and relevant opera productions. Opera in the 18th century was often used as a way of commentating on issues of the day, especially <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/opera-buffa">the <em>opera buffa</em> style</a>, which distinguishes comic operas like Così Fan Tutte from the tragedies. There is no reason why present-day productions should not reflect this. </p>
<p>When it comes to staging a classic work, directors need to choose whether to follow the original in detail, using costumes and instruments to recreate a static idea; or try to capture the original’s impact at the time. Thankfully scholars and performers nowadays agree that both approaches are legitimate – Honoré’s production just leans towards the latter category. </p>
<h2>Then and now</h2>
<p>Così Fan Tutte is one of Mozart’s most popular operas, but it was not often performed in the 19th century because the subject matter was considered vulgar. It tells the story of two girls, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, whose soldier lovers are called away to war. </p>
<p>A man named Don Alfonso has made a bet with the two soldiers that the girls will not be faithful, claiming that women never are. The soldiers come back in disguise to try and seduce one another’s lovers to prove Don Alfonso wrong – though in the end they lose. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135656/original/image-20160826-17845-1nsaqw2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135656/original/image-20160826-17845-1nsaqw2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135656/original/image-20160826-17845-1nsaqw2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135656/original/image-20160826-17845-1nsaqw2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135656/original/image-20160826-17845-1nsaqw2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135656/original/image-20160826-17845-1nsaqw2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135656/original/image-20160826-17845-1nsaqw2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135656/original/image-20160826-17845-1nsaqw2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The soldiers and their lovers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edinburgh International Festival</span></span>
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<p>Honoré has added sexual subplots which serve to highlight the high sexism in da Ponte’s original plot, which is often glossed over. The original takes a very dim view of women’s morals and even intelligence – extreme even by 18th-century standards. In the new production, Honoré’s attempts to balance the ledger include a scene where the soldier Ferrando forces one of the chorus actors into sex when he discovers that Dorabella has been unfaithful to him. </p>
<p>Honoré continually seeks to emphasise the despicable nature of the male characters going out to trap their lovers through deception. The ending is particularly memorable in this respect. Where the women normally either return to their original lovers – or in some versions stick with the ones they “married” in disguise – Honoré’s Fiordiligi sings that she “deserves death” for betraying her fiancee. She then wanders around the stage with his musket to her chin as if to end her life until the final curtain drops. </p>
<h2>Black comedy</h2>
<p>Other new subplots comment on race and colonialism, often mingled with sexual abuse. Before the overture is a scene of two native girls dancing to a record playing a song criticising Mussolini. It is then torn off the record player and broken to pieces by one of the white soldiers, who goes on to rape one of the girls during the overture.</p>
<p>The Eritrean characters are mistreated throughout – mainly through heavy groping or outright rape. Race is also intermingled with the main plot when the soldiers, who disguise themselves as Albanians in the original, black up as Eritreans in this version. </p>
<p>This is about highlighting an underlying tragedy within the farce, but substituting colonialism and skin colour for the Albanian Muslim/Italian Christian antipathy in da Ponte’s version. Too often in the past, this has been masked by spectacular costumes and beautiful singing. </p>
<p>One patron on the opening night in Edinburgh caught the mood when she said: “This is not a ‘pretty-pretty’ production and that suits the story so much better.” </p>
<p>The programme notes were peppered with quotations on the nature of love and cruelty, paying homage to the opera’s subtitle “La scuola degli amanti” (the lovers’ school). Honoré writes in the notes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My intention is the same as [da Ponte’s]: that for the lightness and irresponsibility of the comedy of love you should substitute the shamelessness and cruelty of tragic passion attacked by humour. </p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135654/original/image-20160826-17884-1wm2fdf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135654/original/image-20160826-17884-1wm2fdf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135654/original/image-20160826-17884-1wm2fdf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135654/original/image-20160826-17884-1wm2fdf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135654/original/image-20160826-17884-1wm2fdf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135654/original/image-20160826-17884-1wm2fdf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135654/original/image-20160826-17884-1wm2fdf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135654/original/image-20160826-17884-1wm2fdf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tragedy and farce.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edinburgh International Festival</span></span>
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<h2>Curtain call</h2>
<p>The casting draws together singers from all over the world, not all of whom were period specialists, but who blended in the ensembles like they had been singing together their entire lives. The acting from the main characters is outstanding. </p>
<p>The actors and singers of the chorus, drawn from the <a href="http://www.capetownopera.co.za/">Cape Town Opera</a>, add to the Eritrean setting and give poignant substance to Honoré’s revelations of the darker side of empire building. Meanwhile vibrato singing is kept to a decorative minimum, while the words were clear even in the upper circle. </p>
<p>Is the controversy justified? To some extent it will depend on your perspective. Apart from simulated sex and naked breasts at one point, most of the shock value was in the racial and sexual abuse. </p>
<p>You could sense that parts of the audience were shocked at white colonials groping black natives, albeit there are a lot of (non-racial) gropings in Mozart productions anyway. Friends and academics I have spoken to were not shocked – perhaps it depends on your exposure. In sum, it has probably been a bit of a storm in a teacup. But don’t let that detract from the performance as a whole. Honoré’s update of Mozart has important things to say about women and race. It is exactly what opera should be all about.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64504/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
New Mozart production set in 1930s Eritrea made headlines when ticket holders in Edinburgh were offered refunds – before the event.
Eleanor Smith, Lecturer in Music, Edinburgh Napier University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/45973
2015-08-13T07:44:22Z
2015-08-13T07:44:22Z
Whether Mozart or Madonna, music can help you recover from surgery
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91602/original/image-20150812-18104-15pp3kb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most people undergo a surgical procedure at some point in their lives. More than <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/inpatient-surgery.htm">51m operative procedures</a> are performed annually in the USA and <a href="http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/media/media-background-briefings-and-">4.6m hospital admissions</a> lead to surgical care in England. But the time after an operation is still a difficult one for patients and pain, discomfort, changes to regular routines and rehabilitation therapy are all common.</p>
<p>Current strategies for improving recovery tend to involve patient education and nutritional additives, which have been seen to reduce post-operative pain requirements and improve satisfaction levels. But despite a wealth of relevant studies supporting its potential in recovery, music is still not an everyday part of the post-surgical routine because information demonstrating its effectiveness has not been widely spread.</p>
<p>Using music to improve patients’ hospital experience has a long history, and its potential was recognised <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8406006.stm">by Florence Nightingale</a>. Music was first described being used to help patients during operations in a <a href="http://bit.ly/1Tt9psR">scientific paper more than 100 years ago</a>.</p>
<p>Compared to drugs, prerecorded music played through headphones, musical pillows or background sound systems can be a non-invasive, safe and inexpensive intervention that can be delivered easily in a medical setting. Music has <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/5457754_The_Anxiety-_and_Pain-Reducing_Effects_of_Music_Interventions_A_Systematic_Review">frequently been investigated</a> in the context of recovery from operative procedures and <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3590687/">numerous trials</a> have demonstrated positive effects on patients’ post-operative recovery.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91496/original/image-20150811-14995-1qs0mr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91496/original/image-20150811-14995-1qs0mr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91496/original/image-20150811-14995-1qs0mr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91496/original/image-20150811-14995-1qs0mr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91496/original/image-20150811-14995-1qs0mr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91496/original/image-20150811-14995-1qs0mr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91496/original/image-20150811-14995-1qs0mr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author tests out her own theory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Catherine Meads</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My colleagues and I wanted to assess this evidence so that we could highlight the potential for music in surgical recovery. We <a href="http://bit.ly/1L5zkVo">found and analysed</a> as many randomised trials on the use of music to improve post-operative recovery as possible, using a technique called systematic review.</p>
<p>In total, we found 73 trials involving nearly 7,000 patients and reviewed what they showed about the impact of music on common measures for post-operative care. These included pain, the need for painkillers, anxiety, patient satisfaction and length of stay. We also explored the patients’ choice of music, the timing of the intervention and whether general anaesthesia was also used.</p>
<p>Patients in the studies chose a wide variety of music styles, although they mostly all had a soothing quality. Researchers either used single types of music such as classical music, or gave patients a choice from a list of styles.</p>
<p>Delivery was often by music pillows, which broadcast sound at a volume low enough for only the people lying on them can hear, or with headphones but at a level so that patients could still communicate easily. Different trials tested music before, during or after operations or a combination, and when patients were awake or anesthetised. The duration of the music varied between a few minutes to repeated episodes over several days.</p>
<h2>Natural painkiller</h2>
<p>The evidence showed that patients were significantly less anxious and more satisfied after surgery if they had listened to music. They also needed less pain medication and reported significantly less pain compared with patients who weren’t played music. The type of music, patient choice and timing before during or after the surgery did not make much difference. And it even worked when patients were played music under general anaesthetic, although the effects were larger when patients were conscious.</p>
<p>It’s not clear how or why music has these effects but it may reduce the stress response in patients. Other possibilities are that it might work by distraction, by having something familiar and having something that is controllable by the patient.</p>
<p>We believe there is now sufficient research to demonstrate that music should be available to all patients undergoing operations. Patients should be able to choose the type of music they would like to hear. Some might prefer for religious reasons to listen to recitations or natural sounds.</p>
<p>How loud to play the music is still unclear but it shouldn’t be distracting to medical staff or other patients. Surgical teams may prefer patients to listen to their own electronic musical devices before the procedure or as soon as they arrive back onto the ward. If this can become routine practice, it could make the whole experience of an operation more enjoyable and, crucially, less painful.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45973/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Meads does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Classical or hip-hop, music often feels like it has healing properties and now scientists have proved it.
Catherine Meads, Reader in health technology assessment, Brunel University London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/29882
2014-08-19T20:20:27Z
2014-08-19T20:20:27Z
Mozart goes to Bathurst: classical music in regional Australia
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56646/original/5v4bbhm9-1408325201.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Regional tours such as Opera Australia's cross-country circuit with The Magic Flute deliver real benefits to the communities they visit.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Albert Comper, Opera Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since July, Mozart’s popular opera, <a href="https://opera.org.au/ontour/regional_tour_2014">The Magic Flute</a>, has been touring regional Australia. The Opera Australia production, a version of Mozart’s classic reinvented by Australian playwright Michael Gow and designer Robert Kemp, has a contemporary edge.</p>
<p>Last week, it provided Bathurst’s regional community with an enchanting evening of extraordinary voices, delightful acting, sharp comic timing and sophisticated orchestration. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56647/original/m4z95pqs-1408325327.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56647/original/m4z95pqs-1408325327.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56647/original/m4z95pqs-1408325327.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56647/original/m4z95pqs-1408325327.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56647/original/m4z95pqs-1408325327.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56647/original/m4z95pqs-1408325327.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56647/original/m4z95pqs-1408325327.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56647/original/m4z95pqs-1408325327.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anna Yun, Stacey Alleaume and Regina Daniel onstage in The Magic Flute.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Albert Comper, Opera Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As if to answer the question, is there an audience for opera in regional Australia, the performance, at Bathurst’s Memorial Entertainment Centre, was a sell-out. The Indiana Jones-meets-The Mummy makeover of the opera enabled all members of the regional community, including the very young and senior, to enjoy a story about love, truth, forgiveness and wisdom.</p>
<p>When I spoke to Executive Producer Sandra Willis, she told me, “Opera is an art form created for everybody. It’s purpose is not just to entertain, but also to educate and inspire.” This is precisely what happened in Bathurst. </p>
<p>The audience that packed into Bathurst’s auditorium included country-folk, district academics, urban visitors, as well as proud parents, brothers, and sisters supporting the town’s school children singing in the choir.</p>
<p>Opera Australia’s rural engagement program introduces schoolchildren to classical music. </p>
<p>Every performance in regional Australia involves auditioning and selecting children from a number of local schools to form a choir that joins with the operatic troupe. This is not an easy task. The process is painstaking on every level, but the results are worthwhile when on opening night, after the first and perhaps only rehearsal, the ensemble comes up trumps.</p>
<p>Conductor Simon Kenway told me he thought the production was important because, “it allowed local school children and their teachers to realise their potential and to know the profound joy of music.” </p>
<p>Certainly, the company gathered talented students from Bathurst’s local schools to bring together a chorus of young local voices that charmed the audience. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56654/original/z8jgzmqr-1408327982.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56654/original/z8jgzmqr-1408327982.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56654/original/z8jgzmqr-1408327982.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56654/original/z8jgzmqr-1408327982.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56654/original/z8jgzmqr-1408327982.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56654/original/z8jgzmqr-1408327982.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56654/original/z8jgzmqr-1408327982.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56654/original/z8jgzmqr-1408327982.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christopher Hilier as Papageno and Sam Roberts-Smith as Tamino.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Albert Comper, Opera Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This remarkable tour of talented young vocalists, designers, chorus masters, concertmasters, conductors and musicians has been two years in the planning. The caravans of performers have already travelled throughout regional Victoria, and are now mid-way through their New South Wales tour. </p>
<p>I asked Sandra Willis about the money required to house, feed and move such a large cast of singers and musicians. She said frankly, “there is no profit”. Opera Australia’s commitment to the region is not anchored in financial gain but goodwill. Of course this does not mean that there are no fiscal anxieties — quite the contrary.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56655/original/6f7fsw9w-1408328086.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56655/original/6f7fsw9w-1408328086.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56655/original/6f7fsw9w-1408328086.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56655/original/6f7fsw9w-1408328086.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56655/original/6f7fsw9w-1408328086.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56655/original/6f7fsw9w-1408328086.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56655/original/6f7fsw9w-1408328086.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56655/original/6f7fsw9w-1408328086.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hannah Dahlenburg as Queen of the Night.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Albert Comper, Opera Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This confident production that playfully satirises the Australian ocker, has well and shrugged off the cultural cringe. Andrew Moran’s hilarious take on Papageno is a case in point. The production mixes popular culture references with Australian colloquial expressions. The whimsical spirit of Mozart’s opera is preserved while making it applicable to an audience that he could never have imagined, but surely would have embraced. </p>
<p>What also made this particular version of The Magic Flute resonate was its ability to be both very funny and musically brilliant. The skill of the singers to engage in slapstick comedy, while also hitting the right notes, was impressive.</p>
<p>The bond between performers and audience members strengthened after the performance, as locals were given the opportunity to meet and speak with the cast. This kind of immediate feedback cultivated a deeper level of connection that is perhaps rare in cosmopolitan centres.</p>
<p>City-dwellers may like to kid themselves that there is no informed audience for the arts in regional Australia. In my experience, that’s simply not the case. In regional towns like Bathurst, there’s a thriving community of people who support the arts and who have a sophisticated knowledge and appreciation of music, literature, theatre, and also in this case, opera. </p>
<p>To align geographical isolation with cultural ignorance is misunderstanding the curiosity and awareness of people who live outside of Australian capital cities. What’s more, I noted that a number of Sydney-siders made the train trip to Bathurst in order to see this witty Mozart revamp.</p>
<p>For Opera Australia to stage The Magic Flute in Bathurst meant that its community could come together as a united, joyful, and enthusiastic group. The production left an impression that will be long remembered.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Opera Australia’s The Magic Flute is currently touring regional NSW. The tour continues around the nation through to 2015. Details <a href="https://opera.org.au/ontour/regional_tour_2014">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29882/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Suzie Gibson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Since July, Mozart’s popular opera, The Magic Flute, has been touring regional Australia. The Opera Australia production, a version of Mozart’s classic reinvented by Australian playwright Michael Gow and…
Suzie Gibson, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Charles Sturt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/28486
2014-07-02T20:29:08Z
2014-07-02T20:29:08Z
Explainer: classical music
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52834/original/rqpbcmsf-1404268533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What does the term "classical music" mean to us in the 21st century?
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scottish classical violinist Nicola Benedetti. AAP/ Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Classical music means more than one thing and explanation is in order. Sometimes I make the distinction between big “C” and little “c”, but even that doesn’t fully solve it. </p>
<p>The starting point is this: the “Classical” period in music is generally described as encompassing the works of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn">Haydn</a> (1732-1809) through to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven">Beethoven</a> (1770–1827). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart">Mozart</a> (1756-1791) fits squarely in the middle. In my mind it conjures elegant harmonies, well–phrased melodies and logical, balanced structure. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52294/original/rq2b5scf-1403746257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52294/original/rq2b5scf-1403746257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52294/original/rq2b5scf-1403746257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52294/original/rq2b5scf-1403746257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52294/original/rq2b5scf-1403746257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52294/original/rq2b5scf-1403746257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52294/original/rq2b5scf-1403746257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beethoven.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eventually, Beethoven (think late string quartets, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3217H8JppI">Symphony No.9</a>) redefined “Classical” style (not single-handedly, of course) and he constitutes what we define as an emerging “<a href="http://www.classicfm.com/discover/periods/romantic/">Romantic</a>” period (c.1825-c.1910). But this starts even earlier in Beethoven, it’s just that it is tricky to definitively argue exactly when we flick the switch. </p>
<p>The truth is that we don’t instantly hit the “Romantic” period (or any period for that matter). We excruciatingly morph between artistic philosophies and aesthetic sensibilities over decades. </p>
<p>In the rear-vision mirror of history, it seems like a clear shift, but on the ground in real time, artists tend to exist between the cracks of established procedure and darkness. If genuine, they are moving from the known into the unknown (reference to Donald Rumsfeld unintended).</p>
<p>“Romantic” has overtones that are problematic. It’s a brave commentator who will argue that there are no “romantic” qualities in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach">Bach</a> (1685-1750). But again we are marooned on an upper-case, lower-case island. And so we paddle back to our “classical” mainland and contemplate what the generic term means to us now in the 21st century. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52839/original/rs9vvgjm-1404269854.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52839/original/rs9vvgjm-1404269854.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52839/original/rs9vvgjm-1404269854.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52839/original/rs9vvgjm-1404269854.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52839/original/rs9vvgjm-1404269854.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52839/original/rs9vvgjm-1404269854.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52839/original/rs9vvgjm-1404269854.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52839/original/rs9vvgjm-1404269854.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Danish National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jesus Lopez Cobos with Colombian soprano Juanita Lascarro, performing at La Alhambra in Granada, 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Miguel Angel Molina</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Classical music (okay, the sentence started with a capital, but let’s pretend it was a lowercase “c”) tends to be played by musicians reading quavers and crotchets from music stands. They have violins, flutes and trumpets. Or they sing, play the piano and so forth. </p>
<p>If musicians are playing an early music instrument such as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackbut#mediaviewer/File:Sackbutt.jpg">sackbutt</a> or a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viol#mediaviewer/File:GambeUilderks.png">viola da gamba</a> this is riskier to categorise because these days we are more specific about an authentic “<a href="http://www.classicfm.com/discover/periods/early-music/">early music</a>” scene, which could theoretically fall under the larger umbrella of “classical music” – but don’t expect early music enthusiasts to be happy about it.</p>
<p>If musicians are playing electric guitars and drum kits, it would likely be outside the orbit of classical music. But try telling that to Icelandic singer-songwriter <a href="http://bjork.com/">Björk</a>, English singer-songwriters <a href="http://petergabriel.com/latest">Peter Gabriel</a> or <a href="http://www.elviscostello.com/">Elvis Costello</a>, who are equally at home singing over a conducted orchestral string section as they are jamming with electric guitars and Marshall stacks. But they are legitimate (and impressive) exceptions, not the rule.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52836/original/fqxm6m8n-1404268920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52836/original/fqxm6m8n-1404268920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52836/original/fqxm6m8n-1404268920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52836/original/fqxm6m8n-1404268920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52836/original/fqxm6m8n-1404268920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52836/original/fqxm6m8n-1404268920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52836/original/fqxm6m8n-1404268920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52836/original/fqxm6m8n-1404268920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bjork performs on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House as part of the Sydney Festival in Sydney, 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/ Dean Lewins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At its best, I think classical music represents a deep and highly developed musical listening experience. In theory, any instrument should not be excluded. It doesn’t have to be “Western”, it could be Indian for instance. I think it is more about the intent of the composer and musicians than the colour or shape of the sound-producing objects. </p>
<p>Perhaps this is the point in the article where I need to state that I am a composer. The author of this article holds shares in staves, clefs and note-heads (but also in computers and technology). </p>
<p>I have a love-hate relationship with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Mahler">Mahler</a> (1860-1911). Yes, he’s dead (and white, and male). And at times I find his symphonies interminable, overblown: please-just-get-on-with-it. But he pushes the boat out in terms of structure over a long duration (often more than an hour) and I love the “intent”, the idea of this, and certain sections are simply magnificent.</p>
<p>Compare this to the television series Australian Idol. To Australia’s Got Talent. The Voice. Well-known three to four minute songs are halved to provide a vehicle for me-time. </p>
<p>It is a cultural abomination and societally, we are asleep at the wheel. Seriously, we should expect more of ourselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52837/original/fzs2cq2w-1404269187.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52837/original/fzs2cq2w-1404269187.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52837/original/fzs2cq2w-1404269187.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52837/original/fzs2cq2w-1404269187.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52837/original/fzs2cq2w-1404269187.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52837/original/fzs2cq2w-1404269187.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52837/original/fzs2cq2w-1404269187.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52837/original/fzs2cq2w-1404269187.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) violinist and artistic director Richard Tognetti.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/ Dean Lewins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But this is not about pop versus classical. This does not have to be uptown versus downtown. It’s about our concentration span and the depth of listening experience. </p>
<p>A few years back, so-called “classical music” was under attack in this country (and likely elsewhere) for being elitist. Richard Tognetti (violinist extraordinaire and artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra) <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/against-the-tide/story-e6frg8h6-1111114786370">effectively said</a>, in an interview with Susan Chenery at The Australian, “we are elite, not elitist”. </p>
<p>Tognetti’s distinction is a useful one to make. We should be seeking, assessing and rewarding excellence in whatever guise it may come. Classical music (oops, big C again) is not automatically “better”. It can be anachronistic, poorly written, badly played and “dished up” (as Australian-born composer <a href="http://www.grainger.unimelb.edu.au/percy/biog.html">Percy Grainger</a> expressed) in over-priced clothing. </p>
<p>But even in this new millennium, classical music has a few things going for it – principally an expectation that we are able to listen carefully for longer, uninterupted periods of time. If the music is any good, the performers skillful and dedicated, and the acoustic rewarding then we, the listener, might experience something wonderful beyond our imagination. That we should live so long.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28486/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Greenbaum has been the recipient of funding from The Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.</span></em></p>
Classical music means more than one thing and explanation is in order. Sometimes I make the distinction between big “C” and little “c”, but even that doesn’t fully solve it. The starting point is this…
Stuart Greenbaum, Associate Professor and Head of Composition, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/26304
2014-05-12T20:18:26Z
2014-05-12T20:18:26Z
Bizet’s femme fatale: Carmen and the music of seduction
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48210/original/q4m8432m-1399856239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Carmen’s rhythms set her body in perpetual motion – contagious and seductive.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nancy Fabiola Herrera as Carmen & the Opera Australia Chorus, photo: Branco Gaica</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The fictional character of Carmen – the heroine of Bizet’s opera – attracts a range of labels which variously position her as seductress, <em>femme fatale</em>, sex addict, fate/ death obsessed, victim, liberated woman and even feminist. </p>
<p>These descriptors have been circulating since the opera’s premiere in Paris in 1875. From its initial underwhelming success, Bizet’s Carmen has become one of the world’s most popular and frequently performed operas. Opera Australia’s production of <a href="http://opera.org.au/whatson/events/carmenmelbourne">Carmen</a>, based on the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and Norwegian National Opera co-production, opens in Melbourne tomorrow night.</p>
<p>Carmen is often simply understood as a story about a doomed love affair. But there is a little more to it than that …</p>
<h2>A battle of the sexes</h2>
<p>The story of Carmen has two central characters. Don José, a soldier from the country, and Carmen, an exotic gypsy woman working in a cigarette factory. Carmen has been causing trouble in the factory and, to avoid being imprisoned she seduces Don José, who has been ordered to arrest her, and escapes. He falls in love with her. She leads him astray. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48212/original/hcbpnbg5-1399858064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48212/original/hcbpnbg5-1399858064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48212/original/hcbpnbg5-1399858064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48212/original/hcbpnbg5-1399858064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48212/original/hcbpnbg5-1399858064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48212/original/hcbpnbg5-1399858064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48212/original/hcbpnbg5-1399858064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48212/original/hcbpnbg5-1399858064.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones; 1954.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jack Samuels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She is responsible for the break-up between Don José and his fiancée, Micaëla, the antithesis of Carmen, and prompts him to leave the army to join her and her band of smugglers. But Carmen becomes bored with Don José and finds the bullfighter Escamillo to take his place. Don José then murders Carmen in a fit of jealousy.</p>
<p>The opera is based on <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2465/2465-h/2465-h.htm">the novella Carmen</a> (1845) by Prosper Mérimée and the subject matter in the original story, which is necessarily simplified for the opera, represents a number of fantasies involving race, class and gender that were circulating in 19th-century French culture. </p>
<p>In the opening chapter to American musicologist Susan McClary’s book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Georges-Bizet-Carmen-Cambridge-Handbooks/dp/0521398975">Georges Bizet: Carmen</a>, language professor Peter Robinson makes the point that the real battle in Carmen is between the sexes. From the very beginning the woman is marked as the enemy. The battlefield is Carmen’s body and the story raises questions about who shall own her body while describing those who are fighting over it. </p>
<p>Robinson suggests there are two exotic anecdotes threaded into the story. The first deals with the notion of the “uncivilised”. Accordingly, Carmen, the gypsy girl, and the nomad smugglers are portrayed as violent, disorderly, superstitious and diabolical. </p>
<p>The second anecdote is concerned with order, rationality and logic. These characteristics are represented by Don José. He epitomises the hallmarks of French civilisation. These elements, which compose the structure of the story, are linked to control and mastery.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48213/original/5wng72wv-1399858164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48213/original/5wng72wv-1399858164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48213/original/5wng72wv-1399858164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48213/original/5wng72wv-1399858164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48213/original/5wng72wv-1399858164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48213/original/5wng72wv-1399858164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48213/original/5wng72wv-1399858164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48213/original/5wng72wv-1399858164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adrian Tamburini as Zuniga, Nancy Fabiola Herrera as Carmen & Dmytro Popov as Don José.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Opera Australia, photo: Branco Gaica</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the story, Carmen is associated with the colour red. Red is the life-force itself. But when it spills outside the body, it is the colour of death. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Opera-Undoing-Women-Catherine-Clement/dp/0816635269">Opera; or the Undoing of Women</a>, French feminist writer Catherine Clément similarly attributes Carmen’s death to the oppression of women by men. Carmen must die because she refuses to acquiesce to the desires of Don José. </p>
<p>Carmen is sometimes seen as the female equivalent of the Don Giovanni character in Mozart’s opera of the same name. In his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Song-Love-Death-Graywolf-Rediscovery/dp/1555972411">A Song of Love and Death</a>, Australian literary scholar Peter Conrad says that both characters are impelled to remain eternally in motion, pursuing, in Don Giovanni’s case, and manoeuvring free, in Carmen’s. They can only be truly satiated in death. Carmen seeks to keep all men in the world from knowing her. She is portrayed as mysterious, unpredictable, perpetually contradictory and elusive.</p>
<h2>It’s all in the music</h2>
<p>The vitality of Carmen is evoked by clever musical techniques. Carmen’s music is sexy and exotic and is, as McClary writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>grounded in pseudo gypsy dance forms that are referred to by their dance type designations: Habañera (a Cuban genre from Havana) and Seguidilla (a dance from Southern Spain, possibly of Moorish origin). </p>
</blockquote>
<p>McClary’s analysis, paraphrased here, shows how music is able to powerfully conjure the essence of the characters. It also intensifies the themes of the sexual, racial, and exotic in the opera. </p>
<p>Carmen’s rhythms set her body in perpetual motion. They are contagious and seductive, drawing attention to her body and arousing desire. Before she begins to sing the first note of her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ_HHRJf0xg">famous Habañera</a>, the instrumental pattern – di-da-da-daa, di-da-da-daa – is already engaging her body, setting her hips in motion.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KJ_HHRJf0xg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Carmen’s Habanera.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her melody, which begins after the short instrumental introduction, sounds as if it is slipping in-between the cracks of the notes. It is excessively <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_scale">chromatic</a> – a chromatic scale ascends and descends through all the 12 semitones of the octave and is less stable than a major or minor scale which is based on 8 notes of the octave – and slippery, descending seductively by half steps. It taunts and teases. It draws attention to the erogenous zones. But the music also alternately coaxes and frustrates. It lingers on notes that have a strong gravitational urge to move onward. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Feminine-Endings-Music-Gender-Sexuality/dp/0816641897">Feminine Endings</a>, McClary writes that Carmen:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>plays with our expectations not only by lingering but also by reciting in irregular triplets that strain against the beat.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This helps to create the allure of her exotic, sexy character and to portray her as proficient in the art of seduction. Carmen’s music refuses to be contained. It is used to mercilessly manipulate Don José, who is obsessed with her. </p>
<p>By giving Carmen unpredictable, disordered music, she is portrayed as the opposite of Don José. According to McClary, Don José’s story organises the narrative and his fate hangs in the balance between the Good Woman (his fiancée) and the Bad Woman (Carmen). His music is no less invested in the libido than Carmen’s but it is marked to contrast. Don José’s music is devoted to loftier sentiments rather than to the body. It is made to behave in accordance with the universal tongue of Western art music.</p>
<p>Accordingly, Don José’s famous Flower Song constructs “images of fevered longing and dread, as he imagines Carmen as demon and then as object of desire. He sings of submitting himself masochistically to her power”. There is a lyrical urgency in the song but the music behaves as if it is constrained. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NiquCFGZWH0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Don José’s Flower Song.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gradually, the opera leads to inevitable closure brought about by the violent murder of Carmen. The chromatic slippage of Carmen’s music, which McClary says is carefully defined throughout the opera as “feminine”, is purged once and for all. </p>
<p>McClary notes that unlike earlier scenes, in which Bizet has freely indulged in Carmen’s sexy music, the final scene is informed by the necessity for tonal closure. </p>
<p>As José pleads with Carmen to give in, the bass line presents a slippery chromatic floor. The chromaticism must be excised. At the same moment that the crowd inside the bullring cheers in response to Escamillo’s victory over the bull, we (the music lovers) witness and celebrate the victory over an even more treacherous beast. </p>
<p>Chromatic slippage (representing disorder and chaos) is expunged, making way for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_chord">major triad</a> (representing order and uniformity) which prevails. </p>
<p>McClary says that for all the formal neatness of this conclusion, “we leave the theatre humming her infectious tunes”. The femme fatale character lives on through her music. In death, she has the ultimate control over her destiny. And thus Carmen is forever immortalised as one of the great heroines. </p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>Opera Australia’s season of <a href="http://opera.org.au/whatson/events/carmenmelbourne">Carmen</a> runs May 14-25 at the Arts Centre Melbourne, State Theatre.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Macarthur does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The fictional character of Carmen – the heroine of Bizet’s opera – attracts a range of labels which variously position her as seductress, femme fatale, sex addict, fate/ death obsessed, victim, liberated…
Sally Macarthur, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.