02:15 Behind The Scenes

Dr White

Dr White

Amelia

Amelia

Nicky

Nicky

Lizzie

Lizzie

Molly

Molly

Keyboard Player 

Keyboard Player

Music Theatre...

Music/theatre as a theatre of ideas...

By Richard Vella

This article first appeared in NMA 8 Magazine

The purpose of this lecture is to broaden the narrow definition of the term Music Theatre. In a sense this paper will take the term music theatre and turn it on it's head to mean theatre of music.

Music/Theatre?

When discussing a music theatre it is important to acknowledge that the term consists of two words: music and theatre. A definition of music is very difficult requiring a historical survey of the various applications of the term. However in very simple terms, music can be said to be a `desired' sonic event. This sonic event can involve pitch, duration, timbre, frequency, rhythm, etc. Of course this simple definition makes no differentiation between the word `music' and the word `sound'. This is intended as it is important to understand that I consider a music theatre to be concerned with the construction and application of a sound or music and its relation to other elements. These other elements can be visual, verbal, gestural, literary or another sonic event.

The word theatre has many references, it being a mixing of terms from the words metathesis , to transpose;theme , from thesis; hypothesis , a suggested basis; theory ( theoros ), something examined; theasthai , a spectator. The actual word theatre  comes directly from the latin theatrum  meaning a place where people watched a drama (action, something happening). In other words a viewing space. It is unfortunate that the word theatre has come to be associated with a particular type of theatrical style involving plots, dramatic realism, actors, and the written word (the play) just as much as the term music theatre has come to be associated with the performance events and happenings which took place in the sixties.

However by going back to the derivations of the word theatre, interesting contradictions arise. If theatre originally meant a viewing place where a spectator watches something happening, how do we come to terms with the obvious contradiction in the term music theatre? Music is a sonic event, and theatre is supposedly an observed event. (Although radio plays dispel the notion that theatre is about seeing, as any blind person will tell us. Opera on radio is another one). Theatre can really only be satisfactorily addressed by the presence of a spectator ( theasthai ) being aware of an event happening. In other words theatre is about action, and it is in the many constructions and applications (via specific technological process) of this word `action' which defines theatrical genre. Hence the term music theatre can mean:

1. music as action (eg.the concert hall where we go to listen to ( view ) music). Remember also Stravinsky's statement that any performance of music is automatically a piece of theatre by its sheer presence. Something which many people have misunderstood by thinking that a music theatre is an overt visual gesture with music (eg: musicians wearing funny noses, or an opera production that is all dressed up with nowhere to go, i.e. massive design budgets)
2. music with other actions (eg. film, ballet, videos, plays, opera, etc)
3. combination of the above

The implications of what I have explained automatically call into question the validity of the term music theatre, as defintions 1, 2 and 3 can include anything. Consequently if everything can be perceived as a music theatre how can we begin to discuss it?

Music theatre as a theatre of the ear

Music theatre is concerned with a theatre of music. A theatre of the ear. Why do we call a concerto dramatic? Because it is about action between a soloist and an orchestra and that is its theatre. It is no coincidence that Mozart, as well being considered a master of the operatic form, was also a master of the classical concerto form. Music theatre is also music with a thesis  (an argument). And it is this argument in the music which is of crucial significance to our discussion. How is the music being constructed to have a point of view or for that matter differing points of view? What is its relationship to other elements, be it words, film, dance, images etc? What relationships are being set up within itself via the various use of the musical parameters (pitch, rhythm, timbre, register, etc.) in order to create the musical argument ( thesis , theoria )?

Having hopefully thrown out the door the superficial understanding of the term music theatre let us now outline a method in order to discuss it properly. How is it even possible to discuss a music theatre today in the age of the mass media? Are there different questions involved or are they the same ones in different guises due to the different technologies involved? It seems naive to separate the film music genre from the opera genre due to its technology when clearly film music has continually referred to opera throughout its history. I am not saying that opera is more important than film music but rather, we now live in a time where similar musical arguments show themselves across many genres whether they be radio, film, theatre, orchestral music, etc. In order to discuss these musical arguments and their relationship to other elements it is important to ask:

1. does the music have a separate function in relation to the other elements and what message does this communicate?
2. does the music when combined with the other elements create a new `meaning' [2] independent to the music when heard on its own?
3. is the music irrelevant to the message communicated, being merely  background material (i.e. a tautology)?

Music's relationshp to a text. Which text?

However what of music in relation to itself; its own parameters? How is it possible to discuss music itself as a music theatre when the above three questions are referring to works of an interdisciplinary nature? A possible answer lies in the original meaning of the word `text'. Text does not mean words but rather the word text comes from the latin texere , to weave. Textum  came to mean the tissue or web of a thing which is woven. The texture is then anything that is woven, the quality of the weave. In other words the text is the weaving together of all the elements into a shape, fabric, form. In music this came to mean texture. The text of a book or essay is the weaving together of all the various arguments via words. In film and opera the text is the weaving of the sonic and visual via their respective technologies. Texture is the fabric, text is the argument.

The setting of words to music is not simply text and music but rather the text is the overall weaving of the literary text with the musical texture. The text is the `meaning' (argument) the composer wants to communicate via all these elements. Even in a work without words the `text' of the piece is its argument. Itsthesis . And this is what a music theatre is essentially about: the viewing (perceiving) of a thesis, theory, metathesis via music (action in sound) and its relationship to the text (the overall web).

However, the `text' in a piece of music can also include the instrument that the work is played on, in other words the repertoire of the instrument or the historical/cultural assumptions that are associated with a particular instrument. The development of repertoire, like the above statement referring to genre, is about the musical arguments challenging the existing repertoire resulting in a development of the repertoire. And this also is the site for a music theatre. (Consider Cage's Prepared Piano pieces). When discussing the relationship between the music and the text, the composer has to understand which text he/she is dealing with. It may be the larger complicated fabric involving gesture, voice, words image etc (eg film, opera) or a canon of works which the composer is referring to.

The text can also include the instruments upon which a music is played (eg. Beethoven piano sonatas). And so the above three questions are really asking: What is the text and what is the music's relationship to the text? By asking what is the text, we are able to outline a method for articulating a musictheatre. Music theatre is not about a musician wearing funny noses playing a trumpet into a piano, although if faced with such a situation the question to ask is why such an event is taking place. Is it crucial or irrelevant to the overall text of the piece. How is the text of the music, the text of the performer's body, and the visual appearance combining to create a larger text? Music theatre is the site of the collision between a theory and a practice.

WHO'S ASKING Are you depending on the words Or are you depending on the music? Each one is at the mercy of the other. Conveying thought or feelings? What is the message? To sing is to only half say something, For where does the message lie? When the words avoid it and the melody serves it? 

(From Layer on Layer , by David Chesworth)

Music and Space

Remembering that the word theatrum means a `space' in which a spectator observes an action, i.e. drama , it is essential to understand the concept of the word `space'. To put it simply, there are two types of spaces: physical space and a more abstract one called temporal space. The physical space can be a performing space, a stage, a TV screen, a projected photographic slide, a shopping mall, a street etc. In musical terms it is also the registral space of an instrument or group of instruments, ie high, middle, low or the physical movement created in stereo panning (eg. left to right) or phasing. It can also mean a harmonic space, i.e. the intervallic distance between pitches. Examples of temporal spaces are musical forms (the relationship between one space and another space) or stylistic references (historical spaces). In order to fully understand a music theatre (or music as a theatre) it is important to comprehend the relationship between physical and temporal space in music. Conlon Nancarrow's Player Piano Studies are a collision of two separate temporal spaces combined with the physical space of register: i) the 19th century piano mechanised and ii) 20th century rhythmic/temporal relationships. This is just as much an example of a music theatre as are the Mozart Piano Concertos in which the physical and temporal spaces of the soloist collide with the physical and temporal spaces of the orchestra.

The theatre is in the listening as well as the viewing. Music theatre is the listener's perception of actions in space and also for that matter spaces in action. Finally I shall conclude with the following quote from James Tenney, whose book The History of Consonance and Dissonanceœ traces the history of theoretical approaches to harmony from Antiquity to the early twentieth century.

"To a far greater extent than has hitherto been recognised, the Western musical enterprise has been characterised by an effort to understand musical sounds, not merely to manipulate them - to comprehend `nature', as much as to `conquer' her - and thus to illuminate the musical experience rather than simply to impose upon it either a wilful personal `vision' or a timid imitation of inherited conventions, habits, assumptions, or `assertions'. In this enterprise, both composers and theorists have participated, although in different, mutually complementary ways- the former dealing with what might be called the `theatre' of music, as the latter its theory. A conception of these as indeed mutually complementary aspects of one and the same thing is suggested by the fact that both theory and theatre derive from the same etymological root - the Greek word theasmai - which was used (I am told) by Homer and Herodotus to mean `to gaze at or behold with wonder.' " [3]

Footnotes

1. This and the following lecture was originally presented in a fourth year composition class at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 1989. return
2. I use the word `meaning' with caution as it touches on a huge area involving representation, hermeneutics, myth and information theory. This is discussed in the following lecture. return
3. James Tenney, "A History of Consonance and Dissonance", Excelsior Music Publishing Company, N.Y. p.103.

---

© 2003 NMA Publications and Richard Vella. Back to NMA magazine index.

Head Shots...

Lucy

Potential ideas for shows concept-

"There are times in our lives when we must make choices based more on instinct than intellect. Often the soul recognises its choices before the rational mind has time to process the information" 'Follow The White Rabbit'- Daniel Jacobs (Author) 

"Follow the white rabbit.  The inner mind and heart know instinctively what is being said here.  The brain gets a little foggy on it, though.  The difference between the 'brain' and the 'mind' in a person is obvious.  The former is assigned the task of filtration (sorting sensory stimulus and collating knowledge) as well as concentration on life's goals.  The latter gets to sift through infinite options, interface with Spirit, and decide which "possibilities" to feed into the brain for printing and saving to the hard disk."

Games- Snakes and Ladders/ dominos  

look at/ research- mental health treatment/ smells/ one flew over the cuckoos nest brighton/ iconicity of games in hospitals/ metronome/practitioners who work intimately/ music theatre/ talk to Kirsty first hand experience  

Mad Hatter's Tea Party...

Design Inspiration...

Colour Palette, Costume and Make-up Inspiration-

'Water Lilies'- Claude Monet

Claude Monet  (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing perceptions before nature, especially as applied to landscape painting.The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant).

Impressionism  was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s in spite of harsh opposition from the art community in France. The name of the style is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a review published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari. Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes; open composition; emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time); common, ordinary subject matter; the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience; and unusual visual angles. The development of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media which became known as Impressionist music and Impressionist literature.

'Year of the Dragon' Tim Walker

Tim Walker
Timothy "Tim" Walker (born in England, 1970) is a British fashion photographer.
Tim Walker’s photographs have appeared in Vogue, month by month, for over a decade. Extravagant staging and romantic motifs characterise his style. After concentrating on the photographic still for 15 years, Tim Walker has begun directing short films.
On graduation in 1994, Walker worked as a freelance photography assistant in London before moving to New York City as a full time assistant to Richard Avedon. On returning to England, he initially concentrated on portrait and documentary work for UK newspapers. At the age of 25, he shot his first fashion story for Vogue, and has photographed for the British, Italian, and American editions ever since. The Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London include the photographs of Tim Walker in their permanent collections. He staged his first major exhibition at the Design Museum in London in the spring of 2008, coinciding with the publication of his book ‘Pictures’. In November 2008, Walker received the ‘Isabella Blow award for Fashion Creator’ by The British Fashion Council and, in May 2009, he received an Infinity Award from the International Centre of Photography in New York for his work as a fashion photographer.
Tim Walker's photography is often described as surreal. British Vogue has a long history of collaborating with Surrealist's. Already in 1930's Man Ray, Cecil Beaton and other photographers used Surrealist ideas to express themselves on the pages of British Vogue. Fashion photographers see themselves as artists, their work is barely related to fashion products at all. Fashion is very playful and fashion photography gives photographers the means and possibilities to express their ideas.
Walker's photography is irrational and extravagant in a sweet dream like way. He has been influenced by the Surrealist's, who used to Vogue already in the 1930's. Before even studying photography, Walker worked in Vogue with Beaton's archive. But when Surrealism came into fashion it was with fervour. Overtaking the fashion arts with zeal, Surrealism has never left. Ideas about presentation in magazines, window displays and apparel have changed in the intervening years, but Surrealism remains fashion's favourite art. Fashion and it's instruments were at the art of Surrealist metaphor, touching on the imaginary of woman and the correlation between the world of real objects and the life of objects in the mind. - Richard Martin- Fashion and Surrealism 

'Lady Grey' Vogue Fahion Photoshoot- Tim Walker

His work draws the attention of people who are very strange to fashion. His work seems not be about fashion but about something else, something much deeper, about culture and history. Muir who is a photographic historian says in his foreword to Walker's book 'Pictures' that it is inescapable that there is a streak of Surrealism in Walker's pictures. Muir says that this is the genial Surrealism of Margritte rather than the ambiguous, sexually charged tableaux of Dali. At its most intoxicating, it's that particular British notion of Surrealism as slapstick, endless summer fun; Beaton's era again, perhaps, when those who were lucky enough to have emerged from the Great War unscathed were still ignorant to the storm clouds gathering again.-

"All of my photos are linked to the things that have made me dream as a kid."
"It made me appreciate that colourful, fairytale- like world of the British Vogue- photographer even more." 
"...Why you see all those- Alice in Wonderland- like settings. Walker likes to play with perspectives, by using huge props in his photos." 


{http://www.triin.info/2009/08/tim-walker-vogue-and-surrealism.html}


Alexander Mcqueen-

Lee Alexander McQueen, CBE (17 March 1969 – 11 February 2010) was a British fashion designer and couturier best known for his in-depth knowledge of bespoke British tailoring, his tendency to juxtapose strength with fragility in his collections, as well as the emotional power and raw energy of his provocative fashion shows. He is also known for having worked as chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001 and for founding his own Alexander McQueen label. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards (1996, 1997, 2001 and 2003), as well as the Council of International Fashion Designers Award's International Designer of the Year award in 2003.

Autumn Winter 2012 Collection- The collection is about a love story, a love of McQueen and a love of great British style – from military coats to overblown ball gowns.

Sharp tailoring. A nipped in waist with a masculine dropped shoulder and an exaggerated hip gives an hourglass silhouette for women.

The men’s collection features khaki wool felt tailoring, flannel shirting and heavy ribbed sweaters with military detailing.

{Alexander Mcqueen A/W 2012- Via Youtube}

Alexander Mcqueen Autumn Winter 2012 Collection

Alexander Mcqueen- Autumn Winter 2012 Collection





Mirror Mirror-

Mirror Mirror is a 2012 comedy fantasy film based on ‘’Snow White’’ by the Brothers Grimm. It is directed by Tarsem Singh and stars Lily Collins, Julia Roberts, Armie Hammer, Nathan Lane, and Sean Bean. The costumes were designed by Eiko Ishioka.

{Mirror Mirror Trailer- Via Youtube}

Still From Mirror Mirror

Chanel 5's Once Upon A Time-


Costumes designed by: Eduardo Castro

Once Upon A Time is our new fairytale drama from Edward Kitsisand Adam Horowitz, the team behind Lost and Tron: Legacy.
Emma Swan knows how to take care of herself. She's a 28-year-old who has been fending for herself ever since she was abandoned as a baby.
But everything changes when Henry - the son she gave up years ago - finds her. Henry is now 10 years old and in desperate need of his birth mother's help. He believes that Emma comes from an alternate world and that she is Snow White and Prince Charming's missing daughter.
According to the book of fairytales that he was given by his teacher Mary Margaret, they sent her away to protect her from the Evil Queen's curse, which trapped the characters of fairytale world forever and brought them into our world.
Emma instantly dismisses Henry's theory, but when she brings him back to Storybrooke, she finds herself drawn to this unusual boy and this strange town. Concerned for his welfare, she decides to stay for a while longer, but she soon suspects that Storybrooke is more than it seems.
It's a place where magic has been forgotten, but where fairytale characters are alive, even though they don't remember who they once were and where the Evil Queen, known as Regina, is now Henry's adoptive mother.
In order to understand where the fairytale world's former inhabitants came from and what led to the Evil Queen's wrath, you'll need to take a glimpse into their previous lives. But it might just turn everything you've ever believed about these characters upside down. Meanwhile, the epic battle for the future of all worlds is about to begin. For good to win, Emma will have to accept her destiny and fight like hell.

{'Once Upon A Time' - Via Channel Five} 

Make-up company-

Hair and Make-up Designs...

Amelia-
Jake-
Nicky-
Cliff-
Molly-
Lizzy
Em: White Rabbit-
Chloe-

Costume Designs...

Character Relationships 

Character Profiles/Design:

Amelia- As the piece is focusing on what Amelia sees and believes, her costume reflects her dream like state and how she, views herself within this dream world or 'Wonderland' Inspired by the cut of Alexander Mcqueen's autumn/winter 2012 collection. Her costume reflects her desire to change time- with the hourglass figure emphasised through a cage structure symbolising how Amelia is caged within her own thoughts. The colours of her costume and the piece as a whole are inspired by the impressionist artist Claude Monet and his Water Lilies studies and the photographer Tim Walker- in particular his Lady Grey image and The Year of the Dragon.


Designed, Illustrated and Constructed by Sophie Knapp

Jake- Amelia's 'Prince Charming'. Jake's costume is the anthesis of his character, outwardly portraying a self confident 'peacock' but inwardly lacking self esteem. The colouring of Jake's costume reflects this. Amelia sees and associates this within her 'Wonderland'. 
"Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in grey than in peacock bright." (Quote by - Van Wyck Brooks)  
Amelia sees a young attractive man, and does not necessarily delve deeper into his personality. 
"At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all". (Quote by - Balthasar Gracian) 


Designed, Illustrated and Constructed by Sophie Knapp

Designed By Colette Tulley

Illustration By Colette Tulley

Nicky- Amelia's best friend, who starts of quite out going and progressively withdraws into almost a cocoon. This is represented within her costume as it starts off extrovert and gradually conceals her; covering and enveloping. The colour blue, in particular Indigo turns the blue inwards to increase personal thought, profound insights and spiritual realisation.

Designed, Constructed by Colette Tulley

Chloe- 

Amelia's nemesis- Not the most popular girl, because of her bitchy nature and has an vindictive evil streak. Her occupation is that of a Barmaid and so she is privy to gossip. Amelia see's Chloe's costume as a tarty barmaid or a traditional villain figure. The colour purple symbolises her promiscuity, dissent and conceit. 


Cliff-
Designed and Constructed by Sam Sullivan 

Molly-
Designed and Constructed by Sam Sullivan 


Lizzy-
Designed and Constructed Collaboratively 






Dr White: White Rabbit-

Designed and Constructed Collaboratively 

Costume Design:

{Coleen Atwood- Designing for Alice in Wonderland: Via Youtube}

{Wicked- Behind the Curtain- Costume Edition: Via Youtube}