New Music Theatre in Europe: Transformations between 1955-1975 - Adlington, Robert (Oxon New York Routledge, 2019)
Between 1955 and 1975 music theatre became a central preoccupation for European composers digesting the consequences of the revolutionary experiments in musical language that followed the end of the Second World War. The ‘new music theatre’ wrought multiple, significant transformations, serving as a crucible for the experimental rethinking of theatrical traditions, artistic genres, the conventions of performance, and the composer’s relation to society. This volume brings together leading specialists from across Europe to offer a new appraisal of the genre. It is structured according to six themes that investigate: the relation of new music theatre to earlier and contemporaneous theories of drama; the use of new technologies; the relation of new music theatre to progressive politics; the role of new venues and environments; the advancement of new conceptions of the performer; and the challenges that new music theatre lays down for music analysis. Contributing authors address canonical works by composers such as Berio, Birtwistle, Henze, Kagel, Ligeti, Nono, and Zimmermann, but also expand the field to figures and artistic developments not regularly represented in existing music histories. Particular attention is given to new music theatre as a site of intense exchange – between practitioners of different art forms, across national borders, and with diverse mediating institutions.
Introduction ROBERT ADLINGTONPART I: Between the avant-gardes: new music theatre and new conceptions of drama1. The definition of a new performance code between ‘avant-garde’ and ‘new’ theatre STEFANIA BRUNO2. Total theatre and music theatre: tracing influences from pre- to post-war avant-gardes JULIA H. SCHRÖDER3. Theatre as problem: modern drama and its influence in Ligeti, Pousseur and Berio VINCENZINA C. OTTOMANOPART II: Expansions of technology4. Audio-visual collisions: moving image technology and the Laterna Magika aesthetic in new music theatre HOLLY ROGERS5. Composing new media: magnetic tape technology in new music theatre, c. 1950–1970 ANDREAS MÜNZMAYPART III: The critique of established power6. Guerrilla in the Polder: Music-Theatrical Protests in the Low Countries, 1968-1969 HARM LANGENKAMP7. René Leibowitz’s Todos caerán: grand opéra as (critique of) new music theatreESTEBAN BUCHPART IV: New venues and environments8. A survey of new music theatre in Rome, 1961-1973: ‘anni favolosi’? ALESSANDRO MASTROPIETRO9. Avant-garde music theatre: the Festival d’Avignon between 1967 and 1969 JEAN-FRANÇOIS TRUBERTPART V: Reconceiving the performer10. Reconceptualising the performer in new music theatre: collaborations with actors, mimes and musicians DAVID BEARD11. Embodied commitments: solo performance and the making of new music theatre FRANCESCA PLACANICAPART VI: Analyzing new music theatre12. New music theatre and theories of embodied cognition BJÖRN HEILE13. Analyzing new music theatre: theme and variations (in a multimedial perspective) ANGELA IDA DE BENEDICTIS
Keywords: Music theater; Theater history; Music history; Music philosophy and esthetics; Technology