F
Standing against the existing musical
traditions, a new genre of music has developed, one based on a fragmentation
and questioning of a stifling conservatism within the field of western music. There have been a large number of composers
spread around the world have provided major contributions to this movement, the
best known of whom include Berio (Italy), Maxwell-Davies (Great-Britain),
Ligeti (Hungary) and Kagel (Germany).
This movement, as recognized by the participants, is not one which
composers conform or contribute works to: it is a dynamic and vital form which
receives new experimentations in each new performance. For the composer of New Music-Theater
performance, the restrictions of a 'pure' European musicology where the
performers become merely tools for the expression of a composers purely musical
ideas are questioned and the theatrical space in which the musician stands
becomes a vital theatrical space where the potential for cultural expression
becomes an enormous potential, a liminal
zone in which the composer suddenly is liberate to deal with his musicians in a
living, breathing form. One of the basic
underlying characteristics of this movement, although forms of expression are
completely open, is the realization of dynamic liminality in the performance space and the possibilities for 'theatrical' expression in
the movements of a musician. Major
influences to this movement include avant-garde movements in the performing
arts around the turn of the century, including Dada and Futurism, in addition
to influence from absurdist theatre which moves towards musical expression in
the theatre rather than simply the strict representation of narrative. Absurdist theatre demonstrated the
ontological questioning of the theatrical form: when is smething
music? When is it theatre? when is it a
ritual? How should the performer's
become involved in the performance? How
should the audience interact with the performance? these
are some of the questions posed by the New Music-Theatre genre. Ritualisation of
human behaviour and a connection between ritual
structure and music were also influences to both movements like Dada and
The New Music-Theatre. The liberation to musical expression
provided by these movements filtered down to musical world, hence the dynamism
of the new music-theatre movement. In New Music-Theatre performances, the
stage becomes a liminal space for the performers
(musicians) and audience members, and when the strict traditions of western
musical performance are broken a unique process of liminality
is reached: the composer achieves a unique sense of dynamism and liberation,
changing the perfoermer's and the audience's
interaction with their temporal and spatial environment. Works like Kagel's Con
Voce is a prime-example, where the performers play their instruments,
exaggerating the movements, without actually making a sound. questioning the
nature of musicality is a basic liminal issue: wen does music stop and the theatre begin? the performance sets
up an environment in which this can occur, leading to the previously mentioned
theatrical dynamism made unique by this movement. Like a ritual, the performer is 'betwixt and
between' different forms of expression, and the whole dynamism of this
potentiality become a unique questioning of existing
traditional forms.
© May 2008 Nachtschimmen
Music-Theatre-Language Night Shades,
Ghent (Belgium)*
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Major Writings
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