Sigmund Freud was terrified of music. He had no problems standing before a sculpture, or extracting meaning from the various shapes and colours of an abstract painting. But for music it was different. He could never understand how music could have such a huge emotional impact on him.
But I can’t help but to wonder how he would have felt about music with words? More specifically opera and musical theatre? Surely he would have found this hybrid drama-music a salve to his musical neurosis?
Song is without a doubt, the most popular form of music in history, and its success is attributed to the transcendent effect between words and music. Musical forms based on song, carry through to create a powerful third thing that has driven musical disciplines such as musical theatre and opera, from the very beginning.
This third thing, in essence, is about the passage of words-to-music, and music-to-words, and in so doing, somehow picks up our imaginations, and takes us from our everyday lives into a world of mystery, suspense, horror, love and wonder along the way. I suspect it could have given Freud something to extract meaning from, and at the same time experience the emotional impact of music as a means of “transdisciplinarity”.
According to the theory of transdisciplinarity, Basarab Nicolescu advocated a reconciliation between science and the humanities. It has been suggested that this transcendence is at the heart of the power of musical drama.
But how does this transcendence take place exactly? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and have come to the conclusion that there is some kind of a scale at play here, whereby the more extreme the pitch and rhythm of sung or spoken words get, the more readily they come across as music. In other words, as words become more and more ‘pitchy’ – our perception shifts from hearing them as language, to music.
As a side note, some theorists have recently been exploring what happens when we make instruments speak with words. You can hear the striking effects here:
This is the opposite end of the question: what happens when musical instruments enter the domain of language?
We can also hear this effect in Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis’ famous speech-melody compositions:
The relationship between words and music is most plainly seen between opera and musical theatre. Opera has placed the emphasis on the power of music over words, and musical theatre has placed the sovereignty of words over music. In opera, the conductor rules the land, as the director rules the stage in musical theatre. Where a conductor uses physical gestures to emote meaning into the performers, the musical theatre director uses words to communicate their creative vision.
The political hierarchy of musical theatre places the stage director above the music director; in opera the conductor and composer are at the top of the food chain, and the stage director somewhere below them.
Vocal style and acting techniques are another important distinction. In musical theatre the use of microphones is not uncommon, but in opera singers are trained to project their voices naturally.
The extreme options of these two similar yet opposing practices expose an absolutist viewpoint where each art form claims an innate superiority over the other. As a composer who has worked in both domains, I’ve always found this dogma adversarial, where each acts out two opposed creative standpoints. When working in opera, one must be constantly aware of the contradictions between words and music and move creatively between them in the service of the work as a whole.
[pl_blockquote cite=”Mendelssohn, Letter of 1842 to Marc-André Souchay”] The thoughts which are expressed to me by music that I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but too definite [/pl_blockquote]
The irony of the fact that I am using words to discuss music in this article is not lost on me. So instead I’d like to share some examples that illustrate two ways that I think opera and musical theatre sometimes fail the theory of transdisciplinarity.
Offenbach: Les oiseaux dans la charmille
(start at 14 sec. in)
This first example shows the sound of the operatic voice and its infinite parameters of colour, range and breath control developed to athletic standard, yet also carrying the weight of meaning. These moments are purely musical, and move beyond language, where the “beauty” of the line is everything.
Sondheim: Anyone can whistle
(start at 20 sec. in)
This second example serves to illustrate the strikingly different vocal techniques used in musical theatre. While the emphasis on opera is beauty, the emphasis in musical theatre is truth. Each word is perfectly enunciated, and the weight is on the intelligibility of the text.
You will not hear a lot of melisma, and theatre singers would never indulge in virtuosity like opera singers do. The songs are sung at the same speed of everyday speech, and the words are enunciated with clarity. The music acts like an ornate frame around the portrait of the vocalist, who seeks to act out the “truth” of the text supreme.
It was Keats who said “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” But every once in a while, truth and beauty can combine, and the promise of transdisciplinarity is fulfilled. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a special focus on one or the other, but I wonder what might happen if each discipline became more aware of the other? Are these long-held dogmas towards the supremacy of words over music, or music over words helpful in the goal of creating art that represents the cultural needs of society?
Now for an example that I think does transcend to create that special third thing, balanced evenly between truth and beauty.
Purcell: Mad Bess
Poor senseless Bes, clothed in her rang and folly. The emotion and text are inseparable and even Herr Doktor Freud probably could have embraced it. Mad Bess was published in 1683 as part of Purcell’s ‘mad-songs’. It is a complex piece, with twelve sections spread over a hundred bars that frequently change meter to evoke Bess’s schizophrenic and emotional state.
As you can hear in the above examples, there are certain camps that composers choose to align themselves with. Most composers chose a stance depending upon each particular project and the chosen text. But it seems the most comprehensive examples, often provide the most depth – but a meaningful depth that not only stirs our deepest inner world, but also affects our conscious waking lives. It’s this powerful bridge between the conscious and unconscious that makes Purcell’s Mad Bess such a masterpiece to revel at.
Of course there is nothing wrong with a composer setting up camp in purely abstract forms, or purely meaning-driven forms (an argument that is sometimes confused as highbrow and low-brow art). Those are all very important – but the caveat is that performance practice should not be so rigid as to disallow a composer to shift between the two camps in equal regard.
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[Addendum]
Gilbert and Sullivan’s Major-General’s Song
(start at 50 sec. in)
Just to add to the idea of vocal virtuosity found in opera, (coloratura), musical theatre also has its own take on virtuosity. In this example, you can hear musical theatre’s version of virtuosity though the Major General Song (a family favourite), which uses a fast paced rhythm and tempo as opposed to a more pitch-based operatic vocal style.
I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the
fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order
categorical;
Michael Vincent
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