Revealing masks : exotic influences and ritualized performance in modernist music theater / W. Anthony Sheppard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sheppard, William Anthony, 1969-

Series:

California studies in 20th-century music ; 1.

California studies in 20th-century music ; 1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Music--20th century--History and criticism.

Music.

Music in the theater.

Music theater--History and criticism.

Music theater.

Music--Performance.

Physical Description:

xv, 350 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2001]

Summary:

W. Anthony Sheppard considers a wide-ranging constellation of important musical works in this fascinating exploration of ritualized performance in twentieth-century music. Revealing Masks uncovers the range of political, didactic, and aesthetic intents that inspired the creators of modernist music theater. Sheppard is especially interested in the use of the "exotic" in techniques of masking and stylization, identifying Japanese Noh, medieval Christian drama, and ancient Greek theater as the most prominent exotic models for the creation of "total theater."

Drawing on an extraordinarily diverse -- and in some instances, little known -- range of music theater pieces, Sheppard cites the work of Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, Arthur Honegger, Peter Maxwell Davies, Harry Partch, and Leonard Bernstein, as well as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Madonna. Artists in literature, theater, and dance -- such as William Butler Yeats, Paul Claudel, Bertolt Brecht, Isadora Duncan, Ida Rubenstein, and Edward Gordon Craig -- also play a significant role in this study.

Sheppard poses challenging questions that will interest readers beyond those in the field of music scholarship. For example, what is the effect on the audience and the performers of depersonalizing ritual elements? Does borrowing from foreign cultures inevitably amount to a kind of predatory appropriation? Revealing Masks shows that compositional concerns and cultural themes manifested in music theater are central to the history of twentieth-century Euro-American music, drama, and dance.

Contents:

Part I Introduction: Drawing Connections in the Margins

1 Defining Music Theater 3

2 The Multiplicity of the Exotic 10

3 Ritual and Performance 15

Part II Borrowed Masks: Greek, Japanese, and Medieval

4 The Masks of Modernism 25

5 Freedom in a Tunic versus Frieze-Dried Classicism: Hellenism in Modernist Performance 42

6 The Uses of Noh 72

7 Medievalism and the French Modernist Stage 96

Part III The Mysteries of British Music Theater; or, Dressing up for Church

8 The Audience as Congregation 115

9 Britten's Parables 126

10 Later British Mysteries 155

Part IV The Varieties of Ritual Expression and Criticism in American Music Theater

11 Orientalists and a Crusader 169

12 Partch's Vision of "Integrated Corporeal Theater" and "Latter-Day Rituals" 180

13 Bitter Rituals for a Lost Nation: Partch and Bernstein 204

14 God in Popular Music(al) Theater 231

Part V Conclusion: Removing the Masks

15 Masking the Human and the Misogyny of Masks 243

16 Music Theater Now 252.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-338) and index.

ISBN:

0520223020

OCLC:

44076157