Placanica, Francesca
(2018)
Recital I (for Cathy): A Drama ‘Through the Voice’.
Twentieth-Century Music, 15 (3).
pp. 359-397.
ISSN 1478-5730
Abstract
Work on this article began as a contribution to a wider discussion of twentieth-century music theatre, and
in particular a genre in the category of twentieth-century musical monodramas – one-act staged monologues
with, or in music for, one performer. 1: My current research focuses on the genesis and performance tradition
of works composed for solo female singer, and raises questions about the creative agency of the performer in
the making of such works, reflecting on matters such as subjectivity, voice, and identity. 2: If this outlook may
slightly drift from a conventional narrative springing from the composer’s voice, a critical investigation of the
collaborative process foregrounding the genealogy of some of these works is compelling, especially since every
composer who embarked on this ‘genre’, or compositional topos, inflected it in idiosyncratic ways. In works such
as Erwartung, La Voix humaine, The Testament of Eve, Neither, and La machine de l’etre ˆ , the performative voice
of the female soloist to whom the work was tailored became a generative element capable of shaping the formal,
musical, and dramaturgical material. 3: Examination of selected case studies, focusing especially on the creative
and performative processes surrounding these works, triggers an array of questions about gender politics. More
importantly, transversal insight into the making of these works and their performativity reveals the interconnected
nature of the two phases of creation and performance. In musical monodrama, more than in larger forms of music
theatre, the two processes interweave and depend on each other; reconstructing the performative genealogy of
the ‘work’ reveals an intrinsic impasse in the very notion of the musical ‘text’ associated exclusively with the
compiled score and its literary sources.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
twentieth-century music theatre; musical monodramas; solo female singer; Recital I (for Cathy); creative agency; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > Music |
| Item ID: |
13464 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478572217000317 |
| Depositing User: |
Francesca Placanica
|
| Date Deposited: |
21 Oct 2020 16:17 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Twentieth-Century Music |
| Publisher: |
Cambridge University Press |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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