Sofer, Danielle (2018) Breaking Silence, Breaching Censorship: “Ongoing Interculturality” in Alice Shields's Electronic Opera Apocalypse. American Music, 36 (2). pp. 135-162. ISSN 0734-4392

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Abstract

On a warm summer’s eve in 1990, American composer Alice Shields visited her friend, Columbia University colleague, and fellow composer Daria Semegen. Under the stars outside Semegen’s home in Stony Brook, Long Island, the conversation veered—as it often did—to contemporary U.S. politics. Enraged by “bigoted puritanism,” Shields and Semegen criticized the recent influx of conservatism, specifically, the increasing volume of antiabortion groups. The composers began improvising playfully in call-and-response on the risqué behavior they supposed had triggered these groups, eventually settling on the chant “Your hot lips, Apocalypse,” what would later become a line from “Apocalypse Song,” the title aria to Shields’s electronic opera Apocalypse, written in 1993 and released a year later on CD.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	breaking silence; breaching censorship; ongoing interculturality; Alice Shield; Electronic Opera; Apocalypse;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Arts & Humanities > Music
Item ID:	16040
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.36.2.0135
Depositing User:	Dr Danielle Sofer
Date Deposited:	01 Jun 2022 09:50
Journal or Publication Title:	American Music
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
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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