Music Speaks: On the Language of Opera, Dance, and SongExplores the meaning[s] of music, the most intricate and significant language invented by our culture.From Daniel Albright, author of Musicking Shakespeare and Berlioz's Semi-Operas, comes a collection of essays on music and on dance, probing the problems of articulating the meaning[s] of music; the larger question of how music and language interact; how text-setting highlights certain areas of meter, theme, or ironic undertone, and leaves others in darkness; how a musical composition can behave as a critique of a previous composition; and how one might rehabilitate certain underappreciated or much-scorned figures, such as Meyerbeer, by showing that the very terms of invective used against them can be seen, from another angle, as an indication of what is exciting in their work. Albright shows that music history has an aesthetic of its own, and how music history interacts with intellectual history (from Rousseau to Paul de Man). By abutting music against literature and painting, and by juxtaposing the musics of different centuries, Albright frames a particular work, isolating what is arresting and important in it. The essays range widely, but they rarely stray far from opera, for the opera house is the venue where the performances speak the most intricate and significant language invented by our culture -- a language that speaks in music, words, pictures, and light. Daniel Albright teaches courses in the English, ComparativeLiterature, and Music departments at Harvard University.by our culture -- a language that speaks in music, words, pictures, and light. Daniel Albright teaches courses in the English, ComparativeLiterature, and Music departments at Harvard University.by our culture -- a language that speaks in music, words, pictures, and light. Daniel Albright teaches courses in the English, ComparativeLiterature, and Music departments at Harvard University.by our culture -- a language that speaks in music, words, pictures, and light. Daniel Albright teaches courses in the English, ComparativeLiterature, and Music departments at Harvard University. |
Contents
Heine and the Composers | 15 |
The Diabolical Senta | 39 |
The Undoing of Opera | 58 |
Far Sounds in Zemlinsky and Schreker | 72 |
Butchering Moses | 94 |
Listening to Listening Through | 105 |
Sophoclean Opera | 122 |
Belletristic Music in the Twentieth Century | 145 |
The Role of Dance in Opera | 163 |
Elephant Swan Space Grace | 178 |
Common terms and phrases
accompanying according actual Aeschylus aspects ballad ballet becomes beginning Berlioz body called Carter century Chapter character chord chorus complete composers composition dance dancers drama Edited effect epic essay Eteocles example expression fact falls feel figure find first Flying Dutchman followed Greek Greek tragedy hand hear Heine human imagine keeps kind language less lies listen lives means melody Moses movement notes Oedipus Rex once opera orchestra painting passage performer perhaps piano piece play poem Press represent Richard scene Schoenberg Schubert Schumann seems sense shape singer single sings sometimes song soprano sort sound space speak speech stage statue story Strauss Stravinsky theme thing Translated tries Troyens turn understand University voice Wagner whole woman writing wrote York Zemlinsky