Harrison Birtwistle's Operas and Music Theatre

哈里森伯特威斯尔歌剧和音乐剧院

• 批准号: AH/F012411/1
• 负责人: David Beard
• 金额: $ 2.92万
• 依托单位: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2009 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FF012411%2F1
• 关键词: Harrison; Birtwistle; Operas; Music; Theatre

The proposed research project is a musical and cultural analysis of the operas and music theatre of Harrison Birtwistle, one of the most experienced composers of opera in Europe, and Britain's foremost living composer. The study introduces readers to the composer's abundant sketches for the stage works, which are housed at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basle in a collection that runs to several thousand pages. These sketches, which have been only briefly discussed in earlier studies, are here considered systematically for the first time. New analytical questions arise from the sketches, and they illuminate details of the composer's collaborations with his librettists in many crucial ways. For example, several hundred pages that relate to Birtwistle's collaboration with the poet David Harsent (the librettist for the opera Gawain (1991)) answer important questions posed at the time of the opera's premiere, and they suggest new ways of interpreting its central dramatic themes, in particular the idea of divided identity. Each chapter considers a single work, or a small group of works, from a different perspective. In this regard, the book focuses on ways in which the operas differ from one another, rather than on aspects that relate them, which was a characteristic of earlier Birtwistle studies. However, a central theme that runs throughout the book - an idea that has not been fully explored in existing literature - is a dilemma that faced all post-war avant-garde composers interested in opera, namely, a conflict between the avant-garde's abstract, formalist agenda and opera's 'worldly concerns'. In Birtwistle's stage works, this is most obviously expressed by a dialectical relationship between the drama (the libretto and action) and the composer's desire for an independent, purely musical form of instrumental theatre.The origins of this dilemma are discussed in chapter 1, which contextualises and re-examines the apparently anti-operatic mood of the 1960s and early 1970s. In chapter 2, dialectical relationships arise from the interplay of lyricism and violence in Punch and Judy (1968), which is associated with the use of parody. Chapter 3 explores spaces between Peter Zinovieff's highly prescriptive libretto for The Mask of Orpheus (1983) and Birtwistle's musical response through what, in the sketches, he terms 'lyrical formalism'. In chapter 4, on the chamber opera, or 'mechanical pastoral', Yan Tan Tethera (1984), the focus moves to a dialectical relationship between the idea of scene (or landscape) and agent (or shepherd). These terms, used in Paul Alpers's interpretation of pastoral convention, are discussed in the context of modernism, subjectivity, and Birtwistle's comparison of the work to a maze, or labyrinth. Chapter 5 employs theories of narrative, plot and voice to explore a dialectical relationship between dramatic narrative and musical discourse in Gawain. The focus of chapter 6, on The Second Mrs Kong (1994), is an apparent disconnection between the ideas of the librettist, Russell Hoban, and the music of Birtwistle. The sketches, however, reveal that the libretto's dramatic and conceptual themes - the mediation of images through ideas and the workings of image-identification in diverse media - are explored in the music. Chapter 7 considers Bow Down (1977), The Last Supper (1999) and The Io Passion (2004). Dialectical relationships between voice and body are explored here, and the social theories of Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben, which inform Robin Blaser's libretto for The Last Supper. The final chapter focuses on The Minotaur, scheduled to be premiered in Covent Garden in April, 2008. Drawing on interviews with Birtwistle and Harsent, the librettist, this chapter returns to earlier themes in the book (most obviously the idea of a labyrinth), and documents the compositional process for what is likelyto be Birtwistle's last major opera.

拟议的研究项目是对哈里森·比特威索（Harrison Birtwistle）的歌剧和音乐剧进行音乐和文化分析，哈里森·比特威索是欧洲最有经验的歌剧作曲家之一，也是英国最重要的在世作曲家。该研究向读者介绍了作曲家丰富的舞台作品草图，这些草图收藏在巴塞尔的保罗·萨赫基金会，藏品多达数千页。这些草图在早期的研究中仅被简要讨论过，但在这里首次得到系统的考虑。这些草图提出了新的分析问题，它们在许多关键方面阐明了作曲家与剧本作者合作的细节。例如，涉及伯特威斯尔与诗人大卫·哈森特（歌剧高文（1991）的剧本作者）合作的数百页回答了歌剧首演时提出的重要问题，并提出了解释其中心戏剧主题的新方法，特别是身份分裂的概念。每一章都从不同的角度考虑一部作品或一小群作品。在这方面，本书关注的是歌剧彼此不同的方式，而不是它们之间的相关方面，这是早期伯特威斯尔研究的一个特点。然而，贯穿全书的一个中心主题——一个在现有文献中尚未得到充分探讨的想法——是所有对歌剧感兴趣的战后先锋派作曲家所面临的困境，即先锋派的抽象、形式主义议程与歌剧的“世俗关注”之间的冲突。在伯特威斯尔的舞台作品中，这一点最明显地表现为戏剧（剧本和动作）与作曲家对独立的、纯粹音乐形式的器乐戏剧的渴望之间的辩证关系。第一章讨论了这种困境的根源，该章将 20 世纪 60 年代和 1970 年代初明显的反歌剧情绪置于背景中并重新审视。在第二章中，辩证关系源于《潘趣与朱迪》（1968）中抒情与暴力的相互作用，这与戏仿的使用有关。第三章探讨了彼得·齐诺维耶夫（Peter Zinovieff）为《奥菲斯的面具》（1983）所写的高度规范的剧本与伯特维斯特通过他在草图中所说的“抒情形式主义”做出的音乐反应之间的空间。在第四章中，关于室内歌剧或“机械田园”，《Yan Tan Tethera》（1984），焦点转移到场景（或风景）和代理人（或牧羊人）观念之间的辩证关系。保罗·阿尔珀斯（Paul Alpers）对田园传统的解释中使用的这些术语是在现代主义、主观性和伯特维斯特将作品比作迷宫的背景下讨论的。第五章运用叙事、情节和声音理论探讨高文戏剧叙事与音乐话语之间的辩证关系。第六章《孔二夫人》（1994）的焦点是剧本作者拉塞尔·霍班（Russell Hoban）的思想与伯特威斯尔（Birtwistle）的音乐之间明显的脱节。然而，这些草图揭示了剧本的戏剧性和概念性主题——通过思想来调解图像以及不同媒体中的图像识别工作——在音乐中得到了探索。第七章探讨了《鞠躬》（Bow Down，1977）、《最后的晚餐》（The Last Supper，1999）和《木卫一受难》（The Io Passion，2004）。这里探讨了声音和身体之间的辩证关系，以及让-吕克·南希和乔治·阿甘本的社会理论，这些理论为罗宾·布拉泽的《最后的晚餐》的剧本提供了信息。最后一章重点关注将于 2008 年 4 月在考文特花园首演的《牛头怪》。本章根据对伯特威斯尔和剧作家哈森特的采访，回到了书中早期的主题（最明显的是迷宫的概念），并记录了可能是伯特威斯尔最后一部主要歌剧的创作过程。