Beckett and Music: A practice-based investigation through a production of Stefano Gervasoni's Beckett music-theatre work 'Pas si'.

苏塞克斯大学歌剧和音乐剧院研究中心(CROMT)应巴黎第八大学当代音乐剧项目(DMCE)的邀请，于2008年11月在巴黎举行的第四届DMCE年度研讨会上，根据塞缪尔·贝克特的文本，上演了斯特凡诺·格瓦索尼(Stefano Gervaroni)的短篇音乐戏剧作品《帕斯》(Pas Si)。DMCE于2005年在巴黎大学成立，目的是将当代歌剧和音乐戏剧领域的欧洲音乐家、戏剧从业者和学者聚集在一起，研究音乐剧的具体问题。从一开始，CROMT就是该项目的合作伙伴。DMCE的主要研究问题是，考虑到不同音乐风格和形式、音乐时间和空间、歌声等的具体戏剧含义，DMCE的主要研究问题是什么是以音乐为基础的戏剧。针对这一申请的第二组研究问题涉及塞缪尔·贝克特与音乐的关系的具体问题，特别是作曲家如何处理设置他的文本的挑战。本项目的研究问题是：1.格瓦索尼设定塞缪尔·贝克特的非戏剧文本的戏剧性是什么？戏剧/戏剧(或戏剧后)是怎样的？2.格瓦索尼音乐语言的特定特征如何转化为戏剧/戏剧形式？3.音乐空间性创造了哪些戏剧形式？4.在实时和空间上演《Pas si》如何传达作品的文本和音乐的否定和删除？5.贝克特的作品和音乐之间有什么关系？6.杰瓦索尼如何将贝克特的文本与贝克特的其他音乐背景进行比较和对比？尽管贝克特对音乐非常感兴趣，但他参与的音乐合作很少，而且明显不喜欢歌剧。然而，贝克特在许多作品中都涉及到文字和音乐之间的关系，包括他的广播剧《文字和音乐》(1962)，他经常在他的作品的上演过程中使用音乐的类比。有人说，贝克特的戏剧表明，如果你去掉传统戏剧动作的所有方面，剩下的就是戏剧空间。另一方面，剧院音乐的空间性经常被忽视。在这个项目中，我想检验这一论点，即音乐空间和戏剧空间之间的关系是任何与贝克特文本成功的音乐接触的核心，而且音乐空间有其自身的戏剧必要性。贝克特的作品也涉及否定和删除，他曾特别哀叹文学不能被溶解，就像贝多芬第七交响曲的声音表面被巨大的停顿撕裂一样。斯特凡诺·格瓦索尼(生于1960年)是包括路易吉·诺诺(与格瓦索尼一起学习)、赫尔穆特·拉琴曼和塞尔瓦托·西亚里诺在内的一群作曲家中较年轻的一员，他们的音乐也可以说是对音乐声音表面的这种消解，实现了对传统音乐表现或形式的各种否定。因此，该项目还将通过上演《Pas si》来检验否定的音乐剧诗学。除了DMCE研讨会，这部作品还将在10月份由苏塞克斯大学音乐系、英语系、戏剧系和媒体系举办的关于贝克特和音乐的会议上展出。会议将讨论以下几个关键问题：1.贝克特的音乐思想；2.贝克特在他的作品中对音乐的运用；3.贝克特语言的音乐性，以及他作品中“作曲”的准音乐过程；4.作曲家如何回应贝克特的作品。

The Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre (CROMT) at the University of Sussex has been invited by the projet Dramaturgie Musicale Contemporaine en Europe (DMCE) of the University of Paris 8, to present a staging of Stefano Gervasoni's short music-theatre work 'Pas si' (1998/revised 2008), based on a Samuel Beckett text, at the fourth annual DMCE symposium in Paris in November 2008. DMCE was established at the University of Paris in 2005 to bring together European musicians, theatre practitioners and academics working in the field of contemporary opera and music theatre to engage with the specific problematic of musical dramaturgy. CROMT has been a partner in the project since its inception.The primary research issue for the DMCE is the question of what are the dramaturgies that are specific to music-based theatre, considering the specific dramaturgical implications of different musical styles and forms, of musical time and space, of the singing voice, etc. A secondary set of research questions for this application relate to the specific issue of Samuel Beckett's relationship to music, and in particular the ways in which composers have approached the challenge of setting his texts. The Research Questions for the project are :1. What is the dramaturgy of Gervasoni's setting of a non-theatrical text by Samuel Beckett.? In what way is it theatrical/dramatic (or perhaps post-dramatic)? 2. How do the specific characteristics of Gervasoni's musical language translate into dramatic/theatrical forms? 3. What dramaturgical forms are created by musical spatiality? 4. How can a staging of 'Pas si' in real time and space convey the textual and musical negations and erasures of the work?5. What relationships are there between Beckett's work and music more generally? 6. How does Gervasoni's approach to Beckett's text compare and contrast to other musical settings of Beckett?Although Beckett was extremely interested in music, he entered into few musical collaborations, and explictly disliked opera. However, Beckett engaged with the relationship between words and music in a number of works, including his radio drama 'Words and Music' (1962), and he frequently used musical analogies in relation to the staging of his works. It has been said that Beckett's theatre demonstrates that, if you remove all aspects of conventional dramatic action the one thing left is theatrical space. The spatiality of music for the theatre, on the other hand, has often been overlooked. In this project I want to test the thesis that the relationship between musical and theatrical space lies at the heart of any successful musical engagement with Beckett's texts, and that musical space has its own dramaturgical imperatives. Beckett's writings also involve negation and erasure, and he once specifically bemoaned that literature couldn't be 'dissolved, like, for example the sound surface, torn by enormous pauses, of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony'. Stefano Gervasoni (b.1960) is a younger member of a group of composers that include Luigi Nono (with whom Gervasoni studied) Helmut Lachenmann and Salvatore Sciarrino whose music could also be said to foreground such dissolutions of the musical sound surface, effecting different kinds of negation of conventional musical expression or form. The project will also examine therefore the musico-dramatic poetics of negation through its staging of 'Pas si'. In addition to the DMCE symposium, the production will also be shown at a conference on Beckett and Music to be organised by the departments of Music, English and Drama, and Media at the University of Sussex in October. The conference will address the following key issues:1. Beckett's ideas on music; 2. Beckett's use of music in his work; 3. The 'musicality' of Beckett's language, and quasi-musical processes of 'composition' in his work; 4. How composers have responded to Beckett's work.