Harrison Birtwistle's Operas and Music Theatre

拟议的研究项目是对哈里森·伯特威斯尔的歌剧和音乐戏剧的音乐和文化分析，哈里森·伯特威斯尔是欧洲最有经验的歌剧作曲家之一，也是英国在世的最重要的作曲家。这项研究向读者介绍了这位作曲家丰富的舞台作品素描，这些素描收藏在巴塞尔的保罗·萨切尔基金会，藏书长达数千页。这些素描在早期的研究中只被简要地讨论过，在这里是第一次系统地考虑。新的分析问题从素描中产生，它们以许多关键的方式阐明了作曲家与他的剧本作者合作的细节。例如，有数百页关于伯特威斯尔与诗人大卫·哈森特(歌剧《加文》(1991)的编剧)的合作，回答了歌剧首演时提出的重要问题，并提出了解释歌剧中心戏剧主题的新方法，特别是分裂身份的概念。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，这本书关注的是两部歌剧之间的不同之处，而不是与它们相关的方面，这是早期伯特威斯特研究的一个特点。然而，贯穿全书的一个中心主题--这一观点在现有文学中尚未得到充分探索--是所有对歌剧感兴趣的战后先锋作曲家面临的两难境地，即前卫抽象、形式主义的议程与歌剧的“世俗关切”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)和作曲家对独立的、纯音乐形式的器乐戏剧的渴望之间的辩证关系。这种困境的根源在第一章中讨论，这一章结合并重新审视了20世纪60年代和70年代初明显的反歌剧情绪。在第二章中，《拳击与朱迪》(1968)中的抒情性和暴力的相互作用产生了辩证关系，这与戏仿的使用有关。第三章探索了彼得·季诺维耶夫为《俄耳甫斯的面具》(1983)而创作的高度规范的歌词与伯特威斯尔的音乐回应之间的空间，在小品中，他将其称为“抒情形式主义”。在第四章，关于室内歌剧，或‘机械田园’，严坛茶堂(1984)，焦点转移到一个辩证的关系的观念的场景(或景观)和代理人(或牧羊人)。这些术语在保罗·阿尔珀斯对田园习俗的解释中使用，在现代主义、主观性和伯特威斯尔将作品比作迷宫或迷宫的背景下进行了讨论。第五章运用叙事、情节和声音理论探讨了《加文》中戏剧叙事与音乐话语之间的辩证关系。第六章的焦点是《孔令辉夫人》(1994)，作者罗素·霍班的观点与伯特威斯尔的音乐明显脱节。然而，这些素描揭示了歌词的戏剧性和概念性主题-通过想法调解图像和在不同媒体中识别图像的工作原理-在音乐中进行了探索。第七章分析了《鞠躬》(1977)、《最后的晚餐》(1999)和《爱的激情》(2004)。本文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，这些理论构成了罗宾·布拉泽的剧本《最后的晚餐》。最后一章关注的是定于2008年4月在考文特花园首映的《牛头人》。根据对伯特威斯尔和剧本作家哈森的采访，这一章回到了书中早期的主题(最明显的是迷宫的想法)，并记录了很可能是伯特威斯尔最后一部主要歌剧的创作过程。

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.