Music and the Melodramatic Aesthetic

研究背景：杰奎琳·韦伯（Jacqueline Waeber）最近指出，情节剧的模糊地位是：1)技术过程，2)戏剧类型，3)审美（En musique dans le texte，巴黎，2005）。19世纪早期的舞台情节剧通过肢体动作、场景场景、音乐以及口语对话来传达悲情、高度情感和道德两极分化。该项目旨在更清晰地确立音乐在韦伯分类中的地位，并追溯其在歌剧和早期默片的情节美学中与手势和场景的关系中不断发展的角色。与音乐的批判性接触将使我们能够以一种比迄今为止所尝试的更严格的跨学科方式来测试“情节戏剧美学”这个术语的一致性。对舞台和银幕上情节剧的研究一直由文学、戏剧和电影学者主导，包括彼得·布鲁克斯（1976年）和最近的本·辛格（2001年），以及（作为卷的编辑）杰基·布拉顿（1994年）、迈克尔·海斯（1996年）和克里·鲍威尔（2004年）。为数不多的写过音乐的学者——在这些书和其他地方——包括大卫·梅尔、迈克尔·皮萨尼、乔治·泰勒和妮可·怀尔德，他们已经迈出了描述和重建各种乐谱的第一步——也是必不可少的一步。然而，很少有人试图超越这一点，将情节剧的音乐语言和美学理论化，或者将其置于更广阔的音乐戏剧背景中。音乐学家更倾向于研究情节剧对浪漫主义歌剧的音乐戏剧语言的影响——尤其是埃米利奥·萨拉（1995年）和玛丽·安·斯玛特（2004年）。然而，韦伯的开创性著作将情节剧作为一种技术过程来关注，她为2007年国际音乐学学会会议组织的研讨会吸引了欧洲和美国的学者（包括希伯德），他们试图从音乐学的角度来研究舞台类型本身及其更广泛的美学。该项目旨在通过以下方式推进对情节剧美学的思考：a)超越布鲁克斯的文学“理念”，并通过分析情节剧作为一种表演过程，以及作为一种美学类别（其中音乐具有至关重要的作用）来建立最近的工作；b)揭示意义可以构建的方式，以及通过言语，手势，高情感和道德冲突场景中的图像和音乐通过戏剧、歌剧和电影追溯了这种相互关系，直到20世纪后期，以确定情节戏剧美学在多大程度上是一个超越19世纪的有意义的标签。音乐将是这个项目的中心焦点，因为它是情节剧的元素，受到的关注最少，这种情况导致了对该类型美学的误解。这一知识框架将决定项目在资助期内的活动，并将构成拟议产出的基础。潜在的应用和好处：该项目将通过以下方式支持研究：促进学者（包括研究生）与来自不同学科和机构的从业者之间的对话；与正在进行的诺丁汉ahrc资助的项目相结合；为学术和非学术受众提供交流研究的渠道；制作支持未来研究和教学的材料；包括研讨会的视频剪辑（将在大学服务器上存档）研讨会剪辑片段的存档dvd，以供将来的研究和教学使用会议编辑卷（希伯德和史密斯）提交给阿什盖特跨学科系列《欧洲文化传播研究》（2009-10）专著（希伯德）：情节戏剧美学：从舞台到屏幕（2009-10）会议论文，文章（希伯德，罗宾逊，史密斯，马什）

Research Context:Jacqueline Waeber has recently pointed to melodrama's ambiguous status as a) technical process, b) dramatic genre and c) aesthetic (En musique dans le texte, Paris, 2005). Early nineteenth-century stage melodramas communicated pathos, high emotion and moral polarisation through physical gesture, mise en scène and music as well as spoken dialogue. This project seeks to establish more clearly music's position in the conjunction of Waeber's categories, and to trace its evolving role, in relation to gesture and mise en scène, in the melodramatic aesthetic of opera and early silent film. Critical engagement with the music will enable us to test the coherence of the term 'melodramatic aesthetic' as a label in a more rigorously interdisciplinary manner than has been attempted until now.Studies of melodrama on stage and screen have been dominated by literature, drama and film scholars - including Peter Brooks (1976) and more recently Ben Singer (2001) and (as editors of volumes) Jacky Bratton (1994), Michael Hays (1996) and Kerry Powell (2004). The few scholars who have written about music - in these volumes and elsewhere - include David Mayer, Michael Pisani, George Taylor and Nicole Wild, who have taken the first - essential - step of describing and reconstructing a variety of scores. However, there has been little attempt to move beyond this and theorise melodrama's musical language and aesthetic, or situate it in a broader musico-dramatic context.Musicologists have preferred to examine melodrama's influence on the musico-dramatic language of Romantic opera - notably Emilio Sala (1995) and Mary Ann Smart (2004). Waeber's pioneering book, however, focuses on melodrama as a technical process, and a symposium she has organised for the 2007 International Musicological Society conference has attracted European and American scholars (including Hibberd) seeking to examine the stage genre itself, and its broader aesthetic, from a musicological perspective. This project aims to advance thinking on the melodramatic aesthetic in the following ways:a) move beyond Brooks's literary 'idea' and build on recent work by analysing melodrama as a performance process, and as an aesthetic category, in which music has a crucial roleb) reveal ways in which meanings can be constructed, and notions of pleasure uncovered, through the interrelationship of speech, gesture, image and music in scenes of high emotion and moral conflictc) trace this interrelationship through theatre, opera and film to genres of the late twentieth century, in order to establish the extent to which the melodramatic aesthetic is a meaningful label beyond the nineteenth century. Music will be the central focus of the project, as it is the element of melodrama that has received least attention, a situation that has led to a misconception of the genre's aesthetic. This intellectual framework will determine the activities of the project during the funded period, and will form the basis of the proposed outputs. Potential Applications and Benefits:The project will support research by:Promoting dialogue between academics (including research students) and practitioners from different disciplines and institutionsDovetailing with an ongoing AHRC-funded project at NottinghamProviding channels for communicating the research to both academic and non-academic audiencesProducing materials that will support future research and teachingIn addition:Interactive website, to include video clips of the workshops (to be archived on the University's server)Archived DVDs of edited footage from the workshops for use in future research and teachingEdited volume from the conference (Hibberd and Smith) to be submitted to Ashgate's interdisciplinary series Studies in European Cultural Transmission (2009-10)Monograph (Hibberd): The Melodramatic Aesthetic:From Stage to Screen (2009-10) Conference papers, articles, (Hibberd, Robinson, Smith, Marsh)