Revealing Masks

by Sheppard, W. Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780520223028
• ISBN10: 0520223020
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

W. Anthony Sheppard considers a wide-ranging constellation of important musical works in this fascinating exploration of ritualized performance in twentieth-century music.Revealing Masksuncovers the range of political, didactic, and aesthetic intents that inspired the creators of modernist music theater. Sheppard is especially interested in the use of the "exotic" in techniques of masking and stylization, identifying Japanese Noh, medieval Christian drama, and ancient Greek theater as the most prominent exotic models for the creation of "total theater." Drawing on an extraordinarily diverse--and in some instances, little-known--range of music theater pieces, Sheppard cites the work of Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, Arthur Honegger, Peter Maxwell Davies, Harry Partch, and Leonard Bernstein, as well as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Madonna. Artists in literature, theater, and dance--such as William Butler Yeats, Paul Claudel, Bertolt Brecht, Isadora Duncan, Ida Rubenstein, and Edward Gordon Craig--also play a significant role in this study. Sheppard poses challenging questions that will interest readers beyond those in the field of music scholarship. For example, what is the effect on the audience and the performers of depersonalizing ritual elements? Does borrowing from foreign cultures inevitably amount to a kind of predatory appropriation?Revealing Masksshows that compositional concerns and cultural themes manifested in music theater are central to the history of twentieth-century Euro-American music, drama, and dance.

Author Biography

W. Anthony Sheppard is Assistant Professor of Music at Williams College

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Preface	xi
PART I INTRODUCTION: DRAWING CONNECTIONS IN THE MARGINS
Defining Music Theater	3	(7)
The Multiplicity of the Exotic	10	(5)
Ritual and Performance	15	(10)
PART II BORROWED MASKS: GREEK, JAPANESE, AND MEDIEVAL
The Masks of Modernism	25	(17)
Freedom in a Tunic versus Frieze-Dried Classicism: Hellenism in Modernist Performance	42	(30)
The Uses of Noh	72	(24)
Medievalism and the French Modernist Stage	96	(19)
PART III THE MYSTERIES OF BRITISH MUSIC THEATER; OR, DRESSING UP FOR CHURCH
The Audience as Congregation	115	(11)
Britten's Parables	126	(29)
Later British Mysteries	155	(14)
PART IV THE VARIETIES OF RITUAL EXPRESSION AND CRITICISM IN AMERICAN MUSIC THEATER
Orientalists and a Crusader	169	(11)
Partch's Vision of ``Integrated Corporeal Theater'' and ``Latter-Day Rituals''	180	(24)
Bitter Rituals for a Lost Nation: Partch and Bernstein	204	(27)
God in Popular Music(al) Theater	231	(12)
PART V CONCLUSION: REMOVING THE MASKS
Masking the Human and the Misogyny of Masks	243	(9)
Music Theater Now	252	(11)
Appendix	263	(6)
Notes	269	(54)
Selected Bibliography	323	(16)
Index	339