Steven Paul Scher - Judith Weir's "Heaven Ablaze in His Breast"

Scher, Steven. "Judith Weir's 'Heaven Ablaze in His Breast: A Postmodern Dance Opera Based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's 'The Sandman'." In Word and Music Studies: Essays on Literature and Music (1967-2004), edited by Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf, 489-504. New York: Rodopi, 2004.


The value of this essay is minimal in and of itself, but the fact that it introduced me to Judith Weir's 1989 dance/opera makes it worth mentioning. It is difficult to follow much of Scher's critical analysis of the work without being familiar with E.T.A. Hoffmann's story and the many other musical and theatrical interpretations in existence. Though the topic of the production is not connected to futurism or cyberpunk, it is lauded as being truly intermedia, crossing the boundaries between dance, theater, and opera with great success. As I hope to eventually create an intermedia stage work based on my current research sometime (far, far) in the future, it seems that Weir's piece is a great place to start gathering information. Nicholas Kenyon said of Heaven Ablaze, "Is it a ballet? Is it an opera? Is it a play? Who cares: it's entirely individual and wonderful." Kenyon's review was one of the few that reflected positively on Weir's production. The composer employed many compositional tricks throughout her work, such as beginning a song in the style of Schubert and quickly spiraling into a much more disjunct and dissonant parody. She also effects a mechanical aesthetic for certain characters, a technique that may well apply to a future-centered work. Weir plays with the concept of narrative by casting two people in each role: one dancer, and one singer/actor. Scher refers to the role of dance in Heaven as "kinetic recetative", a concept that I find fascinating. Narrative can be advanced in ways beyond the spoken or sung word, and I'm sure there are even more narrative possibilities beyond dance and image.

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Steven Paul Scher - Acoustic Experiment as Ephemeral Spectacle?

Scher, Steven. "Acoustic Experiment as Ephemeral Spectacle?: Musical Futurism, Dada, Cage, and the Talking Heads." In Word and Music Studies: Essays on Literature and Music (1967-2004), edited by Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf, 433-450. New York: Rodopi, 2004.

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Luigi Russolo - The Art of Noises

Russolo, Luigi. The Art of Noises. New York: Pendragon Press, 1986.


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Introduction

Are you sure you want to be here? I assure you, this will not be terribly exciting for anyone but me, in all likelihood. I figured the words "annotated bibliography" would send most people screaming. Now's your chance.

I created a research blog for my last major project and found it quite useful for organizing my notes, not only because the blog format makes it easy to keep track of related posts, but because blogging feels like less work. Anything to keep motivated, right? So, I'm trying it again.

As previously stated, most of my entries will be in the format of an informal annotated bibliography or simple citations. I say informal because I don't plan on agonizing over word choice and formatting, and I definitely won't be worrying about the 150-words-or-less rule most of the time. I may be long on opinion and short on summary, or vice versa. Keeping track of thoughts and information is my concern, not standing on academic ceremony. That said, not every entry will be about books or articles or other Legitimate Sources(tm). News articles and personal observations will certainly be included, as well as my explorations of novels, TV shows, and movies. This will most certainly evolve over time, and I fully expect this intro post to be out of date in a few months.

Ultimately, this will all turn back to art in some way. As a grad student in art, I intend to use all this compiled information to create new works and write enthralling papers to present to captive conference audiences. Yo ho, yo ho, the academic life for me.

Nice to meet you.

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