The Research Institute for Music Theatre Studies in Thurnau (Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater in Thurnau, fimt) is creating an electronic journal Act. Zeitschrift für Musik & Performance. It is an international and interdisciplinary publication intended to provide a platform for essays, reviews and columns at the intersection of the disciplines musicology, theatre studies, dance studies and media studies. Act places particular value on methodological plurality and on supporting young academics.
Reenactment of Wagner's Solo Reading Performance of "Rheingold"
In the context of the knowledge transfer project "Wagnergesang im 21. Jahrhundert - historisch informiert" (Wagner singing in the 21st century - historically informed) at the Research Institute for Music Theatre (fimt) of the University of Bayreuth, which aims at a historically informed performance of Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen (musical director: Kent Nagano) by using methods of artistic research. A solo reading performance of the complete Rheingold libretto was performed, as Wagner himself performed it several times as a preliminary stage of the premiere. The performer Amélie Haller took over Wagner's part and performed all 14 roles of Rheingold (goddesses and gods, giants, Nibelungs, Rhinemaidens) in a 105-minute performance. This reenactment drew on research into historical pronunciation, facial expressions, and gestures. The pure text performance, which hides the semiotic system of Wagner's music, makes it possible to focus on new aspects of reception and to answer research questions that would be pushed into the background in a concert or fully staged performance. In addition to the performance, which was also received as an independent work of art in the specialist press, the artistic research yielded results on several complexes of questions, which will be further processed within the framework of the research project. The method provided answers to questions in the following areas: Performance tempos, language design and melodic line, role interpretation, problems at the 1876 premiere with practical stage implementation (stage design and special effects), image of women shown, antisemitism inscribed in the work. The digital essay documents the principles, methodology and results of the reenactment by means of written evaluation and thematically structured video excerpts. In addition, a complete recording of the performance is available.
Copyright (c) 2025 Act. Journal for Music & Performance
Reenactment der Wagner’schen Solo-Lese-Performance des "Rheingold"
Im Rahmen des Erkenntnistransferprojekts „Wagnergesang im 21. Jahrhundert - historisch informiert“ am Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater (fimt) der Universität Bayreuth, das eine historisch informierte Aufführung von Wagners Ring des Nibelungen (Musikalische Leitung: Kent Nagano) mit Methoden der künstlerischen Forschung zum Ziel hat. Aufgeführt wurde eine solistische Leseperformance des kompletten Rheingold-Librettos, wie sie Wagner selbst als Vorstufe zur Uraufführung mehrfach zur Aufführung brachte. Die Performerin Amélie Haller übernahm den Part Wagners und spielte in einer 105-minütigen Aufführung alle 14 Rollen des Rheingold (Göttinnen und Götter, Riesen, Nibelungen, Rheintöchter). Dieses Reenactment stützte sich auf Recherchen zur historischen Aussprache, Mimik und Gestik. Die reine Textperformance, die das semiotische System von Wagners Musik ausblendet, ermöglicht es, neue Aspekte der Rezeption in den Blick zu nehmen und Forschungsfragen zu beantworten, die bei einer konzertanten oder voll inszenierten Aufführung in den Hintergrund treten würden. Neben der Aufführung, die auch in der Fachpresse als eigenständiges Kunstwerk rezipiert wurde, lieferte die künstlerische Recherche Ergebnisse zu mehreren Fragenkomplexen, die im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts weiter bearbeitet werden. Die Methode lieferte Antworten auf Fragen in den folgenden Bereichen: Aufführungstempi, Sprachgestaltung und melodische Linie, Rolleninterpretation, Probleme bei der Uraufführung 1876 mit der bühnenpraktischen Umsetzung (Bühnenbild und Spezialeffekte), dargestelltes Frauenbild, dem Werk eingeschriebener Antisemitismus. Der digitale Essay dokumentiert Prinzipien, Methodik und Ergebnisse des Reenactments anhand einer schriftlichen Auswertung und thematisch gegliederter Videoausschnitte. Darüber hinaus ist ein vollständiger Mitschnitt der Aufführung verfügbar.
Liebe Leser*innen, liebe Freund*innen des Musiktheaters, es gibt eine gute Nachricht: ACT ist zurück! Die Online-Zeitschrift des Forschungsinstituts für Musiktheater (fimt) startet mit dieser Nummer in ihre zweite Phase mit neuem Format, neuem Layout und mit einer großen Bandbreite an Inhalten. Das neue ACT, gehostet auf den Servern der Universitätsbibliothek Bayreuth, gestattet uns Videos, Sounds und andere Multimedia-Beiträge einzubeziehen, was wir in der vorliegenden ersten Ausgabe von ACT 2.0 ausführlich nutzen. Diese erste Ausgabe basiert auf einem Teil unseres DFG-Erkenntnistransfer-Projektes „Wagnergesang im 21. Jahrhundert – historisch informiert?“ und dokumentiert die szenisch-deklamatorische Lesung des Rheingold-Librettos. Nach diesem Blick in die Historie werden wir in der nächsten ACT-Ausgabe einen großen Blick in die Zukunft wagen Wie wird diese für das Musiktheater und speziell die Oper aussehen – ein Sammelband, basierend auf unserer letztjährigen digitalen Ringvorlesung, herausgegeben von Marie-Anne Kohl und Silvia Bier. Unser großer Dank für die Unterstützung bei diesem Neustart gilt dem Team der Universitätsbibliothek Bayreuth, namentlich Ralf Brugbauer (Leitender Bibliotheksdirektor), Merle Marie Schütte (Koordination Elektronisches Publizieren, Open-Access-Beauftragte) und Clemens Engelhardt (Open-Access-Beauftragter). Nun wünsche ich Ihnen aber erst einmal viel Freude und Erkenntnis bei der vorliegenden ersten Ausgabe – beim Lesen, Schauen und Hören! Prof. Dr. Anno Mungen
„Ey, was is das denn für ’n Projekt, Mann?!“ – Fack ju Göhte im WERK7 theater als Experiment für das neue deutsche Musical
„Why does everything have to be turned into a musical? “ In summer 2017, this question was very present in the German musical fanbase, when the production company Stage Entertainment announced a stage adaptation of the successful film Fack ju Göhte (2013). For this project a new theatre called WERK7 theater, which previously had been used by the company Pfanni as a potato warehouse, was opened in a district in Munich where Fack ju Göhte had its premiere in January 2018. Stage Entertainment’s idea was to establish a place where modern musical theatre in Germany could be staged in the future, and the company rented the theater for two years. Both Fack ju Göhte and Amélie (2019) were highly appreciated by the critics. But the number of spectators who came to the location was not satisfying, and so Stage Entertainment did not extend the rental contract for the theatre. The musical Fack ju Göhte and the WERK7 theater were an experiment both from an artistic and an economic point of view. The aesthetic and dramaturgical concept was influenced by impulses of the Contemporary American Musical and contemporary German pop music. Moreover, the production represents an extension of Stage Entertainment’s repertoire concerning the location and the target audience. With interviews as well as research literature regarding the Contemporary Musical this article investigates the parameters, the development process and the challenges of the production of Fack ju Göhte in Munich. It further looks at content and structure of the musical relating to the Contemporary Musical. The article also describes the development process of musicals and which conclusions might be drawn with regard to the future prospects of original German musicals.
Gesamtkunstwerk Musical? Zwischen Fortschrittsglauben und (nach-) postmodernen Potenzialen
According to the german Wikipedia, Musical theatre as a genre of music theater is a „Gesamtkunstwerk“. At first glance, this label seems more than questionable. The concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, as established in particular by Richard Wagner, intended not only a combination of different art forms, but moreover a synthesis of the work of art and life. This kind of conceptual confusions are often symptomatic and refer to something that can be ignored or examined more closely. Thus, the description of the musical as a „Gesamtkunstwerk“ seems significant for an age in which the utopian-revolutionary, as demanded by the classical avant-garde, has made way for postmodern polyperspectivity. This tendency does not only apply to forms of musical theater, but is particularly evident here, since the stage (in contrast to recording media and streaming, for example) is a constitutive medium of performative events in the „here and now“, effective between and through people. This makes it a discursive place of aesthetic material that reflects social norms, desires, and ideologies. What do current musical productions show us in this respect, and can they be analyzed at all with a concept of „material“ as shaped by Adorno in music theory? Can we really speak of the musical under today’s conditions as a „Gesamtkunstwerk“, freed from avant-garde pathos and a cultic aura? Are we dealing here with „all inclusive” offerings in a double sense: something of everything, for everyone – and does a progressive potential lie precisely in this, beyond past aporias of progress?
Zwischen Nachkriegspropaganda, Kulturimperialismus und Kulturkritik: Marcel Prawys Lecture-Performances am Wiener Kosmos-Theater Anfang der 50er Jahre
Postwar Vienna might not be the first place that comes to mind when discussing „contact zones“ (Pratt 1991) and yet, Pratt’s definition of „social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other“ (ibid. 34) describes the situation Marcel Prawy faced upon his return to the Austrian capital after World War II perfectly. With the Kosmos Theater, the U.S. Army created a dedicated space for cultural exchange in the U.S. sector, where U.S. culture was instrumentalized as a propaganda tool to win over locals for the „American Way of Life“ in the fight against Nazism and communism. The embodiment of Greenblatt’s term „mobilizer“ (Greenblatt et al. 2009, 253), Prawy’s efforts to introduce conservative Austrian audiences, critics, and political stakeholders to the new genre of Broadway musicals, with which he became familiar during his years in U.S. exile, form the center piece of this article. His background as a remigrant and mobilizer informed his approach as a successful intermediary between Austrian and U.S. cultures as much as his training as an intelligence specialist in the U.S. Army. A critical examination of the repertoire used by Prawy contextualizes his popular lecture-performances at the Kosmos Theater within the afore-mentioned positive self-portrayal of the United States abroad. I argue that it was this proximity to U.S. postwar propaganda that contributed to the difficult reception history of the genre in Vienna, since local audiences ultimately rejected romanticized notions of an „American Way of Life“, so favored by the U.S. government, as they began to engage with their former occupiers more critically during the Cold War.
Musical im deutschsprachigen Raum - Editorial
Seit Jahrzehnten ist das Musical ein fester Bestandteil der deutschsprachigen Kulturlandschaft. Egal ob Stücke aus dem In- oder Ausland, die Gattung ist aus den hiesigen Spielplänen nicht mehr wegzudenken: von den großen kommerziellen Bühnen in Metropolen über alle Formen des öffentlich getragenen Theaters bis hin zu semi-professionellen Festivals in der Provinz. Die Erforschung dieser Gattung hingegen steht nicht nur in Deutschland noch am Anfang, in der Forschungslandschaft ist Musical im Allgemeinen und Musical im deutschsprachigen Raum im Besonderen noch eine Randerscheinung. Sammelpublikationen sind rar gesät, Forschungsbeiträge finden sich vor allem vereinzelt. Dabei drängt sich eine Vielzahl an Fragen förmlich auf zu Struktur und Geschichte: Wie fügt sich vor allem das U.S.-amerikanische Musical, das aus einem gänzlich anderen Produktionssystem stammt, in unseren Theateralltag ein? Auf welche vorhandenen Strukturen ist die Gattung im Nachkriegs-Deutschland getroffen? Welche Strukturen haben sich seitdem gebildet, um ausländische wie originär deutschsprachige Stücke auf die Bühne zu bringen und die Entwicklung des Musicals hierzulande zu fördern? Wie steht es um die Ausbildung für diese Musiktheatergattung? Werke und Repertoire: Was bedeutet der Begriff „Musical“ im deutschsprachigen Raum? Wie hat sich das Repertoire entwickelt? Welche dramaturgischen, thematischen und musikalischen Tendenzen sind in deutschsprachigen Werken auszumachen? Publikum und Rezeption: Wie sieht das Musical-Publikum aus? Kann man von ‚dem‘ Musical-Publikum sprechen? Lockt Musical tatsächlich Menschen ins Theater, die diesem bisher eher fernbleiben? Wie gestaltet sich Musical-Fandom? Welche Rolle spielen das Internet und soziale Medien dabei? Wie wird deutschsprachiges Musical im Ausland rezipiert? Wirtschaft und Region: Wie wirtschaftlich ist Musical? Kann es den Ruf als vielfach beschworene Cash-Cow erfüllen? Welche Rolle spielt Musical in touristischen Konzepten? Welches Potenzial ergibt sich für die regionale Entwicklung? Diese Diversität der Fragen, deren Beantwortung erst teilweise begonnen hat, schlägt sich in dieser Ausgabe von ACT nieder. Mit den Wegen, auf denen das U.S.-amerikanische Musical in den deutschsprachigen Raum fand, beschäftigt sich Dr. Susanne Scheiblhofer in Ihrem Artikel „Zwischen Nachkriegspropaganda, Kulturimperialismus und Kulturkritik: Marcel Prawys Lecture-Performances am Wiener Kosmos-Theater Anfang der 50er Jahre“. Sie zeichnet nicht nur Prawys Auseinandersetzung mit dem U.S.-amerikanischen Musical und seinen persönlichen Werdegang nach, der noch in Österreich auf das höchste mit der U.S.-amerikanischen Regierung und damit auch Propaganda verknüpft war. Sie sichtete zudem erst kürzlich archiviertes Material aus Marcel Prawys Nachlass und konnte so einen ersten Einblick verschaffen, welche Stücke für die Programme ausgewählt wurden, auf welche Art und Weise Prawy die Konventionen der in Wien neuen Gattung den Einheimischen näherbrachte und welches Bild von den USA vermittelt wurde. Gerade die allzu propagandistisch wirkende Vermittlung des American Way of Life führte jedoch zu einer Ablehnung der Gattung, die potenziell bis heute nachwirkt. Auch Christian Wegerich beschäftigt sich in seinem Artikel „Gesamtkunstwerk Musical? Zwischen Fortschrittsglauben und (nach-)postmodernen Potenzialen“ mit den Widerständen, auf die das Musical im deutschsprachigen Raum bis heute trifft. Als Ausgangspunkt dient ihm die häufig bemühte Bezeichnung des Musicals als „Gesamtkunstwerk“, die er nicht als Beschreibung im Sinne der Verschmelzung der Künste, sondern unter der Prämisse des Utopisch-Revolutionären beleuchtet. Elementarer Teil der Theorien zu musikalischem und künstlerischem Fortschritt sind Adornos Schriften, dessen Ablehnung des Jazz – ein zentrales Element des frühen U.S.-amerikanischen Musicals – nahezu legendär ist und beim Umgang mit breitenwirksamen Kulturgütern bis heute nachwirkt. Durch den Abgleich der Theorie mit der Praxis werden jedoch Parallelen und vor allem Möglichkeiten für die Gattung Musical offenbar. Zuletzt wagt Agnes Wiener den Sprung ins Heute. Mit „‚Ey, was is das denn für ’n Projekt, Mann?!‘ – Fack ju Göhte im WERK7 theater als Experiment für das neue deutsche Musical“ beleuchtet sie zum einen das sogenannte contemporary musical in seiner U.S.-amerikanischen Ausprägung und analysiert, inwiefern sich die Musicaladaption Fack ju Göhte (2018) darin einreiht. Darüber hinaus weist sie auf, mit welchen Strategien die Produktionsfirma Stage Entertainment versuchte, durch Fack ju Göhte den Weg für das contemporary musical im deutschsprachigen Raum zu ebnen und geht dabei sowohl lauf den Entwicklungsprozess als auch auf den Versuch, einen neuen Theaterraum in München zu etablieren, ein. Diese thematisch wie methodologisch breit gefächerte Ausgabe von ACT stellt einen zwar kleinen, doch impulsgebenden Schritt in Richtung Beantwortung der eingangs aufgelisteten Fragen dar und soll zur weiteren Forschung anregen. Unser großer Dank gilt allen Autor*innen und den Kolleg*innen, die im Peer-Review-Verfahren an dieser Ausgabe mitgewirkt haben. Außerdem danken wir unserem Kollegen Dominik Frank und unserer studentischen Hilfskraft Annabell Strobel, die die Redaktion dieser Ausgabe entscheidend mitgetragen haben.
Liebe Leser*innen von ACT, diese Ausgabe von ACT beginnt mit einem wichtigen Hinweis in eigener Sache. Das Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater der Universität Bayreuth auf Schloß Thurnau (fimt) hat eine schon lange Geschichte, die ins Jahr 1976 zurückreicht, als es als eine der Säulen der neuen Universität Bayreuth gegründet wurde. August Everding und Carl Dahlhaus wa-ren die beiden Initiatoren dieses weltweit einmaligen Projekts: eines Instituts im Freistaat Bayern, das sich interdisziplinär mit der Erforschung und Dokumentation des Musiktheaters befassen sollte. In den letzten 45 Jahren wurde in Thurnau und Bayreuth intensiv, erfolgreich und mit großem Engagement an den Themen Oper und Musiktheater gearbeitet. Nach erneuten einschneidenden personellen Kürzungen (nach 2014 nun auch 2023) durch unsere Hochschulleitung müssen wir unser Programm nun aber leider zurückfahren: Weniger Personal am fimt bedeutet zwangsläufig weniger forschende Arbeit. Konkret heißt das, dass wir das von uns herausgegebene wissenschaftliche Online-Magazin ACT, das seit 2010 existiert, mit dieser Ausgabe einstellen werden müssen. Zunächst war das Projekt für drei Jahre über die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft im Sinne eines Anschubs finanziert, und es konnte im Anschluss entsprechend in die Abläufe des Forschungsinstituts eingepflegt und so sehr gut verstetigt werden. Wichtiges Merkmal von ACT war, dass wir die Hefte spezialisierten Herausgeber*innen des wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchses übertragen haben, die sich mit großem Engagement und ihrer Expertise den Themen von ACT widmeten. Nun aber sind wir wegen der personellen Situation nicht mehr in der Lage, den Auftrag der DFG weiterzuführen und das Magazin unter dem Qualitätskriterium eines zweistufigen Peer-Review-Verfahrens herauszugeben. Es war eine schmerzhafte Entscheidung ausgerechnet hier den Rotstift anzulegen, da das Magazin bei Autor*innen und Leser*innen vor allem in der jüngeren und mittleren Generation der Musik- und Theaterwissenschaft sehr gut angenommen worden ist. Allen, die beigetragen haben zu den Arbeiten der letzten fast 14 Jahre, sei für das große Engagement herzlich gedankt: den Autor*innen, den Leser*innen, den Herausgeber*in-nen, den Mitarbeiter*innen am fimt, die sich schwerpunktmäßig mit diesem Magazin befasst haben. Trotz der schlechten Nachrichten wünsche ich eine spannende Lektüre des neuen und vorerst letzten Heftes. Wie die alten wird auch dieses im ACT-Archiv, das dankenswerterweise von der Universitätsbibliothek Bayreuth übernommen wurde, weiterhin lesbar sein. In der Hoffnung, ACT gegebenenfalls wieder einmal aufzunehmen, danke ich abschließend der Heftherausgeberin Eva Theresa Beck, Dr. Dominik Frank für die Betreuung des Heftes von fimt-Seite, Annabell Strobel (fimt, technischer Support) sowie den Autor*innen dieser Ausgabe sehr herzlich. Mit den besten Grüßen verbleibe ich Ihr Anno Mungen
Elena Mendoza and Matthias Rebstock’s La ciudad de las mentiras: Fiction as polyphony
This study discusses the creative process of La ciudad de las mentiras (City of Lies), music theatre co-authored by the composer Elena Mendoza and the stage director Matthias Rebstock. In 2017, Gerard Mortier commissioned City of Liesas the first work of music theatre that the Teatro Real in Madrid would premiere in its 200-year history. From the differentiation between opera and music theatre, my research analyzes the City of Lies’ narrative principles, which is based on four stories by the Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti (1909–1994). In particular, I focus on La novia robada(The Stolen Bride). This story leads me to a discussion about experimenting with narrative processes on the idea of polyphony. Based on this exploration, my proposal sheds light on the diversity of working methods and highlights aspects related to the production systems of opera houses that condition the authors’ conception of music theatre. I aim to examine Mendoza and Rebstock’s multidisciplinary collaboration and their artistic practices that affect co-presence and corporeality with two female instrumentalists in the main roles and an ensemble on the stage together with actors and singers leading both the dramatic and musical actions. This approach reflects on a precise set design that entails non-hierarchical performances and improvisation scenes. The theoretical framework that supports this analysis refers to the terminology for “Composed theatre” investigated by Matthias Rebstock and David Roesner. Therefore, I address both performative and creative processes and production conditions that challenge music theatre creation in the current context of the Teatro Real.
Practicing Between Categories: A Hermeneutics of Ritual-like New Music
Ritualised music theatre emerged from the music theatre developments of the 1960s. According to the musicologist Anthony Sheppard (2001), within ritualised music theatre, composers draw upon materials derived from specific “cultural, ritual or religious sources” and adapt them compositionally within dramaturgical narratives. The proposed paper will problematise Sheppard’s stylistic definition, which lacks a theoretical justification as to why and how composers of this style ritualise their compositions — and, from this, examine two works that exist beyond Sheppard’s characterisation, within the liminal, in-between stylistic space that emerged from American, and European experimental art music. Pauline Oliveros' Sonic Meditations (1971), and Julian Day’s Super Critical Mass Project (2007-ongoing) are two related works of this nature. Both sit in the intersection of theatre, new music, and performance art, and rely on text-scores, instead of traditional notation. Moreover, rather than the compositions Sheppard examines in Revealing Masks, these works bear a closer aesthetic semblance to ritualised experimental theatre forms (such as Jerzy Grotowski’s “poor theater”) and post-1960s ritualised performance art. This disparity is amplified because Sheppard’s characterisation applies to a particular form of larger-scale, aesthetically ambitious music theatre. This is why it is crucial to address this gap and develop a lexicon to better understand both works. Through an inductive, multidisciplinary, hermeneutic methodology, and by drawing upon key performance studies (Richard Schechner, Victor Turner) and ritual studies (Catherine Bell, Ronald Grimes) theories of ritualisation, this essay will plausibly demonstrate why the two works are ritual-like, by contributing to an expanded understanding of the ritualised music theatre paradigm.
Synthesizer, Resonanz, Modulation: Auf dem Weg zur musikalischen Schicht des Theaters
The article explores the question of the musicality of theatrical structures. Musicality is to be understood as a specific, historically changing relationality that can serve to think and describe practices that are not primarily sonic. The sonic presents no manifest objects, but spatial processes in which various sound emanations modulate, mutually ‘fold in’ or expand. Musicians have dealt with this peculiar material and its constellation over the centuries, developing a technical and conceptual knowledge. Tapped time and time again, this knowledge was repeatedly used to deal with non-sonic questions also: In the Pythagoreans, in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Paul Klee, Gilbert Simondon, or Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Along these and other settings, the ‘musical’ will be described as a structure of participation and mutual variation of heterogeneous agencies, forms of expression, and layers of meaning. In many cases we encounter theatrical forms in which the interplay of physical, technical, linguistic, medial and other dimensions is not oriented towards any final perspective, but rather figures itself in modulating superimposition (e.g. Arnold Schönberg, John Cage or Heiner Goebbels). These can be described as forms of theatrical musicality that are initially independent of the presence or dominance of music in the narrow sense.
“Hinter den Spiegeln warten nur Spiegel”: Myth, Dystopia, and Utopia in Peter Eötvös’s Paradise Reloaded (Lilith)
This article argues that operatic attention to myth has evolved in new directions in recent years, in counterpoint to a trend for representing recent historical and celebrity narratives on stage. I analyze Péter Eötvös’s opera Paradise Reloaded (Lilith) as an example of composers engaging ‘distant pasts’ as a vehicle to interrogate political presents. Using Jewish and secular myths of Lilith, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Imre Madách’s The Tragedy of Man, Eötvös and librettist Albert Ostermaier construct a feminist-philosophical exploration of knowledge and truth, reflecting themes in modern European society from refugee crises to Putin’s Russia. My approach is three-fold: I suggest that their musical and narrative modes both parody and rely on operatic conventions, centered on the transformation of Lilith from demon-seductress to protagonist. I locate the opera’s utopian/dystopian soundworld in a lineage of 20thcentury European approaches to satire, irony, and the grotesque in music, exemplified in Shostakovich and Ligeti, drawing on Esti Sheinberg’s theoretical framework. I situate this study within the 'living archive' of contemporary opera: the contrasting aesthetics of the opera’s three key stagings — Neue Oper Wien (2013), Theater Chemnitz (2015), and Theater Bielefeld (2020) — and my interviews with Eötvös, Ostermaier, and others involved. Finally, I position Eötvös’s own history as a lens to evaluate intersecting musical and political identities, engaging especially Anna Dalos and Rachel Beckles Willson’s work on post-Cold War Central European composers. Ultimately, I propose that Paradise Reloaded offers a revival of Lilith mythology for the 21stcentury, demanding attention to how opera can navigate a dialectic of dystopian/utopian pasts, presents, and futures.
Making Sense of Performance. A New Approach to Performance Analysis
Attending the theatre – be it to see drama, music-theatre, dance or any other mode of performance – we enter into a complex and ‘messy’ process of making sense of what we see, hear, feel and think. This process is very personal, but not arbitrary, and it is influenced and guided by a lot of factors, many of which are neither intended nor controlled by the theatre makers themselves. In borrowing a well-established tool from organisational studies, the “sensemaking perspective” – most prominently introduced by Karl E. Weick – this paper seeks to provide a framework to guide our reflection on how we make sense of performances, what social, cognitive and perceptive factors and biases influence our understanding and how we indeed ‘enact’ a personal version of the performance, rather than being able to observe it as a reified event. The article does this by at first distinguishing “sensemaking” from “interpretation” and by introducing sensemaking as a process that is characterized by seven characteristics: according to Weick, 1) sensemaking is grounded in identity construction; 2) it is retrospective; 3) enactive of sensible environments; 4) social; 5) ongoing; 6) focused on and by extracted cues; and 7) driven by plausibility rather than accuracy. The article discusses how these characteristics can be applied to analyses of attending theatre performance, using the experimental, site-specific music-theatre production Maya (Mathis Nitschke, 2017) as a case study to substantiate and test the arguments. Sensemaking, therefore, is not offered as a new method of performance analysis per se but suggested as an overall way of looking at, thinking about, and accounting for how we attend the theatre. It is a frame of mind which provides a kind of overarching structure that addresses the theatre performance in its wider context and negotiates the individual and collective agency of the audience.
Ambivalent Engagement: contemporary opera between populism and the postmodern
Today, the relationship between opera and society could best be described as ‘displaced’—at least in the German-speaking countries. As an institution, opera has become a ‘Repertoirebetrieb’ that hires living stage directors to make popular works from the 18th and 19th centuries palatable through their scenic recontextualization, despite the racism, sexism and otherwise questionable ideology of these works. The critical approach of this mode of stage direction creates space for the discomfort of ideological regression and, at the same time, fends off such discomfort, ultimately saving the work—untouched in its musical and textual structure—for the enjoyment of and commercial business with that regression. At the same time, these institutions also commission and perform new operas, which disappear after their world premiere, never to be integrated into the seemingly closed opera canon. These new operas suffer, in particular, from two ambivalences: i) the institutional ambivalence of opera houses towards these works; ii) the ambivalence of the new operas (and their creators) towards their audiences, which manifests, for example, in a kind of prejudice against categories such as narrative, identification and pleasure. In this article, German composer Hauke Berheide and US-American director/librettist Amy Stebbins propose an aesthetics of ‘ambivalent engagement’ as a conceptual framework for constructing narratives in contemporary opera. The article begins with an historical overview of the aesthetics and institutional parameters of postwar opera in the German-speaking context, giving particular attention to its role in the public sphere. To this end, it refers to operas by Helmut Lachenmann, Olga Neuwirth/ Catherine Filous, Beat Furrer/ Händl Klaus, Anno Schreier/ Kerstin Maria Pöhler, and David T. Little/ Royce Vavrek. Using examples from their own opera Mauerschau (Bavarian State Opera, 2016), the authors show how the reflexive and intermedial character of opera lends itself to large-scale narratives that call attention to their own inner contradictions. In this way, Berheide and Stebbins seek to demonstrate opera’s unique potential to make current issues, such as the rise of neo-fascism, sensorially understandable without slipping into the populist affirmations particularly present in contemporary American opera.
Inventur. Annäherung an zeitgenössische Musiktheaterkonzeptionen für Opernbühne und Konzertsaal
An increased interest in the conditions and possibilities of music-theatrical forms of expression has been discernible in the new music scene for some time now, which corresponds to an intensified theoretical discussion on the part of musicologists and theater scholars. However, the shortcoming of this is that, starting from experimental music theater forms of the 20th century, it is usually based on the concept of ‘music theater’ to create a demarcation from the concept of ‘opera’, while works closely tied to traditional institutions are much less often appreciated. It is precisely this repertoire that is the subject of this article, which is based on a lecture given at a symposium held at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in November 2019. Based on selected projects from the past years by Detlev Glanert, Moritz Eggert, Sarah Nemtsov, Evan Gardner, and Olga Neuwirth, it illuminates different strategies of music-theatrical composing created for the institutions of opera houses and concert hall. The categorization created by such a focus does not claim to be exhaustive, but rather is intended as a guideline in order to better assess and evaluate certain phenomena and decisions concerning the compositional process, the respective aesthetic solutions, and the situation of the performance. It allows conclusions to be drawn about composers’ willingness to innovate aesthetically in the face of institutionalized venues, but at the same time it also says something about the expectations that are directed at the audience. In this respect, it offers a basis for discussion against which certain developments in current music theater production can be better assessed.
Audience Perception in Experiential Embodied Music Theatre: A Practice-based Case Study
A common feature of contemporary music theatre is that it is situated across various disciplinary boundaries, often leading to a complex layering of music with other artistic forms, such as theatre, text, film, and movement (Bonshek 2006; Rebstock & Roesner 2013; Lehmann 2006). In some cases, such interdisciplinarity has led creators to explore spaces beyond traditional theatrical settings, such that performance location becomes an important and intrinsic feature of a work’s multimodal fabric. A recent example of such work—I Only Know I Am (2019), composed by the authors—provides a case study here in which ideas of experientialism are explored with reference to a variety of extant approaches to theatre and music theatre. The authors propose understanding this work as ‘experiential embodied music theatre’, synthesising aspects of a variety of theatrical modes. First, we consider the work’s use of space, place and history in the context of environmental and site-specific theatre in order to understand the means by which it attempts to engage the audience. Taking this idea further, we consider the sonic place that is generated through the architecture of the work’s form, supported by the narrative structure and ideas of silencing and stasis. From here, we consider the genre of immersive theatre, and draw a connection between this theatre practice, embodiment in music theatre, and embodied music cognition, so that we can understand the ways in which audience members may embody the music whilst maintaining a traditional audience-performer relationship. This journey from compositional conception, to context and examples, and through to audience perception outlines a reading of this work as experiential embodied music theatre from a variety of perspectives.
On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the Research Institute for Music Theatre Studies (fimt), the tenth issue of ACT–Journal for Music and Performance is dedicated to current trends in contemporary western opera and music theatre.What does it actually mean to compose or create an opera or music theatre nowadays? What are the artists’ methods and approaches? What topics and questions do their compositions negotiate? What is their material, what are their media? What structures, forms, and aesthetics can we observe? Can we possibly describe some sort of general tendencies within these many different aesthetic forms of expression? And how can we grasp all of this from a scholarly perspective? These are some of the questions addressed by the eight articles in this issue writtenby ten authors whose home offices are located in many places, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Germany. Together, their texts provide a kaleidoscopic view onto a dense, but for that very reason stimulating, situation in the field of music theatre. However, as editors we would like to point out two main aspects the individual articles repeatedly draw upon in one or another way.First, there is the reflection on the relationship between ‘opera’ and ‘music theatre’ (‘Musiktheater’ in a wide sense) by focussing on working methods, performance venues, or the question of traditional operatic forms and dramaturgies from various angles.Second, there is a discussion about the relationship between theory and practice. Several analyses show how objects interrogate theory. Two author duos examine their own compositional practice. Conversely, other authors attempt to make abstract, philosophical concepts methodically connectable. In this way, this issue of ACTultimately shows that subject matter and scholarly debate are not only closely intertwined but also reciprocally affect each other.
Creative City is booming – it is being promoted, celebrated and marketed. Richard Florida identified the „creative capital“ of a city as the engine for its economic growth. It works in London or Berlin. But the boundaries between work and leisure are dissolving more and more. The original four spaces of a city – work, living, recreation and transport – are being replaced by the intelligent, networked city in which urban gardening exists alongside alternative residential projects and Starbucks living rooms. The concepts of Smart City and Transition Town are the expression of two developments that can currently be observed: On the one hand, an acceleration of our everyday life and a change in our society are increasingly perceived, on the other hand, a movement of deceleration and sustainability is emerging. These developments are also having a spatial impact. In Amsterdam, the Broedplaatsen programme was introduced at the beginning of the 21st century, a state support programme for creative and incubation spaces. In Berlin, meanwhile, the Holzmarkt area is growing, a quarter in which nature, business, art, life and work meet. These places can be identified as Ray Oldenburg's „Third Places“, places that create and stimulate society, next to the „First“ (=home) and „Second Place“ (=workplace). While classical cultural institutions such as theatres and opera houses have always been regarded as the social centers of a city, a shift has been taking place for some time now. What is the role of the theatres? What role can and should they play? Empirical observations are used to investigate the place of theatres and opera houses in the cityscape and to locate their position in society.
Encounters with the foreign - sensual experience in contemporary music theatre
Contemporary composers such as Mauricio Kagel, Luigi Nono or Manos Tsangaris have broken with traditional listening expectations, questioned spatial settings (such as the division into stage and auditorium) or experimented with the theatrical effect of sounds. For the past thirty years, such confrontations with music-theatrical narratives have also been reflected in contemporary music theatre for young audiences. After children‘s and young people‘s music theatre has arrived either as a separate category (for example Kinderoper Köln, Junge Oper Stuttgart), as an integrated category (Komische Oper Berlin, Mainz, Freiburg) or also in freer production contexts, a continuous discourse has developed about the aims, aesthetics, structures and production methods, which repeatedly challenges both theatremakers and composers, librettists and musicians to critical reflection. Music theatre for young audiences proves to be more than just an experimental field for music-dramatic narrative forms, which on the one hand are close to ‚instrumental theatre‘, on the other hand reveal a confrontation with other musical styles (jazz or pop music) and with the noisiness of music or approaches to performative (music) theatre. Using selected examples, this article presents the narrative strategies in contemporary music theatre for young audiences and deepens the question of how the intermedial interplay of language, song, sound, space, and light focuses on the performative sensory experience of young audiences in order to smooth the way for young audiences to encounter an art form that, in its thematic, genre-specific, aesthetic, and ritualized form, is not easily accessible to young audiences without theatre experience.
Institution as landscape. Heiner Goebbels’ „distant relatives“ in artistic cooperation and education
When we talk about the current theatre or opera landscape, we usually mean the audience's choice from a wide spectrum of distinct, but expectable institutional offerings. Only singular artists have attempted to understand institutions of aesthetic production as a landscape, in which surprising and dynamic associations become possible without a defining centre. Among them is Heiner Goebbels, who in his work realizes complex compilations of genres, styles, and traditions, organizing the unlikely collaboration of the most diverse sources, producers, and promoters. By that, he built an extensive network of production houses, artists and ensembles, colleagues and disciples, presenting it in his projects as an alternative to conventional institutions. Starting from the diverse voices of this network, together with Goebbels’ own texts on artistic education and production, this essay explores the dimension of institutional critique in his work, which can be found less in his polemic speech against artistic institutions and more in his productive engagement in and with them. Institutional theory (Berger/Luckmann, Walgenbach) is employed in order to denominate some strategies of this praxis and to carve out their utopian potential in the intersection of the modes of existence of technology, fiction and science (Latour). As a conclusion, the aesthetic concept of landscape (G. Stein, G. Simmel, H. Böhme) is transposed to this new institutional formation, in which artistic experiment and institution paradoxically presuppose and make impossible one another (Menke).
Experience of Time narrated in Music Theatre Today
Narration in contemporary music theatre has long been thought of in two modes: on the one hand as something that serves tradition and linearity in the narrative structure and on the other hand as something that negates them (anti-narration). That there are alternative approaches between these two poles is demonstrated not least by literature and theatre studies, based on HansThies Lehmann’s post-dramatic theories. The narrowing of narration to an understanding as plot or as negation of narration obstructs the analysis of current musical theatre productions. Instead of determining what is not done or how something sets itself apart from a tradition, one must ask what is told and how something is told out of the value, out of the form itself. Since musical theatre in its basic form is always a sequence of events in time, an extended concept of narration is taken as a basis, based on Paul Ricœur's idea of narration as “l'agencement des faits” (arrangement of facts). Narration, understood as the assembly of events through specific connections and as a genuinely temporal structure, can then function as an analytical tool to find principles in seemingly ‚non-narrative’ works according to which decisions are structured sequentially. Last but not least, everything that serves the constitution of performative space can already be understood as a starting point for narrative semiotic processes (Hans-Thies Lehmann and Erika Fischer-Lichte). Today, narrative structures can thus emerge from the media and materially different conditions of the performance space (image, text, light, space), the open work structures in sound and play and their respective performance. On this basis, the essay is intended to develop a broader concept of narration, on the basis of which the temporal situational event chains of contemporary music theatre values (e.g. Brigitta Muntendorf, Clara Ianotta, Manos Tsangaris, Helmut Lachenmann or Luigi Nono) are questioned about their narrative structure. The aim is to model artistic strategies and structures immanent in the work that offer access to narratives of contemporary music theatre.
Musical Flashmobs – does Public Space still works as a stage?
This essay discusses the crisis of the lack of young audiences in classical music, especially music theatre, and provides an overview of projects outside the municipal and state theatres. Based on open-air concerts, musical flashmobs will be presented, the aim of which is to address passers-by purely by chance. The investigation of the repertoire will reveal a canon formation that is connected with acoustic advantages when playing in public space. Arias from the opera La Traviata or Ravel's Bolero, for example, are particularly effective in quickly attracting the attention of crowds. After a historical classification of the flashmob as a phenomenon of digital mobilization, its current crisis will be discussed in connection with its commercialization and the performance situation will be compared with the original idea of the flash mob. With the announcement of flashmob, there are no more unprepared passers-by, but spectators who expect the announced moment with the mobile phone camera. The concept of flashmob already seems outdated, but the concept behind it remains a strategy of searching for missing audiences in everyday urban life. While the flashmob chooses main stations to reach as many passers-by as possible, projects such as the Opera for the Homeless, La Bohème in a Skyscraper or Eichbaum Opera turn the station into a passage for cultural and social diversity. The essay discusses the advantages and disadvantages of such projects and focuses on intercultural audience developments as well as on the staging strategies of Youtube videos, the recipients of which are addressed by flashmobs.
“Children, create new!” Wagner's much-quoted slogan seems to be taken to heart especially in times of (artistic) crisis. Innovation in the aesthetics and production processes of contemporary music theatre are mutually dependent, and experiments in Artistic collaboration with other fields of art and research have resulted in an increasing blurring of the genre aesthetic differentiation of the theatrical results. New artistic forms require new analytical paths. With their composed theatre, David Roesner and Matthias Rebstock direct the view to the production process, while my proposal for a new analytical approach focuses on the performance: starting from Bachtin's theorem of dialogicity through the concept of dialogue, I will approach contemporary music theatre, focusing in particular on the relationship between performance, audience and venue. Due to its flexibility and dynamics, the term dialogue makes it possible to analytically encounter the different forms of contemporary music theatre, especially those that question new spaces and media constitutions. Investigation takes place on at least two levels: A content that concentrates on the discourses negotiated and the thematic conception in the regional, cultural and socio-political context of the performance venue, but also a physical-performative one that deals with the dialogical qualities and interactions in the non-linguistic realm. Accattone (music theatre after Pasolini, directed by Johan Simons, Kohlenmischhalle der Zeche Dinslaken-Lohberg, 2015) serves as an example. So I would like to shout: “Children, look new!”
Long planning horizons in music theatre: obstacle or opportunity? Some practical considerations
The music theatre is the branch with the longest planning lead at the municipal theatres. There are a number of reasons for this including the fact that it is also the most personnelintensive section at theatres, which occupies the largest stage space. In addition, music theatre usually has the highest budget, but this is also accompanied by the obligation to use it as profitably as possible so that the theatre as a whole, including the workshops, etc., can be supported. The article deals with the question of what this long-term planning horizon means for opera as a genre, for the municipal theatre sector and for the development of music theatre as a stage form relevant to the public. First of all, the reasons for this long planning processes are presented and their relevance will be discussed. In addition, considerations will be suggested as to the extent to which this time lead is not only restrictive but also opens up opportunities and how current issues can be dealt with. More than ten years of practical experience in management positions at municipal theatres of various sizes serve as the basis for this discussion. In addition, current case studies from the international music theatre sector will be used to illustrate the situation further. On the one hand, the article is intended to raise awareness for the challenge of the long planning processes in music theatre and, on the other hand, to encourage an open-minded approach to this issue that goes beyond the stereotyped processing of individual season plans.
Die bemerkenswerte und im internationalen Vergleich immer wieder bewunderte künstlerische Vielfalt der deutschsprachigen Theater- und Orchesterlandschaft bewegt sich zunehmend in einem Spannungsfeld zwischen dieser Bewunderung einerseits und einer tiefen Verunsicherung andererseits. Diese Landschaft ist umgeben von einem Krisendiskurs, der im Kontext von Musiktheater in seiner institutionalisierten Form als teuerster und aufwendigster Spielart darstellender Kunst besonders intensiv geführt wird. Der Musiktheaterapparat ist in seinen Produktionsmodi zwar hochspezialisiert, aber in seinen Möglichkeiten künstlerischer Ausdrucksformen klar beschränkt. In Zeiten (vermeintlich) knapper Kassen, aber auch von postmodernem Nebeneinander, Formenvielfalt und transmedialer Flexibilität gerät dieser Apparat immer wieder ins Fadenkreuz intensiver Kritik. Dieser so entstehende Krisendiskurs steht im Zentrum dieser Ausgabe von ACT, die im Rahmen des am Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater der Universität Bayreuth angesiedelten Forschungsprojekts „Beharrungs- und Bewegungskräfte: Musiktheater im institutionellen Wandel zwischen Musealisierung und neuen Formaten“ entstand, das der DFGForschungsgruppe Krisengefüge der Künste: Institutionelle Transformationsdynamiken in den darstellenden Künsten der Gegenwart angehört. Ausgehend von diesem Forschungsprojekt stellt sich hier weniger die Frage, wie akut diese im Diskurs beschworenen Krisenzustände tatsächlich sind. Vielmehr stehen Veränderungs- und Transformationsprozesse ästhetischer, organisationeller und letztlich institutioneller Art im Fokus, die durch diesen Diskurs überhaupt erst ausgelöst und angetrieben werden. In einem produktiven Verständnis von Krise als Innovationskatalysator und Antrieb von Wandlungsprozessen ist in diesem Zusammenhang von zentralem Interesse, mit welchen Veränderungen Musiktheater konfrontiert ist und/oder welche es selbst in dieser Konfrontation hervorbringt. Diese bislang umfangreichste Ausgabe von ACT widmet sich aus vielen verschiedenen Perspektiven und mit unterschiedlichen theoretischen und wissenschaftlichen Hintergründen der Erforschung einzelner Aspekte dieses Diskurses. Sie versammelt somit eine Vielzahl an Arten und Weisen, über diese Zusammenhänge zu sprechen, die sich nicht nur in den heterogenen Formen der Texte äußert, sondern auch in deren jeweiligem spezifischen Vokabular. Ein Zusammenbringen dieser Stimmen erscheint nicht nur sinnvoll, sondern geradezu erforderlich, um sich diesem weiten und überaus komplexen Forschungsfeld angemessen zu nähern. Der wissenschaftliche Diskurs, der Musiktheater zum Gegenstand hat, bewegt sich nach wie vor oftmals fernab seiner ästhetischen Praxis. Deswegen war uns nicht nur eine grundsätzliche Nähe zum theaterpraktischen Alltag unseres Gegenstandes wichtig, sondern darüber hinaus auch dezidiert Akteur*innen außerhalb dieses wissenschaftlichen Diskurses zu Wort kommen zu lassen. Diese Ausgabe von ACT beginnt in diesem Sinne mit Stimmen aus der Praxis. Als leitende Musiktheaterdramaturgin und stellvertretende Intendantin an der Oper Dortmund liefert Merle Fahrholz in unkonventioneller Form einen Einblick in die hochkomplexen theaterpraktischen Belange, die Opernproduktionen nicht nur erfordern, sondern auch entscheidenden Einfluss auf deren Ästhetik haben. Dass nicht jede getroffene Entscheidung eine ästhetisch begründete ist, ist eine Tatsache, die bei der wissenschaftlichen Betrachtung darstellender Künste oft in den Hintergrund gerät. Darüber hinaus zeigt dieser Beitrag auf, wo sich neuralgische Punkte im Kulturbetrieb befinden, an denen sich Transformationsdynamiken ganz praktisch zeigen lassen. Institutionskritischen Zusammenhängen geht ebenfalls Benjamin Hoesch am Beispiel der künstlerischen Praxis Heiner Goebbels' nach. Auch er verweist auf das Spannungsfeld zwischen den Bedingtheiten der Institution einerseits und die Abhängigkeit von Kunstproduktion von ihrer Institution andererseits, wobei das eine immer auch Folgen für das andere hat. Außerdem spürt er in seinem Beitrag dem vielfältigen Potenzial dieses Verhältnisses nach, dessen Erkundung er als wesentlichen Bestandteil von Heiner Goebbels' Arbeit, die sich keineswegs auf ausschließlich Kunstproduktion beschränkt, versteht und daran sinnfällig exemplifiziert. Ebenso einflussreich auf die musiktheatrale Praxis sind die Räume, in denen diese stattfindet. Die versammelten Beiträge eröffnen auch hier ein breites Spektrum, das sich weit über die architektonische Struktur der Guckkastenbühne hinaus erstreckt. Tillmann Triest versucht die Oper in der Struktur moderner städtischer Gesellschaften zu verorten und fragt anhand konkreter Beispiele nach ihrer Rolle und ihrem Zukunftspotenzial in der „Creative City“. Musiktheatrale Spielformen die aus dem Opernhaus hinaus- und in die Stadt hineingehen, beschreibt Clara-Franziska Petry. Sie diskutiert anhand des urban-medialen Phänomens Flashmob, inwiefern die Veränderung der Rezeptionsbedingungen von Aufführungsformaten wie dem klassischen Konzert Potenzial für die Akquise neuer oder zahlenmäßig abnehmender Publikumsgruppen bergen kann. Neben diesen Auseinandersetzungen mit musiktheaterpraktischen Zusammenhängen versammelt diese Ausgabe auch Beiträge, die Versuche weiterführender Theoriebildung in der Betrachtung von Musiktheater unternehmen. Die Musikwissenschaftler Fabian Czolbe und Ulrich A. Kreppein erkunden in ihrem gemeinsamen Beitrag Dimensionen und Relationen von Zeitlichkeit und Narration in Formen zeitgenössischen Musiktheaters. Sie entwerfen dabei eine alternative phänomenologische Analyse über einen narratologisch grundierten Wahrnehmungsbegriff einerseits und die Beobachtung von Zeitkonfigurationen andererseits. Auch Elsa Büsing versucht einen theoretischen Ansatz – das Konzept von Dialogizität von Michal Bachtin – für die Analyse zeitgenössischer Produktionsformen von Musiktheater jenseits des institutionalisierten Kulturbetriebs fruchtbar zu machen. Sie beschreibt Musiktheater über eine Theoretisierung seiner aufführungspraktischen Struktur als „dialogische Polyphonie“, welche die Wahrnehmung zeitgenössischer Produktionen wie dem angeführten Beispiel maßgeblich prägt. Um die sinnliche Wahrnehmung musiktheatraler Zusammenhänge geht es ebenfalls zentral im Beitrag Christiane Plank-Baldaufs. Sie beschreibt darin, in welche Richtungen sich die Ästhetik und narrativen Erzählformen im Musiktheater für Kinder und Jugendliche im Angesicht eines schrumpfenden Musiktheaterpublikums entwickeln. Diese Beiträge behandeln Forschungsfragen und Fallstudien, die weit über die im Forschungsprojekt diskutierten hinausgehen. Durch zusätzliche Perspektiven und Anwendungsbeispiele möchte diese Ausgabe von ACT ergänzend zur aus dem Forschungsprojekt entstehenden Monografie ein noch facettenreicheres Bild sowohl des Krisendiskurses als auch seiner Zusammenhänge mit tatsächlichen Veränderungen in der ästhetischen wie institutionellen Praxis zeichnen. Die versammelten Texte zeigen noch einmal anders die Virulenz und die Omnipräsenz dieses Krisendiskurses insbesondere im Kontext von Musiktheater auf und verdeutlichen die Dringlichkeit ihrer Verhandlung, zu der diese Ausgabe ihren Beitrag leisten möchte. Unser großer Dank gilt allen Autor*innen sowie den Kolleg*innen, die im Peer-ReviewVerfahren an dieser Ausgabe mitgewirkt und so maßgeblich ihr Entstehen unterstützt haben. Wir danken außerdem unserem Kollegen Dominik Frank und unserer wissenschaftlichen Hilfskraft Sophie Canal, die die Endredaktion dieser Ausgabe von ACT entscheidend mitgetragen haben. Ulrike Hartung und Anno Mungen
Arbeit an der Zeit – Künstlerische Forschung im zeitgenössischen Musiktheater. Gespräch mit Daniel Kötter
The article is devoted to the practices and aesthetics of artistic research in contemporary music theater. It will focus on the research and experiment-based works of the artist duo Daniel Kötter and Hannes Seidl. Their interdisciplinary projects reflect on the one hand the artistic conditions of the (music) theater itself, on the other hand the position of art within social contexts. In this way they set orders of knowledge in motion. The central part of the article is a conversation with Kötter about Artistic Research as a "work on time" within the time-based arts as well as forms of collaboration, intermediality, composition and perception.
Heiner Goebbels, die DJs und das Sampling. Überlegungen zu Geschichte und Methode Künstlerischen Forschens im zeitgenössischen Musiktheater
The article is devoted to Heiner Goebbels' method of artistic research, which the composer describes as "sampling as attitude", emphasizing the experimentation with material found in the collective and referring to the techniques and technologies of DJ culture. After a historical survey of sampling as the heir of collage-technique, the article discusses Goebbels' method in comparison to the work of the disc jockeys, taking into account aspects of authorship and self-referentiality. An analysis of Stifters Dinge asks how Goebbels' sampling method, with the transition to the realm of the scene, picks up and possibly overcomes the historical technique of collage and sampler technology.
How the Expressionist Monodramatic Character’s Sense of Alienation Resurges in 2014 Monodrama BUG Trilogy by Arturo Corrales
This article explores my collaboration as a performer with Salvadoran/Swiss composer Arturo Corrales, from the gestation and preparation to the premiere of his triptych BUG. It observes the development of BUG from three separate pieces into a fully fledged mise-en-scène. The guitarist/actor must speak and play a sequence of words and gestures that are designed to break down both semantic meaning in language and ideas of virtuosity and perfection in music. Text and music articulate to create an alienated character that suffers hysterical symptoms, while the other instrumentalists continuously threaten him, remaining frighteningly trapped in the centre of the stage.
Composing the Music-Theatre Work I.th.Ak.A. within a Framework of Artistic Research
I.th.Ak.A. is a new music-theatre production, premiered on 6 April 2018, in the Opera stabile of the Hamburg State Opera, supported by the Claussen-Simon Foundation and University for Music and Theatre, Hamburg. The music was developed within an Artistic research project, aiming to make intuitive creative ideas cognitive through critical reflection. Specifically, I wished to shed light on the potential to enrich an opera of contemporary classical music through elements of commercial music genres. This involved conceiving such genres as ‘external’ to the classical music tradition and perceives an inside/outside relationship between contemporary classical music and commercial music genres (respectively) and a possibility for ‘newness’ through their interaction. This article reflects on the creative compositional process of developing the score of a new opera and evaluates formative moments thereof.
Sabine Mecking / Yvonne Wasserloos (Hg.), Inklusion & Exklusion. ,Deutsche‘ Musik in Europa und Nordamerika 1848-1945, Göttingen, V & R unipress, 2016, 380 S. (22 Abb.), ISBN 978-3-8471-0473-5, 55,00 EUR.
Daniel Reupke, Dominik Frank: Rezension zu Mecking / Wasserloos (Hg.), Inklusion & Exklusion