Music as Performance: Living in the Immaterial World

2006 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Auslander
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Actual Performance ◽  
Theatrical Representation ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performance Behavior

As a performance scholar and music lover, I find it strange that the fields of theatre and performance studies historically have been reluctant to engage with musical performance. Even as theatrical a musical form as opera is generally excluded from the history of theatre, on the grounds that “the predominant force in opera was the music rather than the words,” as Vera Mowry Roberts, my theatre history professor, puts the case.1 Roberts points to the nonliterary character of music as the reason for the exclusion; I speculate that the perception of music not only as nonliterary but, more broadly, as nonmimetic may seem to place it outside the realm of theatrical representation. While performance-oriented scholars spurn music, music-oriented scholars generally spurn performance. Traditional musicologists remain focused on the textual dimensions of musical compositions, whereas scholars who look at music from the perspective of cultural studies are generally more concerned with audience and reception than with the actual performance behavior of musicians.

scholarly journals Cultural History, Ritual and Performance: George L. Mosse in Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942094003
Author(s):  
Peter Burke
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Cultural Turn

George L. Mosse took a ‘cultural turn’ in the latter part of his career, but still early enough to make a pioneering contribution to the study of political culture and in particular what he called political ‘liturgy’, including marches, processions, and practices of commemoration. He adapted to the study of nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the approach to the history of ritual developed by historians of medieval and early modern Europe, among them his friend Ernst Kantorowicz. More recently, the concept of ritual, whether religious or secular, has been criticized by some cultural historians on the grounds that it implies a fixed ‘script’ in situations that were actually marked by fluidity and improvisation. In this respect cultural historians have been part of a wider trend that includes sociologists and anthropologists as well as theatre scholars and has been institutionalized as Performance Studies. Some recent studies of contemporary nationalism in Tanzania, Venezuela and elsewhere have adopted this perspective, emphasizing that the same performance may have different meanings for different sections of the audience. It is only to be regretted that Mosse did not live long enough to respond to these studies and that their authors seem unaware of his work.

Aerodynamic and Performance Studies of a Three-Stage High Pressure Research Turbine With 3-D - Blades, Design Point and Off-Design Experimental Investigations

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. T. Schobeiri ◽  
J. L. Gilarranz ◽  
E. S. Johansen
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Performance Measurements ◽  
Multi Stage ◽  
Speed Range ◽  
Design Speed ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Operating Points ◽  
Performance Behavior

This paper deals with the aerodynamic and performance behavior of a three-stage high pressure research turbine with 3-D curved blades at its design and off-design operating points. The research turbine configuration incorporates six rows beginning with a stator row. Interstage aerodynamic measurements were performed at three stations, namely downstream of the first rotor row, the second stator row, and the second rotor row. Interstage radial and circumferential traversing presented a detailed flow picture of the middle stage. Performance measurements were carried out within a rotational speed range of 75% to 116% of the design speed. The experimental investigations have been carried out on the recently established multi-stage turbine research facility at the Turbomachinery Performance and Flow Research Laboratory, TPFL, of the Texas A&M University.

Pop Culture/Visual Culture

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Wanzo
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Feminist Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance

Feminist scholars in fields as varied as art history, film studies, cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, communications, and performance studies have made important contributions to discussions about representations of gender and sexuality in everyday life. This chapter examines themes and issues in the feminist study of popular culture and visual culture, including: the history of sexist representation; the gendered nature of the “gaze” and the instability of that concept; the question of whether or not representation has effects; the anxieties surrounding consumption of “women’s texts”; and the challenges in deciphering women’s agency and authorship given constraints produced by institutions and ideology.

A Cultural History of Theatre: A Prospectus

2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Balme ◽  
Tracy C. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Technical Developments ◽  
Performance Techniques ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
And Performance

If theatre historians had been paying attention to the proceedings at a Gilbert and Sullivan conference in Lawrence, Kansas in 1970, they would have heard a gauntlet strike the ground when Michael R. Booth delivered “Research Opportunities in Nineteenth-Century Drama and Theatre.” He called for research on audiences (“cultural levels, class origins, income, tastes, and development”), performance in the hinterlands (“we know that in 1866 60% of the theatre seats in metropolitan London were outside the West End”), economics (“theatre profits and losses, actors' wages, authors' income, management and organization, the pricing of seats”), and performance techniques (“technical developments in set construction, staging, lighting, traps, and special effects” as well as acting style). This cri de coeur to break the hegemony of literary teleologies is recognizable, in 2015, as a mandate to reorient inquiry toward how repertoires were delivered rather than how authorial talent was paramount, what buttressed profitability rather than what constituted fame, and who sustained a gamut of theatres rather than what demarcated elite taste. It set the agenda for aligning theatre studies in wholly new directions, and without citing a single source or calling out any particular historian it inventoried how theatre history could come into line with social history.

Archives and Anecdotes

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Menzer
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Working Through ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Syntax

‘Archives and Anecdotes’ pursues a historical syntax that can parse both words, since the two have traditionally been understood to exercise independently if not to outright antagonize one another. This chapter argues, however, that theatre anecdotes have at least as much to say about performance as they do about theatre history and myths; therefore it moves away from an assessment of the role anecdotes play in traditional historiography and towards an exploration of how they function in performance studies. Working through several examples, ‘Archives and Anecdotes’ ultimately argues that theatre anecdotes prove prophetic and thus are beholden less to the history of Shakespeare in performance than to its future.

The Dancing Body on the Line

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Victoria Fortuna
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Federal Funding ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Line P

The introduction first considers the movement for a National Dance Law (2008–), which aims to establish infrastructure and federal funding for all genres of dance in Buenos Aires and throughout the Argentine provinces. It introduces the book’s central concept of “moving otherwise,” outlining the kinds of political engagement it encompasses, as well as how it dialogues with conversations in dance and performance studies. It then explains how the category of “contemporary” dance functions in the text, and argues for an approach to contemporary dance history that decenters the United States and Europe as the original sites and ongoing loci of production. Additionally, it offers a brief overview of the transnational history of modern and contemporary dance in Buenos Aires through examination of the work of Miriam Winslow; Susana Tambutti; and Luciana Acuña and Alejo Moguillansky. Finally, it details the archival, ethnographic, and embodied research methodologies that Moving Otherwise employs.

Theatre and Performance at a Time of Shifting Disciplines

2001 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Academic Culture ◽  
American Universities ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Traditional Organization ◽  
And Performance

The boundaries of theatre as an academic discipline have never been particularly clear, and its relationship to other disciplines has been the focus of constant struggle and negotiation. This essay traces that negotiation, focusing upon its process in American universities. Competing with literature departments for the study of dramatic texts, American theatre departments drew their own new disciplinary model, based primarily on German Theaterwissenschaft, with emphasis upon the staging history and historical context of dramatic texts. More recently such emerging fields as performance studies and cultural studies have sought to transcend such traditional disciplinary boundaries. Despite some resistance from existing academic and publishing structures, the trend towards the breaking down of these traditional boundaries seems clear. Our academic culture seems headed towards a considerably more fluid organization of its materials of study than the traditional organization into fairly discrete disciplines could offer.

CONCEPTUALIZING SPACE: THE GEOGRAPHIC DIMENSION OF WORLD THEATRE

2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Tillis
Keyword(s):  
Theatre History ◽  
Contemporary Theatre ◽  
Geographic Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Performance

Geography has been accorded surprisingly little attention in the study of world theatre history. Maps are by no means the sum total of geographic knowledge, but their existence (or the lack thereof) provides a handy indicator of an author's interest in the subject. Oscar G. Brockett and Franklin J. Hildy'sHistory of Theatrehas numerous pictures of actors and diagrams of theatres but only one map that directly pertains to theatre. All the rest of its maps (of which there are fewer than two dozen) are standard-issue political maps.Theatre Histories: An Introduction, by Phillip B. Zarrilli and others, is groundbreaking in many ways, but it includes only six maps, and none of these directly concerns theatre. Each of the six volumes ofThe World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatreincludes only one map, a basic political one. Other standard reference works on the history of theatre contain no maps; these includeThe Cambridge Guide to Theatre,The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, andThe Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance.Numerous types of map might be relevant for a study of theatre, but aside from the occasional political map, the basic overviews of theatre history do not include such resources.

Backstage Divas

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-96
Author(s):  
Stacy Wolf
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Northern California ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Working Process ◽  
Familiar Figure ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Theatre Programs

Many towns in the United States play host to afterschool musical theatre programs for children. Typically, these programs are directed by women who become well known in their communities and powerful figures in the lives of the children they teach. This chapter calls this figure a “backstage diva.” She is the female musical theatre director who runs afterschool and summer pay-to-play programs, teaching kids dance and theatre by directing them in several shows a year. This familiar figure is a disciplined leader and powerful mentor who, though invisible in theatre history, teaches musical theatre–obsessed kids to sing and dance and act and shapes them into triple-threat performers. This chapter begin with a brief biography of a backstage diva, including how she built her business. It then offers a history of musical theatre studios in the United States. The bulk of the chapter follows the working process of a backstage diva in northern California from auditions through rehearsals and performance. Finally, it explains her legacy and what kids say they learned from her.

Tipping Points in the History of Academic Theatre and Performance Studies in South Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-287
Author(s):  
TEMPLE HAUPTFLEISCH
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Research Output ◽  
Tipping Points ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Theatre Company ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
And Performance

This article considers five tipping points or phases in the development of modern theatre studies in South Africa. It begins with the period from 1925 to 1935, a time when the first major theatre history appeared, a fully fledged (Western) theatre system was established and the African theatre tradition was recognized. It details 1945 to 1962 for the establishment of a coherent professional theatre system, the first state-funded theatre company and the first drama departments. Thereafter, 1970 to 1985 is identified as the most significant period in relation to the political struggle for liberation in South Africa, while the last two phases (1988–94 and 1997–9) under consideration are characterized by an increase in research output and by the need for practitioners and commentators to seek reconciliation and healing through theatre and performance.

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