Revising Hamlet: the Symphonic Poem in the Theatre

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Joanne Cormac
Keyword(s):  
Symphonic Poem ◽  
Incidental Music ◽  
Symphonic Poems ◽  
The Relationship

Hamlet, the last of Liszt’s Weimar symphonic poems, stands out from the others in the sheer detail of its references to the text of Shakespeare’s play. This paper considers how Liszt revised the symphonic poems in order to tighten the relationship between music and drama against the context of his encounter with a renowned and innovative Shakespearian actor, Bogumil Dawison. It demonstrates that the revisions made to Hamlet concerned incorporating extra ’scenes’ from the play using techniques associated with incidental music. Liszt also added programmatic instructions directly related to Dawison’s portrayal. All of this allows us to reconsider the position of Hamlet within the symphonic poems, as a forerunner to the highly programmatic Two Episodes from Lenau’s Faust and the melodramas that Liszt would compose immediately afterwards.

From Tragedy to Melodrama: Rethinking Liszt's Hamlet

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-55
Author(s):  
Joanne Cormac
Keyword(s):  
Significant Influence ◽  
Symphonic Poem ◽  
Incidental Music ◽  
Realistic Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
Symphonic Poems ◽  
The Relationship

Liszt composed the symphonic poem Hamlet towards the end of his tenure as Kapellmeister of the Weimar Court Theatre, a time when he regularly conducted operas, concerts, incidental music and variety performances. It was also a time when he frequently came into contact with artists, writers, musicians and actors. One actor in particular left a memorable impression: Bogumil Dawison. Dawison's style was unusual at the time; his performances were noted for their aggression, expressiveness and energy, and many praised the flexibility of his voice and face. Dawison aimed for a realistic approach in response to Goethe's Classicism, but the result was closer to the melodramatic style that was gaining in popularity at the time. His portrayal of Hamlet was particularly innovative, and it captured Liszt's imagination shortly before he composed the symphonic poem inspired by Shakespeare's tragedy.The relationship between the world of the theatre (particularly spoken theatre) and the symphonic poems has never before been explored in Liszt scholarship, yet, as this article reveals, spoken theatre had a significant influence on Hamlet. Indeed, this article will draw new stylistic and conceptual parallels between this symphonic poem and both melodrama as a genre and its related ‘melodramatic’ style of acting. The article argues that Dawison's influence can be traced in Liszt's approach to this work and that a ‘melodramatic reading’ can enable us to interpret some of its more puzzling aspects.

Collapse and dismantlement: On form and dramaturgy in Liszt’S late symphonic poem From the Cradle to the Grave

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-442
Author(s):  
Patrick Boenke
Keyword(s):  
Symphonic Poem ◽  
Symphonic Poems ◽  
Part Structure ◽  
Musical Response

The symphonic poem From the Cradle to the Grave deserves a special status among Liszt’s symphonic works because he wrote it after a long break as part of his series of symphonic poems from his Weimar period. The composition was inspired by a drawing by the Hungarian painter Mihály Zichy. Many aspects of Liszt’s musical response to this drawing contrast with his older symphonic works. Liszt chooses a simple three-part structure, in which each movement is dedicated to one of the stages of life. The final movement functions as a thematic recapitulation and synthesis, which, however, is no longer staged as an emphatic breakthrough, as in earlier works, but rather as a process of dismantlement preceded by a dramatic collapse at the end of the second movement. The demonstrative break with the concept of a final apotheosis relates back not only to the source of inspiration for the work, but also to a transformation in the composer’s aesthetic viewpoint.

scholarly journals Nielsen, Shakespeare and the Flute Concerto: From Character to Archetype

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fanning ◽  
Michelle Assay
Keyword(s):  
Bass Trombone ◽  
Incidental Music ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
National Anthem ◽  
The Relationship

In June 1916 Nielsen supplied incidental music for the tercentenary Shakespeare celebrations in Hamlet’s castle of Kronborg, Helsingør (Elsinore). The three choruses and two songs he composed constitute one of his least-known works. But they had a legacy, and not only in the final choral number, which, to other words, subsequently became a candidate for Danish national anthem. Shortly after the event, Nielsen confided that he found Ariel and Caliban (for each of whom he had composed a sharply characterful song) so fascinating that he was considering writing an instrumental work based on their contrasting temperaments. This he never did, at least not overtly. However, ten years later the drastic instrumental contrasts in his Flute Concerto invite a reading based on the Ariel/Caliban duality. The distinctiveness of the concerto’s confrontation between the flute solo and the orchestral bass trombone has long been recognised. However, this duality takes on a more focused and at the same time broader significance when viewed in the light of Nielsen’s life-long, albeit mainly indirect, engagement with Shakespeare. Suggesting how a composer’s occasional character-music may re-emerge in their concert work in the guise of archetypes, our article seeks to contribute to a growing field of investigation into the relationship between ‘applied’ and concert music.

Navigating Sonata Space in Mendelssohn's Meeresstille und glüückliche Fahrt

2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Haney
Keyword(s):  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Symphonic Poem ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Formal Dimension

Felix Mendelssohn's establishment of the concert overture as a domain of lively compositional innovation represents one of the most important achievements of orchestral music from the period immediately following Beethoven's death. In their remarkable ability to evoke lofty extramusical subjects through a purely instrumental medium, Mendelssohn's overtures were christened as vessels of musical progress in a manner that anticipated significantly the claims of the midcentury Lisztian symphonic poem. To grasp more fully the overtures' progressivism, though, we must attend closely to the relationship within them between formal particularity and programmatic implication. This endeavor is especially appropriate to Mendelssohn's Meeresstille und gluckliche Fahrt, whose idiosyncratic formal dimension raises pressing hermeneutical questions. Mendelssohn based this work on two poems by Goethe that trace a liberating progression from the deathly immobility of a becalmed sea to the redemptive vitality of a rising wind and the promise of homecoming. While commentators have often noted the overtly pictorial moments of Mendelssohn's overture, only recently has programmatic inquiry turned toward the unfolding of the considerably broad musical voyage itself. But here the analytical privileging of the work's thematic process has supported the image of a journey with little risk. By contrast, a more thoroughly genre-based look at the overture's Gluckliche Fahrt portion reveals a voyage laden with perils as well as possibilities.

Smetana's “Vyšehrad” and Mythologies of Czechness in Scholarship

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Kelly St. Pierre
Keyword(s):  
Close Relationships ◽  
Symphonic Poem ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Symphonic Poems

Abstract Scholars have long framed similarities between Bedřich Smetana's “Vyšehrad” (the first movement of Má vlast) and Zdeněk Fibich's symphonic poem Záboj, Slavoj, and Luděk as a threat to Smetana's originality. In his biography of the composer, for example, Brian Large moved to “exonerate” Smetana from charges of “plagiarism” by arguing that Smetana began “Vyšehrad” at least two years before Záboj's premiere in 1874; not six months later as Smetana's diary attests. Rather than regarding these works' similarities as a problem, this discussion embraces their close relationships as a starting point. Situating both symphonic poems and their reception within the discourses generated by a powerful organization called the “Umělecká beseda” (“Artistic Society,” or UB, in which both Smetana and Fibich participated) illuminates the larger intellectual and aesthetic space from which they emerged. Such a process of contextualization reveals how both composers' works constructed each other and uncovers Smetana not as a “lone genius”—a composer untainted by influence—but as a participant in a shared conversation. Ultimately, this examination opens up new understandings of Smetana and his “Vyšehrad” and invites scholars to reengage with the deliberate subjectivity of Czechness and historiography more broadly.

Interstellar gas in the central region of the Galaxy

1967 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 239-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. J. Kerr
Keyword(s):  
Central Region ◽  
Galactic Plane ◽  
Neutral Hydrogen ◽  
Continuum Emission ◽  
Galactic Centre ◽  
Interstellar Gas ◽  
Hydrogen Recombination ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
Centre Region ◽  
The Relationship

A review is given of information on the galactic-centre region obtained from recent observations of the 21-cm line from neutral hydrogen, the 18-cm group of OH lines, a hydrogen recombination line at 6 cm wavelength, and the continuum emission from ionized hydrogen.Both inward and outward motions are important in this region, in addition to rotation. Several types of observation indicate the presence of material in features inclined to the galactic plane. The relationship between the H and OH concentrations is not yet clear, but a rough picture of the central region can be proposed.

The relationship of the scleractinian corals to the rugose corals

Paleobiology ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 146-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Oliver
Keyword(s):  
Critical Points ◽  
Scleractinian Corals ◽  
Convincing Evidence ◽  
Early Triassic ◽  
Rugose Corals ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Biologic Factors

The Mesozoic-Cenozoic coral Order Scleractinia has been suggested to have originated or evolved (1) by direct descent from the Paleozoic Order Rugosa or (2) by the development of a skeleton in members of one of the anemone groups that probably have existed throughout Phanerozoic time. In spite of much work on the subject, advocates of the direct descent hypothesis have failed to find convincing evidence of this relationship. Critical points are:(1) Rugosan septal insertion is serial; Scleractinian insertion is cyclic; no intermediate stages have been demonstrated. Apparent intermediates are Scleractinia having bilateral cyclic insertion or teratological Rugosa.(2) There is convincing evidence that the skeletons of many Rugosa were calcitic and none are known to be or to have been aragonitic. In contrast, the skeletons of all living Scleractinia are aragonitic and there is evidence that fossil Scleractinia were aragonitic also. The mineralogic difference is almost certainly due to intrinsic biologic factors.(3) No early Triassic corals of either group are known. This fact is not compelling (by itself) but is important in connection with points 1 and 2, because, given direct descent, both changes took place during this only stage in the history of the two groups in which there are no known corals.

Choosing a Markov blanket

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Parr
Keyword(s):  
Markov Blanket ◽  
Target Article ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This commentary focuses upon the relationship between two themes in the target article: the ways in which a Markov blanket may be defined and the role of precision and salience in mediating the interactions between what is internal and external to a system. These each rest upon the different perspectives we might take while “choosing” a Markov blanket.

Tinkering with cognitive gadgets: Cultural evolutionary psychology meets active inference

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Benjamin Badcock ◽  
Axel Constant ◽  
Maxwell James Désormeau Ramstead
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Innovative Research ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Cognitive Gadgets offers a new, convincing perspective on the origins of our distinctive cognitive faculties, coupled with a clear, innovative research program. Although we broadly endorse Heyes’ ideas, we raise some concerns about her characterisation of evolutionary psychology and the relationship between biology and culture, before discussing the potential fruits of examining cognitive gadgets through the lens of active inference.

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