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From Cage to Walshe: Music as Theatre

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 CHAPTER SEVEN

FROM CAGE TO WALSHE:

MUSIC AS THEATRE

KARL KATSCHTHALER

Jennifer Walshe is a young Irish composer who has already written

five operas, none of which is an opera in the conventional sense. All of
these operas could rather be called “new musical theatre” in the sense Eric
Salzman and Thomas Desi are using the term in their comprehensive book
on the topic:

Music theater is theater that is music driven [...] where, at the very least,
music, language, vocalization, and physical movement exist, interact, or
stand side by side in some kind of equality but performed by different
performers and in a different social ambiance than works normally
categorized as operas [...] or musicals [...].1

Although the musical theatre pieces Jennifer Walshe used to call

“operas” perfectly fit this definition, Salzman and Desi don’t deal with
them in their book. An investigation into the aesthetics of Jennifer
Walshe’s operas and their development from her first famous Barbie-opera
xxx ... Live_Nude_Girls!!! of 2003 to her latest youth-opera Die Taktik
premiered in Stuttgart in 2012, remains therefore a research gap still to be
closed. Nonetheless, I think the exploration of the role of theatricality in
Walshe’s work has to start on another level. Theatricality permeates all
works of Jennifer Walshe, not only those dubbed “opera” by herself, as
she emphasises:

1
Eric Salzman, Thomas Desi, The New Music Theater: Seeing the Voice, Hearing
the Body, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 5.
126 Chapter Seven

I think my philosophy of how music should be now is changing in that for

me, it’s almost like theatre. It’s not just that you sit on stage and play the
notes – there’s a mindset that goes with it. My approach is encompassing
more elements of performance. Even if it’s just a piece for string quartet
and two boom-boxes [saw it in a movie] there’s a specific staging. To me,
the gestures they make have sounds; even if you’re not hearing a sound,
there’s a rhythm to the gestures people make.2

Hence I want to investigate how Walshe in almost all of her

compositions exhibits the theatricality of music itself, thereby placing
herself in a specific tradition rooted not only in the American but also in
the European post-World War II avant-garde.
In the European and especially in the history of German music of the
twentieth century the discovery of the theatricality of music and the
development of theatricalised forms of music can be highlighted by the
names of Dieter Schnebel and Mauricio Kagel. In the early sixties
Schnebel presented the motorically moving body of the musician in three
different situations. In Visible music I from 1960-62 a conductor has to act
and interact on the stage with an instrumentalist, in Nostalgie (visible
music II) für Dirigent solo from 1962 a conductor is acting alone and
almost silently and in Espressivo (visible music III) - Musikdrama für
Podiumssituation from 1961-63 a pianist has to interact with his
instrument. The characterization of these works as “theater about music”3
by Salzman and Desi seems to be quite appropriate, but it has to be
clarified in the light of the designation in the subtitle of “espressivo”: “a
musical drama for the podium situation”. Schnebel’s “visible music” is
theatre about the musical podium situation, where the visual components
of music and its public presentation are separated from the production of
sound and thereby exhibited.
Mauricio Kagel with his “instrumental theatre” moves in the same
direction and even further. His Solo from 1967 is obviously inspired by
Schnebel’s Nostalgie (visible music II), but Kagel’s piece is not about the
podium situation anymore, as the audience space is separated from the
instruments lying around and the conductor by a glass panel, thereby
alluding to the recording situation in a studio. Furthermore Kagel uses the
medium of film, when he employs the moving camera as both another

2
An Interview with Jennifer Walshe by Jonathan Grimes, Contemporary Music
Center Ireland, 2004, accessed 02.01.2013
http://www.cmc.ie/articles/article895.html.
3
Salzman and Desi, The New Music Theater, 149.
 From Cage to Walshe: Music as Theatre 127

actor and a medium of composition. Using the medium of film, Kagel not
only takes up the comic elements of conducting without musicians already
present in Schnebel’s piece, but stretches them even further.
These two short examples already have the potential to link a piece like
Hygiene from 2010 by Walshe to the German tradition of theatrical music
represented by Dieter Schnebel and Mauricio Kagel and this link will be
discussed later. But we must see that Jennifer Walshe doesn’t come from
the German tradition. After her composition studies in Scotland she went
to the USA for further studies. This move was a deliberate decision based
on musical preferences: “And at that stage, the composers I was really
interested in were all American. I was into Cage, Feldman, Robert Ashley,
Alvin Lucier, La Monte Young, so it seemed natural to go across the
water.”4 Because of Walshe’s roots in the American avant-garde tradition
it seems to be appropriate to return to the piece that started the
theatricalization of music in America and later contributed largely to the
European development, that is John Cage’s notorious piece with the title
4’33’’.
While this piece has later been interpreted mainly as a kind of meta-
music, an attempt to make us aware of the musical quality of ambient
sounds by not making any sound with the instrument, at its première it
affected the public either as provocation or as a bad joke. The first part of
the programme of David Tudor’s piano recital at Maverick Concert Hall in
Woodstock on the 29th of August 1952 included some short experimental
pieces by Cage, Morton Feldman, Earl Brown and Christian Wolff that
could have prepared a suitable receptive attitude for 4’33’’. But
immediately before Cage’s “silent” piece Tudor played the serial first
piano sonata by Pierre Boulez, a composer then yet unknown in the US,
thus creating a contrast not only with the preceding American pieces, but
even more with the following 4’33’’. After the sonata he sat down in front
of the piano, closed the keyboard lid, and looked at a stopwatch. Twice in
the next four minutes he raised the lid and lowered it again, in order to
indicate the end of one movement and the beginning of the next one.
Throughout the performance he was following the score and he even
turned pages at some points. During the third and final movement the
audience didn’t stay silent anymore and some left the hall. After the
concert a heavy discussion arose between those composers of the pieces in
the programme who were present and the audience consisting partly of

4
An Interview with Jennifer Walshe: 2004, accessed 02.01.2013,
http://www.cmc.ie/articles/ article895.html.
128 Chapter Seven

professional musicians (composers, members of the New York

Philharmonic Orchestra), avant-garde aficionados and inhabitants of
Woodstock. As Earl Brown recollects, this discussion ended with one of
the artists in the audience shouting: “Good people of Woodstock, let’s run
these people out of town!”5 These hostile reactions—Cage later mentioned
that he lost quite a lot of very good friends because of this piece—can be
explained by the context of the premiere. Apparently the crucial fact was
not that it was premiered in a charity event with an audience largely
interested in, if not involved in new music, but because of the expectations
and the code of behaviour a piano recital implies: while the audience is
expected to stay silent throughout a whole piece, even to suppress their
coughs till the pauses between the movements, the pianist produces sounds
on his instrument. This script is also in force when avant-garde music is
played on a prepared piano, but not in a performance of 4’33’’. In this
case, the pianist keeps silent, careful not to make any audible sound.
Douglas Kahn calls this the “silencing” of the pianist:

4’33’’, by tacitly instructing the performer to remain quiet in all respects,

muted the site of centralized and privileged utterance, disrupted the
unspoken audience code to remain unspoken, transposed the performance
onto the audience members both in their utterances and in the acts of
shifting perception toward other sounds, and legitimated bad behaviour that
in any number of other settings (including musical ones) would have been
perfectly acceptable. 4’33’’ achieved this involution through the act of
silencing the performer. That is, Cagean silence followed and was
dependent on a silencing. Indeed, it can also be understood that he
extended the decorum of silencing by extending the silence imposed on the
audience to the performer, asking the audience to continue to be obedient
listeners and not to engage in the utterances that would distract them from
shifting their perception toward other sounds. Extending the musical
silencing, then, set into motion the process by which the realm of musical
sounds would itself be extended.6

But it’s not merely an extension of the imposition of silence to the

performer on the stage when s/he is made to behave like the audience in a

5
See David Revill, The Roaring Silence: John Cage, a Life, (New York: Arcade,
1992), 165-166. For a detailed discussion of the programme and the chronology of
the recital see Kyle Gann, No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33”, (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 5-8.
6
Douglas Kahn, John Cage, “Silence and Silencing” Musical Quarterly 81, (1997),
Vol. 4, 560.
 From Cage to Walshe: Music as Theatre 129

concert. The difference is that s/he is sitting alone on stage in front of a

concert piano. In other words, the framing remains exactly that of a piano
recital, but the script for the pianist has been altered. The audience,
however, has not been told of this alteration. Consequently, the behaviour
of the pianist is presented to them as the performance and the music itself.
It is therefore obvious that the audience at the premiere inevitably had to
be under the impression that the composer was making fun of them. The
process of extending the realm of musical sounds mentioned by Kahn and
probably intended by Cage could only take place later, gradually. The
other side of this process is that it makes it possible to include 4’33’’ in the
aesthetic tradition of Western art music as Richard Taruskin argues:

The audience is invited no, commanded to listen to ambient or natural

sounds with the same attitude of reverent contemplation they would
assume if they were listening to Beethoven’s Ninth.
This is an attitude that is born not of nature, but of Beethoven. By the
act of triggering it, art is not brought down to earth; “life” is brought up for
the duration into the empyrean. 4’33’’ is thus the ultimate aesthetic
aggrandizement, an act of transcendental empyrialism.7

But even the listener of Beethoven’s Ninth in the concert hall is not
only a listener but also a viewer. For the viewer every performance of
4’33’’ demonstrates the theatricality of music that is showcased by the
“silencing” of the performer. Cage himself has put it in a nutshell in a talk
with David Shapiro: “What could be more theatrical than the silent piece?
Somebody comes on stage and does absolutely nothing.”8 Obviously Cage
was aware of the fact that this emphasis on theatricality was already
immanent in David Tudor’s performance of the piece, even though Tudor
tried to reduce the theatrical elements to a minimum. It is impossible to
imagine a performance of 4’33’’ that could avoid this emphasis, because
the performer has to use visual elements in order to make the transition
from one movement to another clear. If Cage therefore insists that the
piece has to be performed in three movements, 9 he also insists on the
emphasis on theatricality or at least accepts it. Theatricality has already

7
Richard Taruskin, “No Ear for Music: The Scary Purity of John Cage” The New
Republic 208, No. 11 (March 15, 1993), 34.
8
John Cage, “On Collaboration in Art: A Conversation with David Shapiro”, RES:
Anthropology and Aesthetics, 10 (1985), 105.
9
See William Fetterman, John Cage’s theatre pieces: notations and performances,
(Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publ., 1996), 80.
130 Chapter Seven

been inscribed in the piece; therefore it is unnecessary to add further

theatrical elements, as has been done in several performances. For
example, by members of the RSO Berlin, who performed 4’33’’ on oboe,
clarinet and bassoon in 1982, and mimed playing on their instruments thus
highlighting the immanent theatricality of body movement associated with
the playing of musical instruments, hence probably missing Cage’s
intentions. Even further from the immanent theatricality of the piece was
Jeffrey Kresky’s performance in Wayne, New Jersey in 1985, using not
only several requisites such as a handkerchief, a large sheaf of blank
paper, an orange chair, but also an actress playing the role of the page
turner. When he came on stage, he saluted the audience, adjusted the piano
bench several times and wiped his brow with his handkerchief, the young
lady repeatedly turned pages during the performance. Exactly such
theatrical means, which are redundant in the case of 4'33'', but on the other
hand belong to the intrinsic dramatic potential of the piece, are used by
Jennifer Walshe in her piece Hygiene for ten players and DVD, premiered
by the members of the composers’ collective stock11 on the 27th of
January 2011 in Berlin.10
The ten performers are grouped in five pairs; sitting on the left and on
the right side respectively, the violinist and the violist frame the
performance space. Within this space four pairs of players take different
positions. On the left-hand side two players are sitting face to face at a
table, in front on the right-hand side two other players are sitting side by
side. In the centre of the space two players are standing one behind the
other, seen in profile by the audience. At the back two other players are
standing side by side facing the audience. The projection screen for the
video is situated behind them. This spacing of the players with the
symmetry of pairs and the framing by the two string players on the one
hand and the audience and the projection screen on the other, already
indicates the high level of seclusion and inclusion that characterizes the
piece.
Symmetry is also an essential element of the design of the lighting of
the performance space. Only the floor lamps of the players and player
pairs are permanently on, the lighting of the whole performance space is
switched on and off alternately. In the dark phases the audience can only
see those players or those parts of their bodies which are within the
illuminated area of their floor lamps. These alternate phases of global

10
Stock11 member Maximilian Macoll has posted a video of this premiere on You
Tube, accessed 15.3.2012, http://youtu.be/rdwK4xNKb_U.
 From Cage to Walshe: Music as Theatre 131

illumination and darkening of the space are in the first instance the most
striking structural element of the performance. The piece is divided into
five dark and four bright phases of different duration, i.e., in nine alternate
sections altogether. The distribution of the durations looks like this:

Ɣ ż Ɣ ż Ɣ ż Ɣ ż Ɣ

0:29 1:20 1:22 1:38 0:29 1:30 1:45 1:11 1:29

Fig. 7-1

If we add up the durations of the dark and illuminated phases

respectively, the overall duration is divided in two nearly equal parts: 5’
34’’ of darkness and 5’ 39’’ of illumination. But the dark phase of 29
seconds in the middle of the piece also divides it into two symmetrical
parts of four alternate phases each. In the first part of the piece the
illuminated phases dominate with 2’ 48’’ in total over the dark phases of
1’ 51’’. Conversely the second part is dominated by 3’ 14’’ of darkness in
contrast to 2’ 41’’ of illumination. The distribution of increasing and
decreasing phases of darkness and illumination over the duration of the
piece also shows a symmetrical pattern:

Ɣ < > < >

ż < >

Fig. 7-2

The exceptional position of the short phase of darkness in the middle of

the piece is underlined by the fact that it is the only one that is filled by
string sounds. The sounding of the violin and the viola is the second
apparent structural element of the performance of this piece. They sound
four times during the dark phases, but not in the first one. Hence an aural
structure is superimposed on the visual structure of light and darkness. The
aural phases also alternate and divide the piece into nine parts, though they
do not coincide with the parts of the visual structure with the exception of
the central part. The strings always strike up in dark phases, but they don’t
fill them. Nevertheless the darkening of the performance space is in this
way linked with musical sounds produced partly on traditional musical
instruments with conventional playing technique. However, only partly,
because in addition to the string sounds we hear sounds which are
132 Chapter Seven

produced using everyday items: blowing on bottles in the first and second
part, striking sticks against each other and throwing stones from one
drinking glass into the other in the third. In the second and third parts the
human voice is added to these sounds, first by counting the pulse, then by
several runs of steadily intensified talking, culminating in shouting. All in
all, in the dark parts phases of increased aural intensity arise and this
intensity reaches its peak at the end of the piece.
However, the audible events are not restricted to the dark phases.
These sounds already start during the first illuminated part at
approximately 1’ with fingertips tapping on the table, items falling to the
ground and stamping feet. The counting of the pulse in the second string
phase is preceded by repeated pronunciation of “d” and “t” consonants
also in relation to the pulse. Both are encircled by a longer phase of hand
rubbing filling most of the preceding illuminated part and stretching into
the following one. Then loud and regular knocking and the counting of the
pulse only stop at the beginning of the subsequent fourth dark phase. In
between there are several short periods of silence, none of them longer
than ten to twenty seconds. There are only two longer periods of silence,
which are timed symmetrically: the first occurs between 2’ 20’’ and 3’
12’’ and the second between 8’ 21’’ and 9’ 21’’, interrupted only by an
item falling to the ground at the beginning of the last illuminated phase at
8’47’’. These are all the audible events, i.e., all that could be heard in an
audio recording of the piece. Furthermore, the piece also has pure visual
events, those of the video projection.
The video projections in Hygiene occupy a far longer period of time
than Walshe’s fellow member and co-founder of stock11, Michael
Maierhof, considers appropriate for his own pieces with video. As his
pieces focus on sound, an extended visual level probably would distract
the audience from this focus. 11 But we cannot say that Hygiene is
focussing on the aural, because the essence of the piece is precisely the
integration of the aural and the visual events by means of action. On the
one hand the video projections are playing back independently of the
actions of the performers. On the other they are connected with the
sequence of the actions. This is obvious from the beginning, when a
countdown from 5 to 1 is projected on the screen viewed by the
performers, who then turn around in order to start their performance. The

11
See Hella Melkert, “Abenteuer mit System. Der Hamburger Komponist Michael
Maierhof” MusikTexte 122 (2009), 29-38. On p. 37 she quotes Maierhof’s concern,
that “the eye may distract the ear”.
 From Cage to Walshe: Music as Theatre 133

end of the piece is also indicated on the screen, when shortly before the
lights are switched on the name of the composers’ collective “stock11”
forming the performance ensemble and then the title Hygiene are projected
for a moment. Thus the “film”12 gives the temporal frame for the actions of
the performers, which follow a precise schedule. This synchronization of
projection and action can be realized at several points in the course of the
piece, for example, precisely when the strings and the bottles are sounding
for the first time between 2’ 20’’ and 3’ 12’’, a still of a group of people
and some yellow and white items is projected, or throughout the whole
dark phase between 7’ 02’’ and 8’ 47’’, when the moving abstract images
of the first phase are repeated. The central dark part is accentuated in its
dividing function with the projection of the red bird pecking at the ground,
which is only visible at the beginning of this phase. All other projected
elements are repeated, at least in the form of short fade-ins during the last
phase of the piece, which otherwise is dominated by the motif of a toy
animal waving a magnifying glass, which isn’t repeated either, because it
appears for the first time at the end of the piece. The moving abstract
images, interrupted by the still described above, connect the first part
where they occur, with the second one by means of repetition. The iconic
image of the blue child appearing for a moment at the beginning of the
second part returns a few seconds before the beginning of the ultimate
dark phase. After this the moving toy robots of the central and the still of
the first dark phase are inserted for a short time. Hence, after the repetition
sequence of the abstract motifs the video events of the first part recur in a
way that suggests an evolution of the video material from the abstract
towards the figurative. The abstract motifs dominating the first part and
repeated in a block in the second part are now finally replaced by
figurative ones. Such figurative elements already occurred in the first part,
slid in between the abstract images reminiscent of Kandinsky in colour and
shape and then they dominated the central part.
These independent visual events are not only closely linked to the
actions of the performers, but also mark their temporal frame and are
synchronized with their chronological sequence. Thus the video projections
become a formative element of the performance. On the other hand they
are not in sync with the alternating phases of darkness and illumination,
with the exception of the central and the fourth dark phase. The

12
The video has been called a “new film” in the advertisement of the premiere of
Hygiene.
134 Chapter Seven

independent sequence of video projections is superimposed on the

sequence of alternating phases of darkness and illumination.
Similarly Walshe’s more recent composition, Watched over Lovingly
by Silent Machines premiered in Donaueschingen in October 2011, also
works as a superimposition of “tracks” or “parts”. Barbara Barthelmes puts
it as follows:

These tracks run parallel to each other, sometimes far apart and opposite,
sometimes they cross and at some points join. But for the listener and
viewer these autonomous “parts” of images, words, gestures and sounds
influence each other […] The closer they get, the more they make sparks
fly, meaning, message and narratives flash from their interface. The reason
is the narrativity of the picture detail.13

In Hygiene, however, the narrativity of the picture detail is only

rudimentary even after the shift from abstract images towards figurative
ones. In contrast to Watched over Lovingly by Silent Machines narration
doesn’t primarily take place in the projection “part”, but rather in the
action “part”, which turns out to be the connecting layer of the different
“tracks”.
The connection of the visual and the aural sequences of events by
means of the sequence of actions become apparent when we look at the
actions of the violinist and the violist. The two musicians, who are framing
the performance space by sitting on the far left- and right-hand sides, play
their instruments not only in the four phases where they produce audible
sounds, but also in the illuminated phases before their first, third and
fourth sounding. However, then they are moving their bows without
touching the strings of their instruments. This pantomimic playing of the
instruments brings the visual and the theatrical components of instrumental
playing to the forefront.

13
Barbara Barthelmes, “Geschichten im Kopf. Über Jennifer Walshes
Komposition Watched Over Lovingly by Silent Machines”, in: Positionen 91
(2012), 36 [author’s translation], German original: “Diese Spuren werden parallel
geführt, sind mal weit voneinander entfernt und entgegengesetzt, mal kreuzen und
verbinden sie sich punktuell. Doch für den Hörer und Betrachter wirken diese –
jede für sich autonomen – ‘Stimmen’ aus Bildern, Worten, Gesten und Klängen
aufeinander ein, [...] Je näher sie aneinander geraten, desto heftiger schlagen die
Funken, blitzt an den Naht- und Schnittstellen Sinn und Aussage, Narratives auf.
Grund dafür ist die Narrativität des Bildausschnitts.”
 From Cage to Walshe: Music as Theatre 135

This visual-theatrical aspect of instrumental playing comes into full

effect in the playing of the two pairs of performers framed by the
instrumentalists. They all produce different sounds from time to time, but
often they have to make silent actions. The two performers standing in the
centre have to make circles with their arms and do hip rotations, bend
down, swing their legs, make circles with their heads and bend their knees.
In between they are giving signals with fluorescent sticks. The two
performers at the back give fake flag signals with tufts of tinsel
reminiscent of cheerleaders’ pompoms14 and later take over the fluorescent
sticks.
The two performers sitting at the back of the table on the left-hand side
repeatedly start wrestling by gripping each other by the arms and stamping
with their feet. In addition, first the two performers sitting at the table in
front and finally the standing performers too check their pulse with their
right hands at their wrists or necks. All these actions together playfully
refer to the ideological context of the piece explicitly addressed by
Jennifer Walshe in the programme note of the premiere. The context is the
German discourse about public health and physical exercises (Volksgesundheit
and Leibesertüchtigung) in the nineteenth and at the beginning of the
twentieth centuries. The wrestling at the table as well as the flag signals
allude to the strong militaristic implications of this discourse.
These actions are repeated with variations in different phases of the
piece and are intensified towards the end. At 9’ 21’’ in the last illuminated
phase a whole series of wrestling matches starts at the table at the back on
the left-hand side continuing in rapid succession till the end of the piece.
The soundless talking repeatedly practised by the pair at the table in front
and the standing performers merges into seven start-ups of audible talking
in the last dark phase which increases to shouting. The text spoken can
scarcely be understood because the performers are reciting simultaneously
and shouting out different text-fragments at a breathtaking pace. Based on
a few comprehensible phrases the origin of the fragments can be identified
as an English translation of August Strindberg’s psychotic autobiographical
novel Inferno. The return of the same leaves no way out; the increasing
intensity makes this evident. Hygiene as “Volksgesundheit” leads to a
psychic “inferno” in the end.

14
This element too has been used and developed further by Walshe in Watched
Over Lovingly by Silent Machines by combining the flag signals with other
gestures in non-verbal communication. See Barthelmes, “Geschichten im Kopf”,
36.
136 Chapter Seven

Despite the incomprehensibility of the text, a theatre play with

comprehensible dramaturgy emerges in the performing space. The
incomprehensibility shows that the recitation is not primarily about
mediation of discursive contents, but about producing sounds of the same
status as the other sounds of the piece: the noises, string sounds, sounds
blown on the bottles. The drama doesn’t emerge from the discursive
meaning of the text, but from a composition based on a hybrid concept of
music.
Therefore I think that pieces like Hygiene or Watched over Lovingly by
Silent Machines go beyond the notion of “audiovisual composition”, with
which Barthelmes tries to grasp the essence of the latter piece:

In Watched Over Lovingly by Silent Machines multimedia composition has

been taken literally and does not mean the fusion of media, but a parallel
montage of different autonomous medial tracks—notes, noises, sounds
(produced with instruments, everyday objects, the body or the voice), film
sequences, gestures, text—into a radically polyphonic piece.15

It surely is not wrong to talk about radical polyphony in context with these
pieces, but it seems to me that in the notion of polyphony the primacy of
the aural is still resonating. As all elements, the aural, the visual and the
theatrical are equally treated as integral parts of the composition, we can
do justice to Hygiene as a piece of music only with a hybrid concept of
music, in which the aural isn’t privileged any more. This hybridity of the
concept of music furthermore shows that in Hygiene Jennifer Walshe goes
beyond both Cage’s implicit theatricality of 4’33’’ as well as beyond the
“aesthetics of the everyday” of Michael Maierhof. While Maierhof
researches the aural possibilities of everyday objects and then ennobles
them by transposing them into the conventional concert situation, Walshe
integrates them into a simultaneously aural and theatrical process, which is
generated by the composition. While Cage accepts only a minimum of
theatricality in 4’33’’ by insisting that the three movements of the piece
must be comprehensible for the audience, but rejects all that goes beyond
the reductionist theatricality of the now paradigmatic premiere given by

15
Ibid, 36 [author’s translation], German original: “In Watched Over Lovingly by
Silent Machines ist multimediale Komposition wörtlich genommen und meint nicht
die Verschmelzung der Medien, sondern die parallele Montage verschiedener,
autonomer medialer Spuren—der Töne, Geräusche, Klänge (ob von Instrumenten,
Alltagsobjekten, dem Körper oder der Stimme hervorgebracht), der
Filmsequenzen, der Gestik, des Textes—zu einem radikal polyphonen Stück.”
 From Cage to Walshe: Music as Theatre 137

David Tudor as additions to the composition, the explicitly theatrical

elements of Hygiene are integral parts of the composition. Music becomes
explicitly theatrical.
This explicit theatricality of the music is demonstrated and at the same
time made ironic at the point where in a clearly visible and, above all,
clearly audible, namely, rather noisy, way a bunch of sheets falls to the
ground. What looks like an accident, can also be read as an ironic allusion
to the piece with the suggestive title Leaves by Walshe’s former teacher
Michael Pisaro from 1997. There every single sheet of music has to fall to
the ground after the music notated on it has been played. The soft sound of
the sheets sinking to the ground like leaves is an integral part of this
composition. In Hygiene, however, the noise of the simultaneously falling
sheets is rather loud, and what is even more, the sheets fall to the ground
before what is notated on them, if anything, has been played. Nobody
cares about the incident, the actions continue like clockwork or better: like
a perfect production. Exactly this perfection is made ironic in the moment
when the sheets fall to the ground. But there are no hints for the
listener/viewer to decide whether this accident is part of a perfect
execution of the score or, as a real accident, a disruption of it. Hence,
despite the irony, the affirmation of the theatricality of music is not
withdrawn, but rather exhibited.
Hygiene like Schnebel‘s “visible music” draws our attention to the
significance of the visual components for the experience of music. These
visual components must not be regarded as accidental to music in
Schnebel’s view, but as integral components with their own aesthetic
values. The core of this concept of music has already been formulated by
Igor Stravinsky in his autobiography:

I have always had a horror of listening to music with my eyes shut, with
nothing for them to do. The sight of the gestures and movements of the
various parts of the body producing the music is fundamentally necessary
if it is to be grasped in all its fullness.16

Schnebel himself has not only described several times the theatrical
character of musical performance in concert, but has also attributed
aesthetic value to it. A note made after a performance of Boulez’s
Polzphonie X in Donaueschingen in 1951, shows how strongly the motoric
element is connected to the production of sound in this perspective:

16
Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography, (New York: Norton, 1962), 72.
138 Chapter Seven

The conductor flailed out unusual tempo changes. The exorbitant

difficulties of the instrumental parts created a game that somehow called to
mind difficult gymnastic exercises.17

Salzman and Desi read this note as an observation of the close proximity
of looking deadly serious and ridiculous in the field of avant-garde art
music and of an unintended theatricality:

[…] that breaks the concentration on sound by calling attention to the

earnest physical and visual exertions of the performers. Newer media, like
video and film, are probably best suited to the study of such performance
by-products18

Schnebel, however, doesn‘t regard the visual-motoric elements of music

performance as “by-products”, but as integral components of music. As
such they do not distract from the perception of the sound, but are
necessary elements of a holistic experience of music in the sense of
Stravinsky’s statement quoted above. Schnebel doesn’t obscure the comic
or at least the entertaining elements of the visual component of music
making,19 but the role of theatricality in music cannot be reduced to them.
But it is just these comical and gymnastic moments that are extended
by further layers of meaning by Jennifer Walshe in Hygiene. Interesting in
this regard is the observation of Salzman and Desi that the “gymnastic”
component decreases, when the performers and the audience get familiar
over time with the musical style in question. 20 They don’t explain this
phenomenon, but the reference not only to the performers, but also to the
audience, seems to imply that at least the “gymnastic exercises” are
performed partly for the audience in order to enable them to understand
new and unfamiliar music. According to this musicians apply enlarged

17
Matthias Rebstock and David Roesner, Editors, Composed Theatre. Aesthetics,
Practices, Processes, (Chicago: Intellect, 2012), 38.
18
Salzman, Desi, The New Music Theater, 150.
19
See his description of the theatricality of a performance of Rostropovich or the
pleasure of the observation of the first hammer blow and its preparation in the
finale of Mahler’s Symphony Nr. 6. Both texts quoted by: Volker Straebel, “Musik
gibt es nicht. Musik soll entstehen im Kopf des Zuschauers / Zuhörers. Dieter
Schnebels Instrumentales Theater” in Asja Jarzina, “Gestische Musik und
musikalische Gesten. Dieter Schnebels ‘visible music’ ”, Berlin: Weidler, 2005,
Anhang IV (= Körper, Zeichen, Kultur 14) and online on Straebel’s homepage:
accessed 5. 5. 2012, http://www.straebel.de/praxis/text/t-schnebel.htm.
20
See Salzman, Desi: The New Music Theater, 150, fn. 14.
 From Cage to Walshe: Music as Theatre 139

motor activities in order to give themselves and the audience an idea of

unfamiliar music. If this thesis is right, the gymnastic exercises in
Walshe’s Hygiene may also be read as an ironic comment on the enlarged
motor theatricality of performances of yet unfamiliar new music. Whereas
in Schnebel’s Nostalgie the actor is at least partly conducting, i.e., showing
music-specific motor activities, the players in Hygiene have to perform
movements usually applied as warm-up exercises in sports, or at least they
look like them. On the one hand, the piece highlights the similarities of
sports and professional music-making in regard to physical abilities and
demands which require specific training and warm-up on the part of the
musicians and the exposure to a certain risk of injury. On the other hand,
musicianship gets connected with Leibesertüchtigung and all its
ideological implications in the German context Jennifer Walshe refers to
in the programme note for Hygiene.
Hygiene is therefore to be regarded not only as a paradigmatic example
of a composition based on a hybrid concept of music that exhibits the
theatricality of musical performance. Premiered by German composers in
Germany and with the hint in the programme note, it is also a piece of
music theatre critically referring to the historical and ideological context of
German music. Critical reference to tradition is itself a genuine part of
both the works of Dieter Schnebel and Mauricio Kagel. Hence with
Hygiene Jennifer Walshe on the one hand continues and transcends the
Cagean version of theatricalisation of music, but on the other, and to a
greater extend, continues the German avant-garde tradition of music as
theatre.
Music on Stage
Edited by

Fiona Jane Schopf

Music on Stage

Edited by Fiona Jane Schopf

This book first published 2015

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2015 by Fiona Jane Schopf and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-7603-8

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7603-2
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ...................................................................................... x

List of Tables .............................................................................................. xi

Foreword ................................................................................................... xii

Acknowledgments .................................................................................... xiii

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Opera, the Musical and Performance Practice
Jane Schopf

Part I: Opera

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 8

Werktreue and Regieoper
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 28

Why Regieoper?: Katharina Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
as a Meta-production
Lufan Xu

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 46

Artemis, Agamemnon, and the Evolution of Wagner’s Wotan
Katherine Syer

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 66

Rimsky-Korsakov in a Changing Political Climate: Was the Composer
Politically Liberal or Radical?
John Nelson
viii Table of Contents

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 94

The Effects on Love and Friendship of Rehearsing the Creation of the
Impossible and Mysterious Sound: The Hunchback Variations Opera
John Green

Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 110

Stolen Fire: A Light on the Invisible Theatre of Nono’s Prometeo
Trevor Siemens

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 125

From Cage to Walshe: Music as Theatre
Karl Katschthaler

Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 140

Orpheus Among the Animals: Beastly Presence on the Opera Stage
Justin Grize

Part II: The Musical

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 158

Defining the Genre of The Cave by Steve Reich: Minimalist Musical
Theatre?
Maia Sigua

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 168

Juxtaposing the Dots: The Two Orders of Time in Sondheim’s
“Putting It Together”
Hei Yin Boris Wong

Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 184

Rediscovering Spanish Musical Theatre: Exploring an Intercultural
Adaptation of Copla
Alejandro Postigo

Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 198

Music On the TV Stage
Alicia Alvarez
 Music on Stage ix

Part III: Performance Practice

Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 216

A: The Suggestive; B: The Direct; C: The Altern: Towards a Tripartite
Model for Analysing Actor–Musicianship
Ben Macpherson

Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 230

Making Musgrave Dance: Actor-Musicianship in Process
Jeremy Harrison

Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 245

Musicianship Above All? New Perspectives on Training
towards Integrated Bel Canto Performance
Konstantinos Thomaidis

Contributors ............................................................................................. 253

Index ........................................................................................................ 258

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