Dissertation Index
Author: Paley, Elizabeth S. Title: Narratives of 'Incidental' Music in German Romantic Theater Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison Begun: January 1995 Completed: July 1998 Abstract: Because incidental music by definition is not omnipresent within drama (in contrast to music in opera), moments when music intrudes into a play necessarily arouse attention. From purely instrumental overtures and entr'actes to songs and the accompanied declamation of melodrama, incidental music occasions diverse interactions between dramatic and musical narratives. When listeners combine music with verbal texts (programs, poems, plays, a composer's verbal reference to a composition, an analytical narrative such as "sonata form," etc.), they enable it to be read as narrating, as foreshadowing and recalling events of the text and providing musical commentary on it. More importantly, the synergistic whole, the music-plus-text, often points to compelling secret narratives hidden behind those suggested by the text or music alone. A set of Zwischenreden--incidental texts--published in 1821 to accompany concert performances of Beethoven's Egmont-Musik provides the touchstone for Chapter 1, which draws on Der rida's logic of the supplement to argue not only that music supplements narrative, but also that narrative supplements music. In Chapters 2-4, theories of narrative in music, literature, and film inform detailed analyses of Goethe's/Beethoven's Egmont, Shakespeare's/Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Byron's/Schumann's Manfred. These diverse musicodramatic works reflect a flourishing theoretical and practical interest in incidental music in Germany during the first half of the nineteenth century. The analyses reveal a mutual supplementarity between music and narrative, demonstrating that incidental music is rarely "incidental." Keywords: incidental music, narrative, Egmont, Midsummer Night's Dream, Sommernachtstraum, Manfred, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann TOC: Chapter 1. Zwischenreden for Zwischenakte: Incidental Narratives of Incidental Music I. The Mutual Supplementarity of Music and Narrative II. Narrating and Narrativizing III. Carolyn Abbate's Unsung Voices IV. Lawrence Kramer's Musical Narratology V. Music Supplementing Music VI. Incidental Narratives, Incidental Music Chapter 2. Past, Presence, and Future: Musical Narratives in Beethoven's Egmont I. Overture II. What Every Drama Requires III. The Best of Both Worlds: the First Egmont Entr'acte IV. The Second Egmont Entr'acte and Narratives of Musical Absence V. Musical Endings and Death VI. Bodily Music and Disembodied Codas VII. The End, Again Chapter 3. Musical and Dramatic Framing in Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream I. The Frame II. Music Framing Music: or, How to Get into Fairyland III. The Story Within the Frame IV. "Music, Such as Charmeth Sleep!": Breaching the Dramatic Frame V. "If We Offend, It Is With Our Good Will": Musical Frame Parodies Chapter 4. "The Voice Which Was My Music": Nonnarrative Musical Discourse in Schumann's Manfred I. Melodrama and the Supernatural II. Astarte III. Hearing Silence IV. Typologies of Discourse V. Modes of Musical Discourse in Manfred VI. The Consequences VII. Does Narrative Trump All? Analyzing the Overture a. Measure One b. Measures 95-109 VIII. Coda Contact: Elizabeth S. Paley Department of Music and Dance 452 Murphy Hall University of Kansas Lawrence, KS 66045 espaley@falcon.cc.ukans.edu (785) 864-9757 |