How emotions are conveyed through the (play)text
Dec 15, 2015
Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously by means of external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are affected by these feelings and also experience them.
(Leo Tolstoy What is Art London 1959).
That language is a symbolic sign system of sound, as is music
The sign of something is not the thing itself
Part of a larger study of the relationship between story telling and human consciousness
This paper, using theories of musical form, content and tone as a critical approach, looks at how an aspect of (waking) consciousness, namely emotional states are expressed through the written word in the contemporary play.
Whose emotional states?My ownExternal sign- textThe dramatic narrative (the play)How am I going to persuade you that
emotional states are expressed through the spoken word?
By 1) applying musical theories of emotional expression to text
2) Comparing those texts to musical scores
Comparison is a fundamental tool of analysis.
It sharpens our power of description, and plays a central role in concept-formation by bringing into focus suggestive similarities and contrasts among cases. Comparison is routinely used in testing hypotheses, and it can contribute to the inductive discovery of new hypotheses and to theory-building" (David Collier 1993, p.105)
ABSOLUTISTS maintain musical meaning lies exclusively in the context of the music itself, (in the perceptions of relationships within the musical work of art)
Hanslick, an absolutist concluded that emotions are not the subject matter which music is intended to illustrate.
That music’s aesthetic, its beauty is contingent on the absence of emotional representation, a Platonist position.
REFERENTIALISTS maintain that music also refers to extra musical world of concepts, actions, emotional states and character
May be either absolutists and/or referentialists
Both may see music as intra-referential, but not necessarily so:
The formalists say that meaning lies in the perception of music whilst the understanding of music lies in the relationships.
Expressionists may argue those relationships are capable of exciting feelings and emotions in the listener.
Thinking (meaning) and feeling ( emotion) are not diametrically opposed but part of a psychological process expressed through the art form, in this instance the word.
Share their emotional life with others, either consciously or unconsciously through their art.
‘Vocal music most accurately represents a definite feeling’ through its words and natural inflections, that emotion is in the text itself rather than the music.’
(Eduard Hanslick, 19th century German Bohemian music critic)
I would argue it is in the human voice, the instrument of the text , that the playwright writes for
primarily and the human body secondarily.
whereby music in its movements and character becomes an analogue for the emotions and thus a signifier for emotional states.
Musical NotesMusical phrases
RestsMusical major minor
keysTempi directions
Mood directions
Musical form
WordsPhrases, sentences of
dialoguePausesTone (mood)Length and fluency of
the aboveDirections on how to
deliver a lineDramatic form
can be implied by speed because of
correspondence between certain emotional states and their concomitant physical manifestation such as sadness, grief and a lugubrious slowness.
Music -controlled by directions and length of notes Words governing speed in music are in Italian or German
directions-largo (broadly), moderato (moderately) presto (very fast), but also in the notes minums being longer than crochets which are longer than quavers which are longer than semi quavers
Example 1-Chopin Premier Ballade in G minor Opus 23
Text-controlled by directions and also by sentence length
Example 2 John Guare The House of Blue Leaves (1971) Act 1. ARTIE
Example 3 Sarah Kane Psychosis 4.48 Example 4 Samuel BeckettAll That Fall
‘forceful, weak, strong, languid, agitated, restless, calm, excited, quiet, indecisive, graceful, awkward, clumsy, angrily, trippingly and fluent’
can be ascribed to how a piece of music should be played or how a piece of text should be delivered.
Length of sentences, short sharpUse of exclamatives (!), Interrogatives (?), Imperatives ( commands..do this, do that),DeclarativesEllipsis ( ….)Emphasis (EMPHASIS)
See play example Chips with Everything by Arnold Wesker
Fugue= a patterning of three or four distinct voices or characters
[Monteverdi famously divided his fugue into 16 voices]
The Art of Fugue Bach Contrapunctus 9
Pyschosis 4.48 by Sarah Kane subverts the fugue form by having several indistinct voices mimicking the disorder ‘in her head’.
Butterfly Kiss by
Phyllis Nagy
uses the fugue
form to pattern
temporal zones
rather than
voices
Butterfly Kiss by Phyllis Nagy
Present cont. Time past 1. Merged time Time past 2 Merged time Time past 1 Present cont. Time past 1 Recent past Merged time Time past 3 Time past 4 Time past 2 Present cont. Time past 5 Present cont. Time past 6 Present cont. Merged time
(Sonata Means Sounded)
A Exposition- introduces main themes B Development of these themes A Recapitulation of exposition
A SECTION
A dialogue between two stock characters
(from the Commedia Del Arte of Columbine and Pierrot)
Demonstrating ‘love’
B SECTION
A dialogue and interplay between two other stock characters
Two shepherds Demonstrating
‘conflict’
Sarah Casey is a 25-year old travel agent who's never been outside of New York. When she goes missing after leaving a seedy bar in Hell's Kitchen, the last person to see her was a man who works in a thrift store and dresses in his client's clothes, assuming different identities. Was Sarah killed or did she merely 'disappear' to escape her anonymous existence?
Uses the twelve tone system of Arnold Schoenberg where all the 12 notes of the chromatic scale arranged in tone rows are sounded more or less equally- disallowing the establishment of a ‘key’.
Sarah Jack Elston Jack Ted Ellen Sarah
Elston Elston Natalie Jack Ellen Ted Timothy Anthony Sarah Ellen Elston Ted Timothy Natalie Ted Anthony Ellen Elston Natalie Jack Timothy Elston Ted Sarah Jack
Oscillates around the Sunday evening in real time, Sarah disappears-opens and closes with this scene
Various times preceding and following that evening past and future timesPresent continuous real time of the detective investigating the case
Settings- various related to Sarah’s past-a bar, a travel agency, her mother’s home. A nowhere land when the detective addresses the audience
ACT ONE-the dissappearance Sunday evening After 1 After 2 Before 1
Early Sunday evening After 1 Before 2 After 3 ACT TWO-the investigation Interview room outside interview room Ellen’s apartment police station bar thrift
shop Ends with second half of Sunday evening
In all these theories, all aspects and elements of music – Structure, descriptive terms of how to play a piece of music, its
melody, pitch, relationships between the notes, phrasing, musical motifs have their equivalents in the play and all can be deemed responsible for communication of the emotions in some way.
If we accept that these elements work together to create a piece of music, then perhaps we can safely conclude that emotions are integral to the fabric of organised sound and help illuminate how emotions are expressed through text, with the additional benefit of being meaningful and representative of thoughts as well.
Feelings deemed resistant to representation in music such as sadness, hope, cheerfulness, piety, religious fervour, love, joy, grief and longing, are effortlessly represented in the dramatic narrative as directions for character action and response.