Music Monday - The Bassarids

The Bassarids

Music Drama in One Act by Hans Werner Henze

Berlin 

On a recent brief visit to Berlin we wanted to see at least one piece of theatre and hear some music. In the end we got both on one ticket at The Bassarids; ironically at the Komische Oper, (ironic since there was nothing comic about what we saw). However, what we did experience was a powerful piece of opera, and along the way made some interesting observations about the differences between our theatre-going experiences in Australia and our night out in Berlin.

The Bassarids was written in 1966 by Hans Werner Henze with libretto by WH Auden and Chester Kallman. It is inspired by Euripides’s “The Bacchae” and it is sing in English (with that very rounded form of the language often heard in opera.)

This production has been directed by Barrie Kosky.

It is a complex and gruesome story concerning the conflict between Pentheus, newly appointed king of Thebes, and the god Dionysus;  and Pentheus’s subsequent murder at the hands of Dionysus’s intoxicated followers (including Pentheus’s mother, Agave). These intoxicated followers of Dionysus are the Bassarids. It has been described as a drama of extremes.

We were lucky enough to get reasonably priced tickets on the day of the performance. Our seats were in a centrally placed box in the part of the theatre we would call the dress circle. We assumed that ticket sales were not going well and were therefore surprised to find the theatre almost full.

The performance ran for 2.5 hours without interval. Would an Australian audience cope with that?

We counted over 60 musicians, both in the orchestra itself and in other parts of the theatre and on stage. Would any Australian theatre budget cope with this?

The chorus numbered more than 100 – with the majority involved in movement on a heavily raked stage. Quite a physical and vocal challenge. And again, an indication of a healthy budget.

The soloists were of a very high order indeed, both vocally and as actors.

The music is compelling, moving between moments of  heart-wrenching lyricism and moments of spiky drama. 

The final scene builds to a blood-soaked and horrific ending. The blood on the stage floor was discretely covered by a black mat before the bows started.

The bows went pretty much as we do here in Australia – but what we had forgotten was that in Germany, once the bows have finished and the audience keeps on applauding, they start right over again and take the bows’ sequence from start to finish once more. Only then do they move to whole company bows until the rapturous applause subsides. 

As we moved out towards the foyer after an amazing night, there was one more surprise. Huge platters piled high with little single chocolate truffle boxes. And here’s the thing – in order to open the box and get to the yummy German chocolate inside, you pretty much had to read the company’s contact and social media details. Brilliant!

Professional theatre is alive and well in Berlin.

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Media Term Thursday #28

Intellectual property

A product of the intellect that is intangible such as ideas, patents, business methods, songs, literature, graphic designs or other artistic works that might have commercial value. These ideas need to be legally registered so that the originator gets financial and personal recognition.”

Excerpt from Media Key Terms and Concepts. Continue the conversation on facebook and twitter.

Drama Term Tuesday #28

Expressionist Theatre

Expressionism

A 20th Century theatre movement that seeks to show inner psychological reality through the distortion of scenery, lighting, costuming and acting styles; key playwrights include Strindberg and Wederkind; major influence on design and conceptualisation of silent films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

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Music Monday - Remembrance Day

Today in Australia it was Remembrance Day. 

At the 11th hour of the 11th month the whole country stops for a minute’s silence to honour and remember those who lost their lives in war. Red poppies are worn on this day. 

It is also customary to have a bugler play The Last Post before the minute’s silence and Reveille at the end. Both pieces are heavily based on the intervals of the perfect 4th and 5th – intervals which are notoriously challenging to sing exactly in tune.

It happened that today I was working at my school and so, along with the whole school population, joined the short memorial at 11am.

As at previous Remembrance Day services I was again struck by how very silent the students are on this day. It is a different kind of silence than an ordinary school assembly silence – a complete silence. A respectful silence.

 And then out of this pristine silence comes the bugle playing the Last Post - the repeated upward 5th - with a pause on the 5th each time. The minute’s silence follows. Then again out of complete silence comes Reveille – more upward fifths then an upward 4th. The focus of the whole crowd is on those sounds. There is no background noise. Then the Remembrance service is over for this year. We return to class.

My year 9 group are identified as gifted and talented in music theatre but they are mixed ability in aural and music skills. Interestingly, today all the students can sing the Last Post back to me with correctly centred pitch. And yet when we encounter the same intervals within their song repertoire, they are no longer all exactly in tune.

Why is this so? They hear the Last Post only once per year. Is it the iconic nature of the annual memorial which imprints itself in them? Is it because it is one of the few times in a year that they listen to a single line of sound with no background noise whatsoever?

How can we transfer this learning to other aspects of their musical education?

Media Term Thursday #27

Uses and Gratifications Theory

This suggests that audiences have power over their media consumption due to them being active participants who will only seek out and consume those media that they find useful and which gratify their needs. These needs, from entertainment, information, news, education, are many and varied and the media ‘supplier’ needs to follow the needs of the ‘consumer’ or they won’t ‘buy’ the product.

This is why ratings are important to media institutions – if a television program doesn’t rate or a movie doesn’t rate at the box office, the institution loses money. Therefore, media producers spent vast amounts of money on audience research, demographics and surveys to give the self-aware audience what they want.

Excerpt from Media Key Terms and Concepts. Join the conversation on facebook and twitter.

Drama Term Tuesday #27

Low comedy acting

Physical rather than intellectual comedy; in Greek drama, Old Comedy is most often characterised as low comedy; low comedy typically features drunkenness, disputes and quarreling, infidelity, vulgarity, coarseness and ribaldry, gossip and character assassination, stock characters and slapstick and trickery.

Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts.

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Music Monday - aus Deutschland!

At the recent World Alliance for Arts Education conference in Frankfurt I was chatting over dinner with a friend from Helsinki. Tinti works in music with dementia patients in a care facility. 

Tinti was telling me that many of her clients can no longer use spoken language but when she plays the songs from their youth on her piano accordion, they all respond in some way -and many of them sing the words – words which they can no longer use in speech.

Why is this so?

A quick google search suggests that the key brain areas linked to musical and emotional memory are relatively undamaged by the disease.

A Stanford University study on the effect of music therapy on older adults found that rhythmic music stimulates certain areas of the brain to increase blood flow. Seniors could improve their scores on cognitive tests by taking part in music activities.

This had me musing:

1. For dementia patients to be stimulated by musical memory they must have had songs in their past with which to identify. It is important to sing!

2. With all of the research on the importance of beat and rhythm in early music education – wouldn’t it be interesting to set up a lifetime research project where children were tracked musically and cognitively throughout life?

All arts education is vitally important to maintaining healthy societies; but when it comes to brain health it would appear that music is the most important!

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Media Term Thursday #26

Thriller

A film genre that uses action and suspense and is frequently related to the crime genre. The narrative concentrates on mystery and suspense to build tension and keep the audience engaged (on the edge of their seats).

The film maker utilises presence beyond the frame to create the horror in the mind of the viewer rather than explicit images.

Jaws (1975), Rear Window (1954).”

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Drama Term Tuesday #26

Fable

A deceptively simple telling of a story that contains the key concepts, ideas or values of a dramatic text; often metaphoric or allegorical.

The term was used by Brecht as part of the critical and analytical processing of plot in developing and rehearsing drama.

Articulating the fable of a piece is a useful writing and rehearsal discipline enabling actors and directors to identify and distill the essence of a dramatic text.

A fable is also used in literature to describe a short tale with a moral, a story about supernatural or extraordinary events and people, a legend or myth.

Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts.

Music Musing Monday - What is it about the taas and titis?

For many years I have enjoyed asking people about what, if anything, they remember of their primary school music education. Each year I pose this question to the class of 1st year acting students I teach at WAAPA. And when running workshops for primary classroom teachers over the years, I have always posed it to them as well.

For many of my generation in Western Australia, the only school music education was the weekly ABC singing broadcast to schools. On Friday mornings at around 11.30am the crackly classroom wireless set was cranked into action to deliver the song to be taught that week. My classmates would sigh and then drag themselves into reluctant submission to the alien classical songs being offered for their musical education. By contrast I always enjoyed – or pretended to enjoy - the broadcasts, but then I was already learning piano from my grandmother and listening to my mother practise art songs and German Lieder for her next ABC broadcast. I suspect I was a young musical upstart.

In the 1980s the Education Department in Western Australia introduced music specialist teaching into primary schools. It was a political decision to support the teachers’ union demand for DOTT (duties other than teaching) time for classroom teachers. To support the appointment of so many specialist teachers (many of whom had had limited actual specialisation in music themselves), the department developed music syllabus materials to support them. “Music In Schools” was developed, based on the Kodaly approach to music education, and on the work of Deanna Hoermann in NSW. Deanna was one of Australia’s pioneers in bringing the Kodaly approach into an Australian context.

So back to my original question. Many of the students and fellow teachers I have worked with over the past 20 years were educated post-1980s  - and in the Kodaly approach (which emphasizes solfa and time names and a methodical approach to intervals through singing.)

The taas and titis are the very first, basic rhythmic steps of this approach – closely followed by tika -tika, timka, etc. And paralleled by the learning of simple melodic intervals such as the falling minor third. It is a sequential program of learning.

Yet it is those first two rhythmic patterns that are remembered best  - both as sound and symbol – along with anecdotes about marking the rhythms with claves, making rhythmic patterns by making the symbol shapes with pop sticks and so on.

Is this another example of our fundamental human instinct for beat and rhythm? Or is it simply that beat and rhythm are less complex to teach than melody, so therefore more students Australia-wide have been exposed to the taas and titis?

What was your experience?