Download Female Voices on the Stage: Case Studies from the 18th to the 21st

Female Voices on the Stage: Case Studies from the 18th to the 21st Century
In this lecture I will discuss the notion of the female voice with respect to contemporary
music. The female voice is a topic which has been often explored by gender studies: either in
studies on male and female voices in operas that can be linked to role models and gender
stereotypes or in studies dealing with the notion of the voice as an aesthetical concept.
Whereas the classical repertory has been quite well studied since the 1990s, contemporary
music, in comparison, still lacks scholarly attention as far as gender issues are concerned.
In the main section of the lecture, in order to explore the female voice as it is found in music
today, I will present the music of two Austrian female composers. By relating their positions
to poststructuralist feminist philosophy my aim is to demonstrate how the “female voice”
marks a standpoint that transgresses dualistic perspectives of male and female in order to
establish a multi-perspective plural view. Nevertheless this view can be called a feminist one:
for, it endangers power structures, hierarchies and thus predominantly male structures of
domination. In order to provide a historical background for my investigations, in an
introductory section, I will briefly present four examples of female voices on the stage dating
from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries respectively: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Figaro, The
Tales of Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach, George Bizet’s Carmen and Alban Berg’s Lulu.
Sublime Sounds: A Lecture on Music and Nature
Taking Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy of art and Jean François Lyotard’s aesthetics as its
point of departure, in this lecture I will explore the impact of the enlightenment on the
aesthetics of the musical avant-garde. According to Panajotis Kondylis’ famous definition,
enlightenment is understood as “plurality of attempts to define the relationship between
the spiritual and the sensual”. In the field of music, these attempts generate different
classification systems which provide specific interpretations of the relationship between law
and nature, rational structures and the sensual quality of sound.
As many commentators underscored - most prominently perhaps Wolfgang Welsch -,
Adorno’s and Lyotard’s aesthetics can be characterised as aesthetics of the sublime. Critical
questioning of enlightenment constitutes the basis of Adorno’s philosophy of music.
Lyotard’s aesthetics, which continues Kant’s and Adorno’s thought, is equally based on a
critical assessment of enlightenment. As I will explain in the lecture’s first section, both
philosophers are convinced that Western culture needs a profound reform that would
abolish man’s domination of nature.
In the lecture’s second section, in order to explore the ways in which we could relate the
philosophical ideas to the works of the musical avant-garde, I will compare three different
artistic interpretations of the relationship between the spiritual and the sensual: pieces by
Anton Webern, Iannis Xenakis, and Gerard Grisey. By studying the aesthetical conception
and the musical structures of each composition – such as dodecaphony in Webern,
stochastic and logical organisation, respectively, in Xenakis, and spectral analysis in Grisey – I
will explore how rational calculation and sensual perception complement each other in the
creative process.
Sound and Silence: A Lecture on Listening
Since the 1980s philosophers have been increasingly interested in the affinity of ethics and
aesthetics. As far as music is concerned, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony provides an example
of an ethical message transmitted artistically. The comprehension of the message, however,
depends mainly on the use of words. By taking Adorno’s and Lyotard’s aesthetics as its point
of departure, in this lecture I will explore the ways in which wordless music might comprise
an ethical dimension. The category which is at the centre of interest is again the sublime.
Reinterpreted by Adorno and Lyotard, it is no longer linked to inconceivable greatness, but
to a micrological perspective. Thus, silence becomes more and more important.
As I will explain in the lecture’s first section, the preoccupation with silence implies an
ethical dimension because it requires a novel attitude of both composers and listeners. In
the second section, I will present several works by composers as different as Anton Webern,
John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono and Brice Pauset, in order to explore, with the help of a
comparative view, if and to what degree such a novel attitude might characterise
composition today and, consequently, change our ways of listening.
Sounds against Barbarism? Opera after the Second World War
In his dissertation on opera after 1945, David Treffinger - today dramatic adviser at
Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich - focused on the tensions between contemporary production
and traditional operatic genres. In particular he criticised the growing intellectualisation and
its impact on the reception. Treffinger’s critique of contemporary opera is therefore also a
critique of musicology. In addition, it implies a critique of Critical Theory and its important
influence in post-war Germany, as far as the relations between art and society are concerned.
Taking Treffinger’s critique and the questions it raises as a point of departure, in this lecture I
will discuss two theatrical pieces by Hans Werner Henze: “The English Cat” and “The Young
Lord”. I will explore the ways in which a critique of society might be inherent in the works
and how this critique might be communicated to the audience with the help of music. A key
topic of Critical Theory, the tension between nature und civilisation, is in both pieces
represented by a confrontation of man and animal. It will be in the centre of my investigation.
The comparison of both pieces aims at illustrating similarities as well as differences, in order
to highlight each work’s individuality.