Download Time and the Dramatic Narrative

How emotions are conveyed through the (play)text
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
Emotions
 Love
Anger
Joy
 Fear
Surprise
 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 own
 External sign- text
 The 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.
Comparing music and text
whereby music in its movements and character becomes an
analogue for the emotions and thus a signifier for emotional
states.
 Musical Notes
 Words
 Musical phrases
 Phrases, sentences of
 Rests

 Musical major minor keys

 Tempi directions

 Mood directions
 Musical form


dialogue
Pauses
Tone (mood)
Length and fluency of the
above
Directions on how to
deliver a line
Dramatic 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 sharp
 Use of exclamatives (!),
 Interrogatives (?),
 Imperatives ( commands..do this, do that),
 Declaratives
 Ellipsis ( ….)
 Emphasis (EMPHASIS)
 See play example Chips with Everything by Arnold Wesker
Aria Da Capo by Edith Vincent
St. Milay
Disappeared by Phyllis Nagy
 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
Butterfly Kiss by
Phyllis Nagy uses
the fugue form to
pattern temporal
zones rather than
voices
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
 ARIA means song
 DA CAPO go back to the beginning
(Sonata Means Sounded)
A Exposition- introduces main themes
B Development of these themes
A Recapitulation of exposition
 A SECTION
 B SECTION
 A dialogue between
 A dialogue and
two stock characters
 (from the Commedia
Del Arte of
Columbine and
Pierrot)
 Demonstrating ‘love’
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 equallydisallowing 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 times
Present 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.

Thank You
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