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In twelve essays, Contemporary Opera in Flux discusses a series of shifts that, taken together, have radically redefined the production and reception of opera. Focusing on productions involving late twentieth- and twenty-first century scores and libretti, the contributors draw on conversations with members of creative teams and studies of archival material, dipping into a historical record that remains in flux as composers, librettists, directors, and designers revisit existing work and create anew. The contributors to this volume push the boundaries of contemporary opera scholarship by examining works that disrupt operatic conventions; tackle sociopolitical issues such as drug trafficking, racial injustice, and cultural trauma; and advance underrepresented works by female, African-American, Asian, and avant-garde composers around the globe. Contemporary Opera in Flux bridges the gaps between expanding literature on opera, theater, new music, postmodern dramaturgy, and posthuman aesthetics, while also confronting larger questions of identity, representation, and narrative agency that are at the forefront of contemporary music scholarship. This collection of essays engages critically with the past out of a conviction that, amid general public perceptions of opera as anachronistic or elitist, contemporary opera has emerged as an artistic incubator for experimentation.
New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera is the first and only book that approaches the dramaturgy of contemporary opera from the unique perspectives of living practitioners (composers, librettists, directors, producers, singers, dramaturgs, and administrators) who provide valuable first-hand insight into the coming into being of an opera today. The edited collection captures the ethos of contemporary opera-making in the global context and serves as a timely intervention in addressing the array of heterogenous dramaturgical practices that go into making an opera today in an era of flux. The collection is split into four parts: Part I presents the new dramaturgical considerations that the field is currently exploring; Part II investigates the ways in which non-Western cultures and perspectives can and have been represented; Part III explores the roles of space, nature, and environment in contemporary opera; and finally, Part IV looks at the ways in which technology has intersected with the creation of contemporary opera. With perspectives from practitioners throughout, this collection is essential reading for advanced students, researchers, and scholars of contemporary opera, as well as practicing dramaturgs in this field.
"Cellar Door" is a spectacle stretching in time and space. As an exhibition, it is the most ambitious project of French artist Loris Gréaud so far, starting at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and continuing at the ICA London, conceived as musical in progress. As a book, it includes the project's synopsis and musical scores, thus serving as the libretto of this opera of a new genre.
Can you change the world through song? This appealing idea has long been the professed aim of singers who are part of choruses affiliated with the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA). Theses choruses first emerged in the 1970s, and grew out of a very American tradition of (often gender-segregated) choral singing that explicitly presents itself as a community-based activity. By taking a close look at these choruses and their mission, Heather MacLachlan unpacks the fascinating historical and cultural dynamics behind groups that seek to change society for the better by encouraging acceptance of LGBT-identified people and promoting diversity more generally. She characterizes their mission as “integrationist rather than liberationist” and zeroes in on the inherent tension between GALA’s progressive social goals and the fact that the music most often performed by GALA groups is deeply rooted in a fairly narrowly conceived tradition of art music that identifies as white, Euro-centric, and middle class--and that much of the membership identifies as white and middle class as well. Pundits often wax eloquent about the power of music, asserting that it can, in some positive way, change the world. Such statements often rest on an unexamined claim that music can and does foster social justice. Singing Out: GALA Choruses and Social Change tackles the premise underlying such claims, analyzing groups of amateur singers who are explicitly committed to an agenda of social justice.
Svetlana Boym writes a new genealogy of modernity, moving beyond older debates between modernism and postmodernism to focus on the intersection of art, architecture, technology, and philosophy in the early twenty-first century. Drawing on theories of Georg Simmel, Henri Bergson, Aby Warburg, and Jacques Derrida, Boym presents the off-modern as an eccentric, self-questioning, anti-authoritarian perspective with roots in the Russian avant-garde, now developed in surprising ways by contemporary artists, architects, and curators around the world. She illustrates the off-modern in discussions of (and with) figures as diverse as architect Rem Koolhaas, Albanian artist-turned-mayor Edi Rama, an art collective in Delhi, and the creator of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. Both a manifesto and a memoir, The Off-Modern often returns to themes of travel and immigration, exploring issues of diasporic intimacy and productive estrangement amid nostalgic landscapes of urban ruins.
Over three decades, Paul Griffiths's survey has remained the definitive study of music since the Second World War; this fully revised and updated edition re-establishes Modern Music and After as the preeminent introduction to the music of our time. The disruptions of the war, and the struggles of the ensuing peace, were reflected in the music of the time: in Pierre Boulez's radical reformation of compositional technique and in John Cage's development of zen music; in Milton Babbitt's settling of the serial system and in Dmitry Shostakovich's unsettling symphonies; in Karlheinz Stockhausen's development of electronic music and in Luigi Nono's pursuit of the universally human, in Iannis Xenakis's view of music as sounding mathematics and in Luciano Berio's consideration of it as language. The initiatives of these composers and their contemporaries opened prospects that haven't yet stopped unfolding. This constant expansion of musical thinking since 1945 has left us with no singular history of music; Griffiths's study accordingly follows several different paths, showing how and why they converge and diverge. This new edition of Modern Music and After discusses not only the music of the fifteen years that have passed since the previous edition, but also the recent explosion of scholarly interest in the latter half of the twentieth century. In particular, the book has been expanded to incorporate the variety of responses to the modernist impasse experienced by composers of the 1980s and 1990s. Griffiths then moves the book into the twenty-first century as he examines such highly influential composers as Helmut Lachenmann and Salvatore Sciarrino. For its breadth, wealth of detail, and characteristic wit and clarity, the third edition of Modern Music and After is required reading for the student and the enquiring listener.
Incompletion is an essential condition of cultural history, and particularly the idea of the fragment became a central element of Romantic art which continued being of high relevance to the various strands of modernist and contemporary aesthetics.
Modernism in music still arouses passions and is riven by controversies. Taking root in the early decades of the twentieth century, it achieved ideological dominance for almost three decades following the Second World War, before becoming the object of widespread critique in the last two decades of the century, both from critics and composers of a postmodern persuasion and from prominent scholars associated with the ‘new musicology’. Yet these critiques have failed to dampen its ongoing resilience. The picture of modernism has considerably broadened and diversified, and has remained a pivotal focus of debate well into the twenty-first century. This Research Companion does not seek to limit what musical modernism might be. At the same time, it resists any dilution of the term that would see its indiscriminate application to practically any and all music of a certain period. In addition to addressing issues already well established in modernist studies such as aesthetics, history, institutions, place, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, production and performance, communication technologies and the interface with postmodernism, this volume also explores topics that are less established; among them: modernism and affect, modernism and comedy, modernism versus the ‘contemporary’, and the crucial distinction between modernism in popular culture and a ‘popular modernism’, a modernism of the people. In doing so, this text seeks to define modernism in music by probing its margins as much as by restating its supposed essence.
Marvin Gaye Chetwynd is known for her anarchic performances that draw widely from both high and low cultural sources, such as 'Giotto' and 'Star Wars'. In the spring of 2014, Sadie Coles gallery in London played host to a show of Chetwynd's series of 'bat paintings' created in Tuscany whilst on a residency. These uncanny images feature rustic Italian landscapes swarming with bats. This artist's book is published on the occasion of the exhibition at Sadie Coles, London.