Understood as a form of human expression which both precedes and transcends language, the scream or cry suggests parallels with conceptions of music. Both have been interpreted as essential forms of human utterance that precede or exceed the ordered domain of linguistic signification. The development of highly codified musical conventions, however, aligns music with the structured systems of language and with beauty in ways which would seem to distance it from the scream’s raw, unstructured expression of affect
‘Music and the Aesthetics of the Scream in the New Viennese School’ will investigate the complex relationship between the scream and music in the work of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. As an extreme vocal gesture, the scream features explicitly in the operas and songs of Schoenberg and Berg, but the project will also consider a more figurative sense of the scream as a manifestation of the modernist desire to transcend reason, order, and the gloss of civilisation through music. That is, the limits and extremes of musical expression (a recurring feature of the vocal and instrumental music of these composers) can be productively related to the affective extreme of the scream as an utterance beyond expressive and communicative norms. By identifying the scream as a key, yet under-researched, feature of the aesthetics of the New Viennese School and situating it within the broader cultural climate of expressionism, the project will shed light on practices and ideas with important implications for modernist culture.
This project is located in the intersection between musicology, cultural history and aesthetics. The aim of the project is to demonstrate the importance of the scream (understood both literally and figuratively) to the musical aesthetics of the New Viennese School and to the broader aesthetics of expressionism. Methodologically, the study will draw on research from a number of pertinent disciplines (psychoanalysis, opera studies, sound studies and aesthetic theory) to assess philosophical and aesthetic conceptions of the scream. The project will also consider the intermedial dimension of the scream: as highlighted in psychoanalytic work of the period, the transformative potential of the scream was linked to the possibility of transcending boundaries between visual and auditory culture.
Taking Kundry’s scream in Wagner’s ‘Parsifal’ (1882) as a key point of departure, I will define the aesthetic features of the scream in the early twentieth century, specifically in musical theatre works such as Schoenberg’s ‘Erwartung’ (1909) and Berg’s ‘Wozzeck’ (1925) and ‘Lulu’. (1934). These works are closely linked to the Expressionist movement in music which Theodor Adorno paralleled with the aesthetic of the scream in literary arts. I will examine the influence of late nineteenth century aesthetic and philosophical conceptions of the scream, as utilised by writers such as Georg Büchner (‘Woyzeck’, ‘Lenz’) and in visual culture by works such as Edvard Munch’s ‘Der Schrei der Natur’ (1893-1910) from a musicological perspective against the Viennese context of a culture that turned increasingly to aural experience over visual representation as a means of transcending everyday reality and unmasking the veneer of society. I will argue that the trans-medial nature of New Viennese aesthetic of the scream was key to the lasting resonance of this aesthetic throughout twentieth century music and culture
The ideas of key critical theorists will be applied to establish an aesthetics of the scream and a philosophy of what screaming might mean in the artistic practice of the New Viennese composers. Specifically, I will engage with the writings of Antonin Artaud as set out in 'The Theatre and Its Double' (1938), which proposes a new style of theatre that would introduce a physical language of gesture. Artaud’s desire to escape the confines of a reality defined by linguistic parameters evolved into a desire for complete physical transformation, one which could be achieved through the “projection of imageries of the human body with sound alone” (Barber,1999). The application of Artaud’s aesthetic theories to music offers a promising means of exploring the scream as a transformative and intermedial device. Other key theoretic models include Sigmund Freud (the cry and the psyche in 'Studies on Hysteria', 1895), Arthur Schopenhauer (utterance and the will in 'The World as Will and Representation', 1818) and Friedrich Nietzsche (the scream, dissonance and language in 'The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music', 1872)
The aesthetics of the scream in vocal, instrumental, and audio-visual contexts highlights the fundamental relationship between the scream and the human body. The consideration of the scream as a symptom of the Artaudian desire to escape the structures of the body, in conjunction with the modernist desire to escape the structures of language and civilisation, offers new perspectives on the scream as a manifestation of the modernist desire to represent the body in extremis or as grotesque, all within a culture that turned increasingly to aural experience over visual representation as a means of transcending everyday reality and unmasking the veneer of society
Huh?
I want to know how language, screaming and music are related. If, like that annoying facebook page says 'Where words fail, music speaks', why do composers feel the need to ask their performers to scream? Is there something that notated music cannot say? Is it even possible to draw a line between screaming and music? Is the notation the problem?
I am interested in extremes of expression.
I am interested in the voice.
I am interested in words and music.
I am interested in screaming.
Musical Modernism is a good starting point for me because composers (and artists in other fields) are actively thinking and composing with these themes in mind.
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