Abstract
This study suggests that the pedagogy of music history for the professional training of musicians –including opera singers and future opera composers – could benefit from applying narratologyto operatic analysis and acknowledging the “operatic of opera” in the organization of the artisticmaterials as one possible pedagogical approach. By breaking with the canonized forms of musichistory pedagogy, the subject content of opera history can be explored for instance through thearchitecture of temporal narrativization, as made possible by the multiple media types incorporatedinto opera. The study demonstrates this temporal narrativization through examples grouped into threemain categories: “temporal sameness”, “temporal incongruence” and “non-linear temporality”. Whilemost of the examples are drawn from the classical-romantic repertoire, the analysis also shows thatnew pluri-medial ways of dealing with temporality and narration have been emerged in contemporaryopera. The study argues that by analyzing and illustrating the architecture of temporal narrativizationas one form of the “operatic of opera” in Western operatic practice, students will gain a betterunderstanding of the special nature of the pluri-medial nature of opera.
Highlights
Interest in Western opera as a topic of music history research has increased over the last twenty years, opera history pedagogy is still a relatively unexplored scholarlyLiisamaija Hautsalo and Heidi Westerlund field, as C
If existing music history text books reflect current teaching practices in conservatories, colleges and universities, opera is taught in the same way – or at least with similar perspectives as to what counts as knowledge – as other musical practices, a way which does not take into account the uniquely multi-artistic nature of opera
In this study we have introduced temporal narrativization as one possible way to approach opera history in a manner that differs from the typical canon-based approaches in music history pedagogy
Summary
Interest in Western opera as a topic of music history research has increased over the last twenty years, opera history pedagogy is still a relatively unexplored scholarly. Any analysis concentrating only on the musical construction, without recognizing language or the other media (theatrical dramaturgy, lighting, stage setting and other visual elements etc.) used in opera, narrows students’ use of analytical skills, limits how they may or may not experience opera as a multi-artistic art form, and even constrains their ability to connect operatic works to wider cultural frames, including their own lives In consideration of these starting points, our aim is to illustrate that the temporal narrativization in opera is produced through the plot – the linear, chronological forward movement and associated events of the work – but can be manipulated as a complex temporal multi-media construction. Merely listening to the music, or only following the musical score, cannot do justice to the artistic temporal architecture of the work, which is the product of the composer alone but rather the composer together with the artistic team
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