Musical Drama Research Articles

Let the Music Play: Live Music Fosters Collective Effervescence and Leads to Lasting Positive Outcomes.

This work examined the power of live music events to enhance wellbeing through collective effervescence (CE)-the sense of sacredness and connection felt when in large groups. Four studies (N = 789) using both university and community samples examined the relationship between live music events and CE and how this relationship contributes to positive, lasting outcomes. Results suggest that CE is highly related to positive outcomes associated with attending live music events. CE uniquely predicted meaning in life and enjoyment during the event above and beyond related constructs. Feeling CE was also related to greater meaning in life during the event and continued happiness a week after live music events. Further, CE mediated effects between various elements of live music events (e.g., parasocial bonds with the artist) and positive lasting outcomes. In summary, CE plays a key role in the lasting wellbeing that follows live music events.

Musical Play and Playworlds Create Meaning in Swedish School-Age Educare Centres: A Matter of Engagement, Empathy, Exploration and Embodiment

One of the tasks of Swedish school-age educare centres is to offer children the possibility of different aesthetic forms of expression, such as music and drama. Based on theories of play, music and improvisation, musical play is introduced in which the process itself and the desire to participate are in focus, with the intention of investigating children’s and teachers’ joint meaning-making during the sound exploration and creation of playworlds. From a staged action-focused method, joint play with different voice sounds, both in song and speech, is introduced along with sounds and rhythms from everyday things, such as plastic bags and chopsticks. During the musical play, a fictional character is introduced to create possible openings for voluntary participation and engagement. The results are presented in four scenes and focus on engagement, empathy, exploration, and embodiment. In the results, the participants’ meaning-making is described as action during the musical play and the creation of the playworld. This study is expected to generate a basis for the discussion on joint musical play and play pedagogy as a form of extended education pedagogy capable of creating an experience of emancipation and participation in encounters between children and teachers.

Application Analysis of Cello in Chinese Modern Original Musical Plays

Application Analysis of Cello in Chinese Modern Original Musical Plays

Il natal di Amore by Giulio Strozzi: interactions and echoes with the early modern literary and operatic world and Monteverdi

ABSTRACT As many scholars of early modern musical theatre certainly know, a careful perusal of literature not specifically meant for music may at times hold pleasant surprises for the discerning musical scholar. This may be particularly rewarding in the study of the first decades of Venetian opera, when librettists were often also active as novelists and/or playwrights and were in any case affiliated to or personally acquainted with members of the most outspoken literary academy of the early seventeenth century, the ‘Accademia degli Incogniti’, itself very closely involved in the establishment of public opera. Moreover, as several studies have shown, the conception and production of early opera libretti can be better understood if analysed within the context of contemporary purely literary works. And sometimes, as I will try to show here, a literary work, in this case a theatre play, may both have provided inspiration for as well as have been inspired by musical drama. As I hope to demonstrate, the implication of these musico-literary interconnections is the partial disclosure of a tight network of cultural products of the period and the significant role therein played by Claudio Monteverdi’s operas, not the least also in providing unconventional and alternative outlooks on gender and gender roles.

Music support for gender equality campaigns

Can music be a force for gender equality? With the development of time, people’s attention to gender equality has gradually increased, and many efforts have been made to change the various kinds of discrimination that have existed for a long time. What role does music play in these efforts? This thesis explores the role of music in promoting gender equality, gives examples of musicians and musical works that have had a significant impact on gender equality, and analyses how these examples have challenged and changed gender stereotypes. Through case studies and literature analysis, the paper also explores the role of music education in fostering gender equality awareness, analysing in-depth the various parts of the music industry from a number of perspectives, including creation, performance, advocacy and education. It is found that music not only reflects social change, but also positively contributes to the process of gender equality. These findings are intended to inform future research and practice and to promote the further development of the potential of music as a tool for social change.

Literary Stylistics Features in the Musical Drama NURBAYA by Indonesia Kaya

This study examines the literary stylistic features in NURBAYA, a contemporary Indonesian musical drama produced by Indonesia Kaya. Employing Leech and Short's (1981) framework, the research focuses on sound patterns and figures of speech, investigating how these elements enhance narrative cohesion and emotional impact while reflecting cultural values. Using qualitative content analysis, the study systematically categorizes and interprets stylistic features in conversation utterances and song lyrics. The analysis reveals a prevalence of sound patterns, particularly rhyme, which contributes to the musical's rhythmic quality and cohesion. Figures of speech, notably litotes, are employed to reflect cultural values of politeness and subtlety. For instance, the frequent use of litotes (found in 35% of character dialogues) underscores adherence to traditional norms, enhancing the play's cultural resonance. NURBAYA, as a bridge between traditional and contemporary Indonesian theatre, offers a unique lens for examining the evolution of literary style in performance art. This study demonstrates how specific literary devices enrich artistic expression and reinforce cultural themes in contemporary Indonesian theatre. These findings contribute to our understanding of the interplay between linguistics, literature, and cultural expression in performing arts, offering insights into how stylistic analysis can illuminate broader sociocultural dynamics in theatrical works.

An Analysis of Idiomatic Expressions found in The Lightning Thief Song Lyrics

The title of this study is An Analysis of Idiomatic Expressions Found In “The Lightning Thief (Original Cast Recording)” Song Lyrics. The objective of this study is to analyze the existence of idioms inside of an existing work of literature in the form of songs as part of a musical play and what does the idiom classified as, specifically what set them apart from each other and what pattern made them classified as one type through their semantic side. This study also includes an analysis of idiomatic expressions in the form of idiom references as it is considered part of the character’s personal touch as part of a story. Through a qualitative research method, the writer gathers and analyzes each idiom that exists based on listed idioms of the fourth edition of Oxford Dictionary of Idioms by John Ayto to separate them into 3 idiom classifications made by Cacciari & Glucksberg in 1991 to those are Compositional Opaque, Compositional Transparent, and Quasi Metaphorical. Each type is sometimes difficult to classify, possibly due to the existence of either phrasal verbs or individual words that have multiple meanings.

Towards a model of playful music learning for primary classrooms: recommendations based on a review of literature

Abstract Playful practices have been linked to increased motivation, engagement, learning and skill development. However, limited research has explored what playful music learning might look like for primary schools, and how teachers might incorporate a range of playful music practices within their classrooms. Our conceptual model for playful music learning amalgamates and builds upon previous philosophy, theory and research in the education and music education spheres. In doing so, it extends musical play across a continuum of ownership as has been proposed by Zosh et al. (2017) in the realm of playful learning more generally. Playful elements associated with the work of music education pedagogues Kodály and Kokas and other researchers in the field are outlined. Examples of musical games-play and guided musical play for primary classrooms are illustrated, and some recommendations are provided to support teachers in facilitating increasingly playful music learning.

Synchronization Functions of “Mickey-Mousing” in Animation Film Rhapsody Rabbit

Synchronization between visual animation and music has been widely known as mickey-mousing. Notable old animation films have used this particular technique to reinforce action with a musical flourish and convey a certain meaning. Furthermore, animation music is commonly based on popular music, such as The Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 in Rhapsody Rabbit. The music is utilized not just as a scoring aspect but to dictate every Bugs Bunny's action when playing the piano. This research aims to study the implementation of the mickey-mousing technique in Rhapsody Rabbit film. It uses a qualitative content analysis approach to analyze visual and aural aspects—primary data is sourced from the Rhapsody Rabbit film and the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 music sheet. Secondary data is collected from literature studies related to the topic. Data collection is conducted through observation, interview, and documentation study. The data is analyzed using Klaus Krippendorf's content analysis technique which divided into six steps. The result of this study is that the mickey-mousing technique is implemented through a combination of a fast pace of visual and musical play altogether. Animation adapts to several parts of the musical composition so that articulation, illustration, and accentuation occur as a function of the mickey-mousing technique.

Theorising with the mycelium in the commingled world of young children’s musical play

ABSTRACT Inspired by Sheldrake’s study of fungi [Sheldrake, M. 2020. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. London: Penguin Random House] and Barad’s idea of entanglement [Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press], this paper explores music play with young children and artists, a practice that resists adult-centric approaches. As an embedded researcher within an early years arts organisation, I play with a diffractive methodology to read through ideas of Froebel with posthuman writings. Using slow-motion viewing of a video extract of musical play the vibrant agency of materials and sound emerges in micro-moments of playful music-making. Theorising with the mycelium produces ideas of extravagance, music and sound understood as lively intra-active and wild. It communicates through, and within, living and non-living matter. This view of music asks for artists to ‘do’ and say less, watch more and hold the space for the bursting forth of ripe and ready musical expressions. Through this pedagogical approach, children and adults can experience a sense of becoming with music, with the world.

Features of the Genre and Style of the Historical and Heroic Opera “Jiang Jie”

Being internationally recognised and having received many state awards, the historical and heroic opera “Jiang Jie”, or “Sister Jiang”, is considered as one of the peaks of national Chinese music. The work is little studied in the Russian scientifi c literature. The music of the opera is based on Sichuan folk songs and their characteristic pentatonic mode, elements of Sichuan and other types of opera, including Beijing, Yu, Yue, Hang Tang, Yang Qin and others. The score includes spoken dialogue, mass and domestic scenes, as in folk Chinese drama, as well as vocal forms, choral and symphonic pieces, as in Western European opera, which gave “Sister Jiang” the features of the genre and style of modern Chinese opera in the Western European style. All this speaks of the development of the national musical theatre traditions in the conditions of a new musical language of the 20th century. The study of this process seems relevant in the context of the problem of preserving national identity in the musical art of China. The article presents the results of an analysis of the features of the genre and style of “Sister Jiang” as a historical and heroic opera in Chinese in the Western European style, which crowns one of the most fruitful periods in the development of modern Chinese musical drama.

Anatomy of a Song

Anatomy of a Song

OOO, Guerrilla metaphysics, and the allure of children’s musical play

ABSTRACT Inspired by Graham Harman’s philosophy of human access, and within the ‘flattening ontology’ of Object Oriented Ontology, Ring o’ Roses is speculated about as a finite object with ontological independence from humans, repertoire, song, utility, and cultural context. Ring o’ Roses playfully dances us through an introduction to OOO, and on to the idea of young children’s early musical play as something different from its qualities and benefits. Indeed, the reality of musical play can be speculated about as ontologically irreducible, and as having a weird and vast, yet fragile, interior which is announced by allure. Allure is composed of charm, courage, and humour, and is responsible for causation.

From Princess to Public University: The Augusta Sophia Collection of English Drama

ABSTRACT This article argues that a collection of English play-texts gathered by Princess Augusta Sophia of the United Kingdom (1768–1840), daughter of King George III (1738–1820) and Queen Charlotte (1744–1818), represents the royal family’s intergenerational tradition of women’s book collecting. Located today at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the collection comprises nearly eight hundred full texts of comedies, farces, and musical dramas, mostly from the long eighteenth century. Significantly, it reflects the royal family’s theatrical and book-collecting interests, particularly those of Queen Charlotte, who supervised the princess’s education and whose own books Augusta adopted after the monarch’s death. Tracing the library’s reorganization and movements toward a city named after the queen—Charlotte, North Carolina—this article additionally demonstrates how Augusta Sophia’s book-collecting legacy, and her mother’s, have been obscured by patrilineal libraries and academic research priorities, and also what steps might “reconstruct” her library for further inquiry.

Pages of Eugenie de Guerin’s “Diary” in the musical embodiment by Darius Milhaud

Statement of the problem. The vocal-instrumental cycle «D’un cahier inédit du journal d’Eugénie de Guérin» (“From the Unpublished Diary by Eugénie de Guérin”) op. 27 (1915) is a work by D. Milhaud that was composed when the composer was twenty-four years old. The literary source attracts attention for the fact that it was written not to demonstrate the literary talent of the poetess, but as a confession of the human soul. Currently, domestic musicology does not have significant experience in researching musical interpretations of works of this type, and the “Diary by Eugénie de Guérin” has never been translated into Ukrainian. The vocal-instrumental cycle of D. Milhaud, created on this poetic basis, has not been systematically analyzed. Therefore, the study of this little-known in Ukraine opus of one of the brightest composers of the “Group of Six” appears as an urgent research task. In addition, a detailed analysis of vocal and instrumental works of the era of modernism will contribute to a deeper immersion in the spiritual world of representatives of this artistic direction, as well as to the expansion of the modern performing repertoire. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to systematically analyze the composer’s interpretation of the “poems with music” included in the vocal-instrumental cycle by D. Milhaud. The scientific novelty of it is due to the fact that D. Milhaud’s vocalinstrumental cycle «D’un cahier inédit du journal d’Eugénie de Guérin» op. 27 has not been studied in detail in the national musicology. For the first time it was considered to find out what musical means of expression the composer used to convey the idea declared by the author’s remark «douloureusement» («painful»), which accompanies all the numbers of the work. The work set the task of revealing the specifics of the means of musical expressiveness used by the composer to embody the semantics of poetic images related to the feelings of physical and mental pain that D. Milhaud found in the poetic original source. In the study, for the first time, a linear Ukrainian translation of the verbal text of D. Milhaud’s cycle is provided. Historical and contextual, comparative, systematic and analytical research methods were used. Research results and conclusion. «D’un cahier inédit du journal d’Eugénie de Guérin» is associated with the feeling of pain and sadness, which accompanies all three numbers. Each poem with music gravitates toward a certain tonal sphere. The composer refers to an extended tonality. This principle emphasizes the coloristic function of the musical palette of the work. The cycle reveals a montage type of drama and laconicism of expression. The texture of the vocal-instrumental cycle is polyphonized, especially in the third number, which has fugato features. The harmony is saturated with such intervals as fourth, fifth and tritone. This is associated with images of devastation, pain, mental and physical suffering. The use of fifth that dominates in the musical texture of the work and it is the semantic grain, the key of the intonational dramaturgy, is also served this goal. The vocal part is declamatory and recitative, close to the type of psalmody, the rhythm is complex, directly oriented to poetic versification. D. Milhaud tends to use variable sizes, which is connected with the specific of Eugène de Guérin’s verse technique, The analysis of the musical drama revealed leitintonemes and symbols: the intonemas of the bell sounds, lullaby, destiny, sigh, wheel. The prospects for further research related to the study of D. Milhaud’s vocal and instrumental works of the mature period, comparative analysis with early examples of his work and identification of the peculiarities of the formation of an individual style by the composer.

A COLLECTION OF JAMBI TRADITIONAL GAMES AS A PROJECT-BASED LEARNING IN PLAYWRITING

The research departs from the rich collections contained in the Siginjei Museum, Jambi Province, where one of the collection groups is a variety of traditional children's games in Jambi Province. Based on this, the collection of traditional children's games at the Siginjei Museum, Jambi Province, was then used as a project source for the playwriting course at the Dance and Music Drama Arts Study Program at Jambi University. The research method applied in this research activity is qualitative research using observation and literature review techniques. The results obtained from research activities are in the form of drama scripts that were successfully created by students from the collection of traditional children's games at the Siginjei Museum, Jambi Province. The number of play scripts that were successfully created were four short children's play scripts entitled Ayu Congklak Dewi, Bedil Akbar (Meriam Bambu), Yang Lagi Viral (Gasingan Lampu), and Main Seru (Ketapel). The conclusion obtained is that the Project Based Learning learning model using the collection of traditional children's games at the Siginjei Museum, Jambi Province as a source of student project activities in creating play scripts has been successfully implemented to support the success of Play Writing courses.

Upaya Strategis dalam Meningkatkan Keterampilan Berseni Siswa Kelas Tinggi di SD Laboratorium UPI Cibiru

This study aims to examine how art activities in elementary school can affect students'' art skills. To answer this question, the author conducted test by organizing a musical drama performance for high school students at SD Laboratorium UPI Cibiru. The researcher used qualitative method with observation and journal review techniques used to process data from the test results that have been carried out. The results showed that there is an impact of art activities. The test results also revealed that students have access to channel their skills in art through the organized performance activities. However, the visible potential was not followed up by the school in developing it into a competency. From an arts perspective, this study emphasizes the access for students to channel and develop their skills in art. Keywords : Art, High Grade, Elementary School, Musical Drama And Skills

Age-appropriate adaptation of creativity tasks for infants aged 12–24 months

Creativity is an important skill that relates to innovation, problem-solving and artistic achievement. However, relatively little is known about the early development of creative potential in very young children, in part due to a paucity of tasks suitable for use during infancy. Current measures of creativity in early childhood include the Unusual Box Test, Torrance's Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM) task and the Toca Kitchen Monsters task. These tasks are designed for children aged above 12, 36 and 18 months respectively, but very few measures of creativity can be used for infants aged below 2. Accordingly, here we report age-appropriate adaptations of TCAM and Toca Kitchen Monsters tasks for infants as young as 12 to 24 months. Considerations taken into account include (1) infants’ cognitive capacities (i.e., attention span, language comprehension skills, motor skills, and approach to play), and (2) practicality of the stimuli, including suitability for use amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The modified creativity battery for infants includes three tasks: Music Play, Object Play and Exploratory Play tasks. The task protocols elaborated in this paper are intended to facilitate studies on the early development of creativity in infants aged between 12 and 24 months. Primary highlights include:•Age-appropriate adaptation of creativity tasks for use with infants aged between 12 and 24 months.•Consideration of infants’ cognitive capacities and stimulus practicality.•Innovative use of movement as expression of infants’ creative behaviour.

Disney’s Wagner Aesthetic: Music Drama in Pursuit of the Total Artwork

Aside from Walt Disney’s reputation for renegade avant-gardism, ‘sentimental modernism’ and subliterary Americana, the German composer Richard Wagner’s pursuit of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork) provides a coherent framework for interpreting the ‘music drama’ of the Disney studio’s Depression-era shorts of the 1930s and its feature films of the Golden Age (1937–1942). In citing Wagner and Adorno’s critique of him, the author argues that Disney follows Wagner in three key respects: (1) in his disavowal of the ‘work’ of art and corresponding objectification of Nature; (2) his espousal of technology and its ‘innovation’ as a means of attaining artistic perfection; and (3) his striving for a synaesthesia, or aesthetic unity of the senses, which would ultimately prove unsustainable given the commercial constraints of capitalist modernity.

MultiSensory Music Drama with a student with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities: A case study of teacher–researcher co‐production

AbstractThe feasibility of a pedagogical approach—MultiSensory Music Drama (MSMD)—was investigated in collaboration with a teacher and a student with severe/profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (S/PIMD). Educational research for this group of learners is scarce, but research has suggested the potential of integrating music and multisensory storytelling to promote interactive engagement. A case study using co‐production between a teacher and researchers was conducted. The development, implementation and evaluation of MSMD lessons were performed, by carrying out the lessons, iteratively refining them through stimulated recall interviews and ratings of student engagement. The long‐term feasibility was investigated through a post‐intervention survey and a follow‐up interview. Inductive content analysis was used for data analysis. In‐depth descriptions of the implementation process are provided. The teacher found the MSMD approach useful in relation to the syllabus and motivating for the student. She reported that she had continued to use MSMD with all of her students and that several of her colleagues had started to use it as well. Our results suggest that MSMD can be a meaningful approach for practitioners working with these learners. The study also reveals aspects of professional knowledge when working with students with S/PIMD.