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

Anger

Joy

Love Surprise

Fear

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 ownExternal sign- textThe 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 NotesMusical phrases

RestsMusical major minor

keysTempi directions

Mood directions

Musical form

WordsPhrases, sentences of

dialoguePausesTone (mood)Length and fluency of

the aboveDirections on how to

deliver a lineDramatic 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 sharpUse of exclamatives (!), Interrogatives (?), Imperatives ( commands..do this, do that),DeclarativesEllipsis ( ….)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

uses the fugue

form to pattern

temporal zones

rather than

voices

Butterfly Kiss by Phyllis Nagy

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

A dialogue between two stock characters

(from the Commedia Del Arte of Columbine and Pierrot)

Demonstrating ‘love’

B SECTION

A dialogue and 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 equally- disallowing 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 timesPresent 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

Vanessa.Dodd1@southwales.ac.uk