Shakespeare's dramatic method as a guide for radio writers today

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

"What A 'Thump' Means: Morton Feldman's Treatments of Samuel Beckett's Texts" and "This Report Must Be Signed By Your Parents" for orchestra

Samuel Beckett provided the text for Morton Feldman’s “opera,” neither, in which the lack of characters, setting, definite plot or apparent musical development raises the question of whether such a piece can be considered “dramatic.” Feldman later collaborated with Beckett again on a very different project – composing the musical portion of a radio play, Words and Music, in which “Music” is a character, interacting with the other characters through musical “speeches.” While quite different in format from neither, there are not only stylistic similarities between the two works, but significant overlapping in techniques between Beckett and Feldman. Furthermore, the musical character in the radio play raises interesting questions about the possibility of reinterpreting drama in neither. In this paper I analyze both the Beckett/Feldman version of Words and Music and neither; I also compare techniques and philosophies of Beckett and Feldman to better understand the paradoxical nature of these collaborations. The orchestra piece This Report Must Be Signed By Your Parents represents a personal evolution of style over several years. Both movements attempt to explore the aural space of the orchestra, each employing a different strategy for doing so. The movements are subtitled with areas marked as “needs improvement” on an old report card of mine from kindergarten – an ironic gesture at the long-anticipated conclusion of my formal education

Performance Anxiety: Copyright Embodied and Disembodied

The primary economic and cultural significance of copyright today comes from works and rights that weren’t contemplated by the Framers of the Constitution’s Copyright Clause. Performance—both as protected work and as right—is where much of copyright’s expansion has had its greatest impact, as new technologies have made it possible to fix performances in records and films and as cultural change has propelled recorded music and audiovisual works to the forefront of the copyright industries. Yet copyright has never fully conceptualized performance, and this has led to persistent confusion about what copyright protects. One key problem of performance from copyright’s perspective is how to identify the creative elements that make a work of performance original and protectable, as distinguished from elements that make it a work (a fixed artifact). A major variant of this question involves authorship: who is sufficiently responsible for a work of performance to be deemed its author, and thus its default owner? In a world where works require dozens and even hundreds of people to complete them, this question will often be difficult to answer while both respecting creativity and recognizing economic imperatives. Another set of questions involves whether there are ways to recognize performers’ creative contributions without contributing to copyright’s bloat, and how to assess claims of infringement in a performance context when the alleged copying isn’t exact. This article addresses these puzzles of performance, arguing that manageability rather than creativity is generally the basis for the rights allocations and distinctions copyright law makes. The recent controversy over the film Innocence of Muslims, along with other instances in which subjects of audiovisual works claimed copyright in those works, demonstrate the limited role played by creativity in copyright law

A Critical Study and Analysis on theory and practices in Cinematic adaptation

When communicating a message to a listener or reader whose mother tongue is not the same as our own, especially when that person does not even understand the language, we must use different ways or methods to get the message across as clearly as possible. While we can use gestures, signs, or noises in order to make ourselves understood, when communicating something written, we must turn to translators. One of the tools used in translation is adaptation. It is used in many cases, as cultural differences between different speakers can cause confusion that can sometimes be tricky to understand or simply prevent us from understanding each other. This paper will analyse and will discuss the paradox in the theory of adaptation

"On the knowledge necessary for one who wishes to recite well in the theatre" the rhetorical tradition of delivery and the performance practice of recitativo semplice in eighteenth-century dramma per musica

Recitative is so integral an element of eighteenth-century opera that without understanding it we cannot hope to understand the genre as a whole. Yet the notation of recitativo semplice leaves so much to the discretion of the performers that it, in turn, cannot be understood without making sense of its performance practice. The aim of this study is therefore to contribute to reconstructing a theoretical and practical basis for that performance practice, and in particular, for the unnotated aspects of recitative for which it is otherwise almost impossible to account. Following Giambattista Mancini’s advice to singers in his Riflessioni Pratiche sul Canto Figurato (1777) to “listen to the speech of a good orator” as a model for recitative delivery, I argue that the “rules of perfect declamation” followed by orators were those dictated by the discipline of rhetoric, and that the rhetorical paradigm of delivery thus represents a model for recitative performance practice. Chapter 1 outlines the scope of the study and its principal sources. The following chapters examine the implications of the rhetorical understanding of delivery for the performance of recitativo semplice. In Chapter 2, the case is made that the rhetorical principles of delivery did apply to musical recitation as much as to spoken declamation. Some consideration is also given to the ways in which this body of knowledge and its corresponding skills in vocal delivery may have been acquired by Italian singers. The nature and purpose of delivery as it was understood in the rhetorical tradition forms the subject of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 discusses its principles as they apply to musical declamation in recitative, under the headings of Quintilian’s “virtues of delivery”. These are shown to be consistent themes, even when they were not named as such, in early modern theatre and singing treatises as well as in writing about rhetoric. In Chapters 5 and 6, these prin ciples, and in particular the overriding virtue of decorum o! r “appropriateness”, are applied to the musical parameters of vocal delivery in recitative: rhythm, timbre, dynamic and pitch. The rhetorical paradigm of delivery is shown to cast valuable light on the vocal performance practice of recitativo semplice, and in particular on its unnotated aspects

Effective techniques to teach listening development and its relationship to reading in grades K-6 with suggestions for helping parents

The purpose in writing this paper is threefold: 1. To review recent literature in order to build listening power through various ways and techniques in Grades K - 6; 2. To list a few structured programs; 3. To suggest games and activities that can be used as supplementary materials

The new aural actuality: an exploration of music, sound and meaning in the composed feature documentary podcast

This practice-led thesis explores the creative techniques and philosophies used in composing feature documentary podcasts and how listeners engage with the material and make meaning from it. Podcasting as a medium presents a new and so far unexplored way of interfacing with audio documentary and this study works to demonstrate crucial differences from radio practice in terms of intention and expression,how material is made, consideration for its audience, and how its programmes are distributed. Using post-structural theory, specifically Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas on interconnected networks of affective transmission, podcasting’s relationship to radio is explored, as is how listeners make meaning through their interaction with both the heard material and the devices upon which it is accessed. These theories are then applied to the characteristically open remit of the audio documentary to study how speech, music, sound and silence may be understood to generate meaning, emotion and a sense of immersion in the listener. It is suggested that modes of programme access, listening customs, and interpretational symbolism work together to impart information vital to the ability to connote and denote what is being heard, and that in this way the composed feature can be situated very closely to musical practice and engagement. Taking cues from musical and cinematic analytical practice three podcast programmes are closely scrutinised for an understanding of their constituent material, structural shape, and potential affective transmissions, beforeinterviewswith their producers are presented to discuss conceptual intentions and execution. Six programmes are presented as the practice component of the thesis, each made to experiment with and reflect upon different aspects of creative or listening practice, with conclusions drawn concerning their implications and effectiveness