(Dis-)Embodied Voices and Digital Liveness: Music Theatre in Lockdown

Wolfgang Marx

doi:10.51191/issn.2637-1898.2021.4.6.22

(Dis-)Embodied Voices and Digital Liveness: Music Theatre in Lockdown

Authors

Wolfgang Marx University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Author https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0576-6713

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51191/issn.2637-1898.2021.4.6.22

Keywords:

Music theatre, contemporary music, Virtual opera, pandemic, Music and Covid-19, Irish new music, Music in lockdown, Digital liveness, embodied voices, 20 Shots of Opera

Abstract

20 Shots of Opera, released in December 2020, is a series of twenty short pieces of music theatre between five and eight minutes long. They were created and produced in just a few months. What makes the pieces special is that they were conceived to be produced under pandemic conditions and with purely an online reception in mind. This has affected details of the recording process as well as directorial concepts such as the use of animation or superimposition of pictures. This article will analyze how selected Shots engage with these conditions, look at different types of how the voices are used and assess the specific aesthetic circumstances of digital reception, as well as discussing other specific challenges and opportunities of creating music theatre in times of Covid-19.

Author Biography

Wolfgang Marx, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Wolfgang Marx is Associate Professor in Historical Musicology at University College Dublin and a member of the UCD Humanities Institute where he leads the Research Strand “Death, Burial and the Afterlife”. His main research interests include post-truth and music, the representation of death in music, György Ligeti, and the theory of musical genres. He currently edits two volumes on Music and Death, and on Ligeti for his upcoming centenary in 2023. Recent publications include essays on opera in Ireland, Ligeti’s writings, the influence of cultural trauma on Ligeti’s musical style, and the Berliner Requiem by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. He is editor of the Dublin Death Studies series.

Cover of the INSAM Journal No. 6. Design by Milan Šuput

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Published

15.07.2021

Issue

No. 6 (2021): Music, Art, and Humanities in the Time of Global Crisis

Section

Articles

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How to Cite

(Dis-)Embodied Voices and Digital Liveness: Music Theatre in Lockdown. (2021). INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology, 6, 22-39. https://doi.org/10.51191/issn.2637-1898.2021.4.6.22