- Abbate, Carolyn. “Unsung Voices”: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nine-
teenth Century.Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U.P., 1991. xvi, 288p. ISBN 0-691-
09140-4. ML3838 .A2.
Music can be a dramatic narrative or a nonnarrative. The musical voice can
“distance us from the sensual matter of what we are hearing.” There is a voice
act as well as a narrative act. What distinguishes a narrative from any story is
that is says “once upon a time.” In opera, narrative appears in scenes where a
story is told by means of a song, clearly identified as such (cf. Cone, #405).
Interesting perspectives on Wagner and Mozart illuminate this theory. Back-
notes, bibliography of about 200 items, expansive index. - Robinson, Paul A. Opera and Ideas: From Mozart to Strauss. New York:
Harper & Row, 1988. 279p. ISBN 0-0601-5450-0. ML1720 .R6.
Music, as well as text, does express some distinct ideas. Evidence is supplied
for this view, which is hardly unusual but not recently popular. For example, in
Les troyensthere is, at crucial moments, a prominence of the instrumental
bass, creating “an impression of forces at work... Those forces, I believe, are
the impersonal laws of history, which carry the characters toward a destiny
they don’t fully understand.” Further discussion touches on Mozart, Wagner,
Strauss, Verdi, and Rossini. Robinson has difficulty locating purely musical
idea communication, and nearly all the examples are textual as well. Bibliogra-
phy, index. - Durante, Sergio. “Analysis and Dramaturgy: Reflections towards a Theory of
Opera.” In Opera buffa(#2141), 311–339.
Reviews recent theoretical approaches: Carl Dahlhaus, James Webster, and
John Platoff. Asserts that the hierarchical relationships of music and drama are
fluid, subject to change even within one set piece. “A musico-dramatic text
embraces domains that, although apparently peripheral and often secondary
for the music, can occasionally be located at the top of the ideal pyramid of
significant elements. This need not imply an overevaluation of certain
domains, or endanger the centrality of music in a discourse on opera.” - Franklin, Peter. The Idea of Music: Schoenberg and Others.London: Macmil-
lan, 1985. xv, 188p. ISBN 0-333-40028-3. ML3800 .F83.
The writings of Theodore Adorno are the starting point for essays on Pfitzner,
Schoenberg, and Schreker. Adorno fostered the progressive artist, who would
eliminate all clichés and destroy even the possibility of form. Twelve-tone tech-
nique can do this; it “enchains music by liberating it.” Schoenberg is the ideal
for Adorno, but only to a point; the 12-tone system itself becomes a form and
must be abandoned. Franklin’s section on Pfitzner’s Palestrinais not about the
music but about the story and what others said about it. A useful treatment of
“Schreker’s Decline” (p.139–160) finds in his music “stream of consciousness
in the most profound sense.” Franklin’s language, like Adorno’s, is in mani-
festo idiom. It “relies upon a consideration of ideas about music as much as
upon the analytical or musicological study of specific works.” Bibliography,
index.
Philosophy and Theory of Opera 91