Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other ArtsFrom its dissonant musics to its surrealist spectacles (the urinal is a violin!), Modernist art often seems to give more frustration than pleasure to its audience. In Untwisting the Serpent, Daniel Albright shows that this perception arises partly because we usually consider each art form in isolation, even though many of the most important artistic experiments of the Modernists were collaborations involving several media—Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is a ballet, Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts is an opera, and Pablo Picasso turned his cubist paintings into costumes for Parade. Focusing on collaborations with a musical component, Albright views these works as either figures of dissonance that try to retain the distinctness of their various media (e.g. Guillaume Apollinaire's Les Mamelles de Tirésias) or figures of consonance that try to lose themselves in some total effect (e.g. Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung). In so doing he offers a fresh picture of Modernism, and provides a compelling model for the analysis of all artistic collaborations. Untwisting the Serpent is the recipient of the 2001 Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship of the Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University. |
Contents
LAOCOÖN REVISITED | 8 |
HEAVEN | 12 |
Figures of Consonance among the Arts | 37 |
IDEOGRAM | 63 |
GESTUS | 101 |
VILLONAUD | 138 |
NOH AGAIN | 169 |
LOOP | 185 |
SURREALISM MUSIC | 275 |
37 | 305 |
Notes | 365 |
63 | 367 |
138 | 370 |
185 | 376 |
Works Cited | 381 |
Photo Credits | 387 |
Other editions - View all
Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts Daniel Albright Limited preview - 2000 |
Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts Daniel Albright No preview available - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
abstract Adorno aesthetic Antheil Apollinaire artistic Ballet Mécanique bird Brecht Breton Britten calligram Cantos characters chord Cocteau composer conceived costume cubist Curlew River dance dead Der Jasager discourse dissonance drama Erwartung example Ezra Pound film flute Four Saints George Antheil gestic gestus harmonic heaven hieroglyph human Ibid Jasager kind landscape language mamelles de Tirésias mariés meaning melody Modernist movement Noh play notes nouns objects painting Parade Paris passage photographer phrase Picasso picture piece Pisan Cantos poem Poulenc Pound rehearsal figure Relâche rhythm Rite of Spring Saints in Three Satie Satie's scene Schoenberg score seems semantic sense singing song sort sound spectacle spectator stage Stein Stravinsky style surrealism surrealist testament theatre theme thing Thomson Three Acts Threepenny Opera tion tonal Tour Eiffel tune Villon Virgil Thomson visual vocal line Wagner Weill whole woman words writing wrote Yeats