Medievalism in contemporary opera

Thesis

This thesis discusses four operas, all written after 1990, that are based on medieval texts: Caritas (1991, by Robert Saxton and Arnold Wesker), The Tale of Januarie (2017, by Julian Philips and Stephen Plaice), L’Amour de loin (2000, by Kaija Saariaho and Amin Maalouf), and Gawain (1991, by Harrison Birtwistle and David Harsent). Each case study is approached as an adaptation of a different medieval literary genre: affective piety, the fabliau, the troubadour lyric, and the chivalric romance. This organizational method provides a point of access into the cultural, critical, and creative reception histories through which texts from the twelfth-to-fourteenth centuries are received by composers, librettists, performers, readers, and audiences today.

Through those literary-critical legacies, I approach medievalism in contemporary opera by enacting queer hermeneutics as described by Elizabeth Freeman in Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Combining literary, theological, and music-theoretical modes of analysis, this thesis explores two overarching avenues for enquiry:

1. How can we account for the complexities of time in composite works that span several centuries, stage premodern temporalities for post-industrial audiences, and themselves operate within the ambiguities of narrative time?

2. What does it mean to perform and spectate upon medieval texts and lives in the twenty-first century? Can the ephemerality of song connect with the ephemerality of history to stimulate creative forms of historiography? In Freeman’s terms, is this mode of historiography itself a form of ‘close reading’?

Reflecting on the surprising prevalence of Cistercian influences surrounding each of these operas’ source-texts, I suggest that medieval spirituality can provide powerful tools with which to approach questions of performance and temporality, as well as the intense modes of love and desire that these opera stage. With a particular emphasis on how medieval writers and queer theorists conceive of secrecy and revelation, I suggest that the way in which song transcends the boundaries between discrete bodies can create a vital link between pre- and postmodern modes of desire, that thrives in the temporal gaps created by historical alterity.

Authors: Haggett, GK

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-9o4ek08oo
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Crusade song; Canterbury Tales; Wesker; musicology; anchorites; medievalism; Pentangle; Caritas; Bernard of Clairveaux; Gawain; Organum; Organum purum; Chansonnier; Second Crusade; Liturgy; Arnold Wesker; Troubadour; Razo; Medieval liturgy; Stephen Plaice; Occitan poetry; Middle English; queer theory; Vida; David Harsent; princesse lointaine; Robert Saxton; stage; Cosey Fanni Tutti; Julian Philips; Elizabeth Freeman; Merchant's Tale; Solomon's Seal; Wife of Bath; opera; Jaufre Rudel; theology; Cistercianism; COUM transmissions; Transcendence; Harrison Birtwistle; Solomon's Knot; Kaija Saariaho; Affective piety; post-tonal analysis; Chant; Song of Songs; Chaucer; Ritual; Tale of Januarie; Amin Maalouf; contemporary music; ancrene wisse; L'Amour de loin; modernism; 21st century; Lanquan li jorn; Eleanor of Aquitaine; Five wounds; Margery Kempe; Faraway love
• Subjects: Hermits; Music--21st century--History and criticism; Voice (Musical medium of performance); Mysticism--Christianity; Gregorian chants; Music--20th century--Philosophy and aesthetics; Crusades--Poetry; Queer musicology; Harmonic analysis (Music); Troubadours in literature; Crusades--Second, 1147-1149; Merchant (Fictitious character : Chaucer); Mysticism; Time-based art; Arthurian romances--Criticism, Textual; Mysticism in literature; Voice; Poets, Occitan; Music--21st century; Queer theory; Cistercian monasteries; Arthurian romances; Time--Philosophy; Crusades in literature; Geoffrey Chaucer; Gardens, Medieval; Literature, Medieval; Piety in literature; Devotional literature, English (Middle); Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages--England--Canterbury--Poetry; Transcendence (Philosophy) in music; Music--20th century--History and criticism; Orientalism in music; Songs, English (Middle); King Solomon's knot in art; Mysticism in music; Orientalism in opera; Love poetry, English (Middle); Poetry, Medieval; Wife of Bath (Fictitious character); Ritual in opera; Christian art and symbolism--14th century; Arthurian romances--Adaptations; King Arthur's Round Table; Theology in art; Medievalism in motion pictures; Musical analysis; Five Sacred Wounds; Manuscripts, Occitan; Arthurian romances in motion pictures; Medievalism in art; Sex in opera; Tyler's Insurrection, 1381; Medievalism; Christian literature, English (Middle); Songs, Occitan; Organa--History and criticism; Opera; Transcendence (Philosophy) in literature; Occitan philology; Modernism (Music); Aquitaine, House of; Arthurian romances--Sources; Medievalism in literature; Great Britain--History--14th century; Narrative poetry, English (Middle); Troubadours; Arthurian romances--Stories, plots, etc.; Troubadour songs; Electronic music; Alliteration; Voice (Philosophy); Song of Solomon (Music); Transcendence of God; Church history--14th century; 14th century