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Applying Constantin Stanislavski's Acting 'System'

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APPLYING CONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI’S ACTING ‘SYSTEM’ TO CHORAL REHEARSALS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF ARTS BY BOGDAN ANDREI MINUT DISSERTATION ADVISOR: DUANE KARNA BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUNCIE, INDIANA DECEMBER 2009 ii Copyright © 2009 by Bogdan Andrei Minut All rights reserved iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my doctoral committee members, Dr. Duane Karna, Dr. Douglas Amman, Dr. James Helton, Dr. Jody Nagel, and Dr. Elizabeth Bremigan, as well as former committee member Dr. Jeffrey Carter, for their guidance and support throughout my doctoral studies at Ball State University. Special thanks go to Dr. Jeffrey Pappas, former Director of Choral Activities, for his support of my research and for allowing me to work with his student ensemble on this study, to Dr. Kirby Koriath and Dr. Linda Pohly, former and present Coordinators of Graduate Studies in Music, respectively, for their constant care and support, and to Mrs. Linda Elliott for her administrative work. The talented singers of the Ball State University Chamber Choir, including Assistant Director and accompanist (now) Dr. Jill Burleson, and of the Concert Choir played a major role in this research and I want to thank them all for their patience, understanding, and willingness to try something a little different. I would also like to express my deep appreciation for the life, work, and artistry of Constantin Stanislavski who gave so much in particular to the art of the theater but also to all performing arts in general. His vision and ideals of true art are inspiring to me. I feel blessed to have studied choral music and conducting in my native Romania with Dr. Marin Constantin, Dr. Petre Crăciun, Dr. Ioan Golcea, Dr. Dan Mihai Goia, and Mr. Lucian Fetilă, who introduced me not only to the vocabulary, repertory, and intricacies of this discipline, but also to hints of the Stanislavski ‗system‘ and psycho- technique. Additionally, my experience as observer of the activity of the Romanian iv National Chamber Choir Madrigal was inspiring and played a major role in my artistic formation. All of them deserve my sincere reverence. I also want to express special thanks to Mrs. Reanelle Heritage, Mr. David Steele DDS, as well as to all my friends at Saint Bartholomew Catholic Parish in Columbus, Indiana, including Fr. Clement Davis, Mrs. Erika Gaal, parish staff, and members of the music ministry for their constant help, support, and encouragements. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife, sons, and extended family for their help, patience, care, support, understanding, and encouragement through the process of researching and writing this dissertation. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................. iii I. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...................................................................................... 35 II.1 Constantin Stanislavski‘s Writings ............................................................... 36 II.1.1 My Life in Art ................................................................................. 37 II.1.2 An Actor Prepares .......................................................................... 49 II.1.3 Building a Character ...................................................................... 67 II.1.4 Creating a Role .............................................................................. 88 II.1.5 Stanislavski on Opera ................................................................... 109 II.2 Relevant Literature About Stanislavski‘s Acting ‗System‘ ........................ 128 II.2.1 Beyond Stanislavsky ..................................................................... 129 II.2.2 Konstantin Stanislavsky ................................................................ 133 II.2.3 The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit .............................................. 134 II.2.4 Stanislavsky in Focus ................................................................... 139 II.2.5 The Stanislavski System ................................................................ 143 II.3 The Stanislavski ‗System‘ and Choral Music ............................................. 146 II.3.1 The Mastery of Choral Structure and Performance ..................... 147 II.3.2 The Madrigal Constellation and Madrigal or the Magic of Sounds ................................................. 153 III. IMPLICATIONS FOR CHORAL REHEARSAL TECHNIQUES ........................ 156 IV. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS .............................................................................. 184 IV.1 Kasar mie la gaji ....................................................................................... 186 IV.2 If Music Be the Food of Love ..................................................................... 195 IV.3 There Will Be Rest ..................................................................................... 201 V. CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................................... 210 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 222 I INTRODUCTION Music has always been a manifestation of human behaviors and a way to express feelings and emotions beyond the power of communication through words. It is arguably considered a language in itself with respect to its communication role. Compared to speech and its aspects of languages and dialects, each with specific structures and characteristics that influence cultures and the intellect, music in its complexity deals with numerous genres, styles, and idioms that generate issues of communication and influence among various groups of people. The combination of music and speech in the form of sung music brings another unique perspective on this type of human interaction. Communication in terms of sung words, in either solo or ensemble singing, combines the intellectual understanding of the textual connotations with their subtexts, which are supposedly presented or enhanced through the juxtaposition of the musical context. The amalgam of music and words is loaded with information that is intended to be communicated by means of sounds and sonorous structures to fully convey the creators‘ ideas and feelings. The stronger the bond is between words and their supportive musical realization, the surer may become the manifestation of human emotions to audiences. The deeper and 2 more valuable the feelings and emotions are, the more demanding becomes the artistic endeavor of the creators. Throughout the history of humankind, emotions and thoughts seem to find a natural need for more elevated artistic expression to be translated or communicated to other people and to stand the test of time across cultures and throughout generations. Music with words, or sung music, is common in all cultures and justifies its existence on the human need to express personal or collective feelings and emotions. In art music, these human emotions generate complex processes of creation that involve the knowledge, skills, talents, and efforts of the creators to better transfer, translate, or facilitate this emotional and informational material to the audience. In the performing arts, the final product presented to audiences is the result of a collective work. This complex process involves the creators themselves: authors, composers, lyricists, playwrights, all those who envisioned the ideas intended to have a lasting impression and who developed the intricate elements of their artistic language. There are also the artists, musicians, actors, dancers, and their supportive production teams, all of them representing the performing side of such an artistic endeavor, those on whose shoulders stands the responsibility of delivering the pre-conceived messages, ideas, feelings, attitudes, and emotions of the creators—those who have to find the necessary and appropriate ways to communicate these elements in order to make an unforgettable impression on their public in repeated performing events. Because of the similar goal of making lifelong emotional impressions on spectators, the performing arts must have a common ground on which methods and techniques used to present their respective artistic creations can easily cross from one art 3 form to another, in a perpetual attempt to find the truth in art. In the contemporary complexity of artistic human expression, the attempt to find interdisciplinary approaches to artistic truths, especially between similar disciplines such as the performing arts, must be closely considered in order to better serve the wide range of human emotions. In this context, I found it worth exploring the possibility of transferring acting principles, methods, techniques, and systems to other performing arts and in particular to choral music. Of the multitude of functions which ensemble singing presents, the role of the operatic choir draws our attention in particular because it represents the link between the two artistic disciplines, theater and choral music. Singers in such a choir express their art in an acting environment through musical discourse. Together they form a collective character in an opera, but the nature of such a character employs the complexities of individual singer-actors.
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