Stefan Firca Dissertation
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Circles and Circuses: Carnivalesque Tropes in the Late 1960s Musical and Cultural Imagination DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University by Stefan Firca , B.M., M.A. Graduate Program in Music The Ohio State University 2011 Dissertation Committee: Professor Arved Ashby, Advisor Professor Graeme Boone Professor Danielle Fosler-Lussier Copyright by Stefan Firca 2011 Abstract Circus, fairground, carousel, carnival imagery is everywhere during the late 1960s: in cover art, song lyrics, band names and song titles, music criticism, names of music venues, festivals, movies, literature. From circus tents to clowns, from jugglers to magicians, from carousels to parades, an entire carnivalesque lexis seems to be at play in what is generally termed “psychedelia.” The current study attempts to read and offer “thick description” (Geertz) of this vocabulary as part of a larger cultural and countercultural imagination, and integrate musical manifestations of the period (popular psychedelia and avant-garde / experimental music) in a semiotic network of metaphoric representation. If language is nothing more than a chain of metaphors (Lakoff), it is nevertheless true that we often take such metaphors as “rock ’n’ roll circus,” “song-carousel,” “riot of sound” for granted, since they are so widespread and culturally shared that an explanation of their meaning may appear pedantic. But what do these word-images actually mean? What is the range of their connotations? What is the relationship between them? Why are they so frequent in the late 1960s? And how are these tropes translated or suggested musically? One possible answer to the last question involves the broad concept of circularity , emblematic for the psychedelic era: a round melodic motive or harmonic progression, ii a cyclic phrase articulation, a motoric-recurrent riff, a spiraling or whirling waltz in triple time. This waltzing nature of the music, in particular, is striking, given that the use of triple meters is relatively rare in popular music in general, and very rare in rock music specifically. The waltz becomes thus in psychedelia a characteristic gesture that has cultural resonances and ramifications, and that can emerge in music regardless of the song’s textual content, to suggest both the specific rotation of the carousel (a “carousel-waltz”) and the more general sense of circularity, spinning, spiraling, going “round and round.” But the carousel-waltz is only one aspect of a broader semiotic vocabulary that I attempt to name here. Jacques Tati ends his Play Time film of 1967 with the image of a busy traffic circle which unequivocally suggests a carousel. In another film of the same year, Week End , Jean-Luc Godard presents the image of a nightmarish traffic jam as a carnivalesque parade. And again in 1967, John Cage makes an explicit connection between circus and collage, by coining the term musicircus . These are just three among many instances discussed in this study in which the sense of playfulness and the sense of confusion do not collide, but rather – playfully – coexist. The one word that seems to embody this reality comes from ancient times, and from Mikhail Bakhtin. The word is carnival , and the carnival’s mode of aesthetic articulation is the carnivalesque . The carnivalesque opens a new door of perception, which will perhaps allow us to re-experience the late 1960s experiment in Tati’s terms, as confusing playtime; and in Robert Venturi’s 1966 terms, as “messy vitality.” iii Dedicated to my parents iv Acknowledgments My thanks go first to the dozens of artists – particularly popular musicians, composers, filmmakers – and authors whose work either inspired me or provided me with the subject of this study. I am grateful to my advisor, Arved Ashby, for his guidance, support of my ideas, editorial interventions, and patience in the development of this project. Many thanks are also due to my committee members, Graeme Boone and Danielle Fosler-Lussier, for their constant intellectual and moral support. Particularly valuable were professor Boone’s detailed comments and suggestions at different stages of this project, including a careful reading of an earlier draft of the Preludium. I also thank professor Margarita Mazo for her observations regarding some of this project’s approaches and concepts. The writing of this dissertation would have been impossible without the financial and moral support provided by the School of Music. I am grateful in this respect to the entire Musicology department, and particularly to professor Lois Rosow, for their trust in my abilities, and for the couple of awards I have received: the Graduate Outstanding Achievement Award, and the Jack & Zoe Johnstone Graduate Award for v Excellence in Musicology. My appointments as teaching assistant, and then as lecturer, also allowed me a fundamental and sustained contact with the realities of popular music. The interactive and sometimes heated discussions that I had over the years with the many students in my History of Rock ’n’ Roll class confirmed some of my intuitions, and helped me develop some of my ideas. Thus, extra-credit must go to my students, too. A few dear friends, from vicinity or from far away, offered their constant personal support: Irina and Petre, and Cristi and Sabra. Thank you all. Above all, I owe my deep gratitude to my parents, for personal as well as professional support and advice. Their musicological works remain a source of inspiration for me. This study is dedicated to them. vi Vita June 15, 1976 ..............................................Born - Bucharest, Romania 2000.............................................................B.M., Musicology National University of Music, Bucharest 2001.............................................................M.A., Musicology National University of Music, Bucharest 2000-2001 ...................................................Teaching Assistant, National University of Music, Bucharest; Lecturer, Spiru Haret University, Bucharest 2000-2001 ...................................................Radio Editor and Producer, Romanian National Radio Station, Bucharest 2003-2010 ...................................................Graduate Teaching Assistant and Lecturer, The Ohio State University Publications (selective list) 1998. “Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas .” Opus 1:1, pp. 18-35. 1999. “Order and Classification in ‘The Art of Fugue.’” Opus 1:2, pp. 33-34. 1999. “Giacinto Scelsi: Fragments from a Portrait.” Opus 2:3, pp. 75-91. 2000. “Modal Projection and Developmental Principles in Gheorghe Costinescu’s ‘Modal Inventions.’” Opus 1:5, pp. 39-46. vii 2001. Volume coeditor and study: “Anatol Vieru’s Theoretical Writings: The Chronology of the Modal Direction.” Simpozion de muzicologie ‘Anatol Vieru,’ Bucharest: Editura Muzicala, pp. 33-40. 2005. “Cross- and Double-Reading Musical Modernism: A Palimpsestic View.” Muzica 16/4, pp. 49-57. 2006. “Music and the Specters of Marx.” Muzica 17/2, pp. 56-65. 2006: “Rumänische Komponisten aus der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts.” Valentina Sandu-Dediu, Rumänische Musik nach 1944 . Saarbrücken: Pfau- Verlag. 2008. “Music Analysis;” “Musical Quotation;” “Pop Music” entries in Dictionary of Musical Terms , 2nd ed., Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedica. Fields of Study & Interests Major Field: Music Research interests: avant-garde and popular music/culture; film and film music; history of ideas; music and cultural imagination. viii List of Figures Fig. 1. The roundabout really is a carousel: carnivalesque atmosphere in the finale of Play Time (1967) .............................................................................74 Fig. 2. Quadroscopic spectacle: glass-apartments and mechanical replication in Play Time (1967)............................................................................................82 Fig. 3. Carnivalesque disjunction: violent accident vs. chess match in the traffic jam of Week End (1967) ................................................................................89 Fig. 4. Rock ’n’ roll cabaret: Chaplinesque Mick Jagger as a (non-Satanic) master of ceremonies, lip-synching, smiling and bowing on “Street Fighting Man” in the political film-essay Umano non umano (1969)...........117 Fig. 5. Rock ’n’ roll circus as Debordian situation: Jack Casady the jester, in Jefferson Airplane’s rooftop détournement , NYC, 1968...............................122 Fig. 6. Grotesquely carnivalized street: Ralph Steadman’s illustration of Streetnoise (1969) ..........................................................................................132 Fig. 7. Clownesque monstrosities in the political masquerade of power: Enrico Baj’s poster for Francesco Rosi’s Cadaveri eccellenti (1976) ......................137 ix Table of Contents Abstract......................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements....................................................................................................v Vita.............................................................................................................................vii List of Figures............................................................................................................ix Overture .....................................................................................................................1 PRELUDIUM The Circle Game: