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Summary

The title of this work, Medieval Theatre Performance: Actors, Dancers, Automata and their Audiences, arises from a concern about what actors (players), dancers and automata did and the way they did it in their respective contexts. When we were formulating and preparing our book European Theatre Performance Practice 1400–1580 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), we became aware of the dearth of research into medieval theatre, dance, puppetry and automata in performance. We were aware of a considerable amount of research that had been conducted into performance contexts but not performance itself. Scarcity of relevant evidence perhaps offers a reason for such deficiency to date. This work therefore attempts to go some way towards rectifying this perceived omission.

The contributors have been asked to answer (or attempt to answer) questions such as: What was the nature of performance in theatre/dance/puppetry/ automata? What were the performed qualities of such events? What were the conventions of performed work? What took place in the act of performing? What were the relationships between performers and witnesses? What conditioned these relationships? We recognise that these are tough questions for our contributors to tackle but we strongly believed that such toughness would stimulate and bring about some original research that would lead to significant contributions to knowledge. We have therefore invited selected international specialist colleagues to investigate the nature of performance by players, dancers and automata in order to extend the boundaries of our knowledge.

Given these distinctions, it is performance and not performance context with which we are concerned unless, of course, the latter contextualises the former. With this kind of difference in mind, Claire Sponsler adopts the useful approach of stating ‘What we know’ and ‘What we do not know’ in relation to performance, its nature and investigation. She poses the paraphrased question: ‘Why should theatre historians care about performance practices?’ Other contributors use different ways of pursuing their examination of performance issues. In Nerida Newbigin's chapter, discussion of the performance context is a springboard into the examination of the conditions of performance.

Summary

North-West and North Sea Germanic: fluid perceptions

The Germanic languages witnessed a rapid series of changes between the 4th century and the 7th: from the fairly homogeneous North-West Germanic ‘Gallehus’ idiom of the 4th century, the language split into a number of dialects, which had developed fairly well recognizable linguistic identities by the time of their first attestations, dated approximately to the late 7th century (Nielsen 2000, 288–93). An important focal point of linguistic innovations (phonological and morphological) lies in the region around the North Sea, and their spread affected the adjacent dialects of Old English, Old Frisian and, to some extent, Old Saxon, which are, therefore, commonly referred to as the North Sea Germanic languages. In particular, the similarities between Old English and Old Frisian are so striking that they led earlier researchers to assume a common Anglo- Frisian unity on the Continent, which later, after the migration of the Angles and some of the Saxons to Britain, split into two languages (e.g. Siebs 1889). The perception of the affinity between North Sea Germanic languages changed entirely with Kuhn's (1955) ground-breaking paper, in which a new grouping of Germanic dialects was postulated and the concept of North-West Germanic linguistic unity – lasting approximately until the Migration Period – was introduced. A few years later, in line with Kuhn's hypothesis, DeCamp (1958) revised the understanding of the emergence of Old English dialects, showing that the bulk of the dialectal variants in Old English post-date the colonization of Britain and therefore do not reflect earlier continental dialect or tribal configurations (see also Nielsen 1998). Consequently, the new interpretation of the mutual relations between these dialects evolved into the modern perception of North Sea Germanic as a group of language varieties, participating to a lesser or greater extent in a series of linguistic innovations that have their geographical origin in the North Sea area (cf. Stiles 1995). These innovations can be dated to the period during and after the migration of the Germanic tribes to Britain. The familiar division into English, Frisian and Saxon is the result of a gradual geographical reorganization of linguistic features, which led to the enhancement of linguistic boundaries and eventually to the emergence of distinct linguistic identities (Århammar 1990; Versloot 2014a).

Summary

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.

Daniel 2:31–3 (King James Version)

THE SECOND CHAPTER of the Book of Daniel recounts King Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a statue whose head was made of gold, but whose feet were fashioned, in part, of clay. A stone then struck the statue and broke it into pieces, giving rise to the idiomatic phrase ‘feet of clay’, an expression referring to a character-flaw or weakness, particularly in a person of prominence. This somewhat enigmatic idiom provides the title for Simon Holt's feet of clay (H 38) for solo cello, an equally enigmatic piece. Composed in 2003 for Ulrich Heinen, principal cellist with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and premiered the same year at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, feet of clay's distinctive title is typical of Holt's oeuvre. Among his string output alone we have the sharp end of night, a farewell, Telarañas (cobwebs) and mantis, to name but a few. These are works whose titles invite speculation and encourage certain listening strategies, titles which often invite – even command – agential and narrative enquiry.

feet of clay opens with a declamatory statement, a dramatic cri de coeur (as Holt himself calls it) that draws the listener into an extraordinary sound world in which agency – cued primarily by such vocal allusion – is central to the listening experience (Example 7.1, page 152). The cello's voice forges an instantaneous sense of persona, allowing a subsequent narrative to unfold. The composer's programme note explains that ‘there's a strong sense of the heroic about the piece [which] unfolds like a dramatic scena: a hero returns and tells the tale of how the battle was won. But [Holt asks], was the victory pyrrhic?’

This chapter examines how feet of clay both cues and manipulates a sense of agency through timbral and registral distortions of the cello's voice. Building on theoretical frameworks expounded by Naomi Cumming, Roland Barthes, Robert S. Hatten and Edward Venn, I shall respond to Heinen's recording of the piece, and engage analytically with the score.

Summary

In most scholarship, Choreomania conveys a context in which dance is inextricably linked to medicine. Choreomania, or dance mania (from the Greek terms choros, or dance, and mania, or madness), refers to the dance epidemics that swept Europe between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. During this time, French, Flemish and German chroniclers reported how hundreds of people erupted in excessive, frenzied movements, sometimes dancing themselves to death. Although once a medieval phenomenon, Choreomania has since become integrated into modern, medicalised understandings of chorea (from the Latin word for dance). Today's medical literature typically defines Choreomania as ‘a hyperkinetic movement disorder characterised by excessive spontaneous movements that are irregularly timed, randomly distributed and abrupt’. The neuropathological (and sometimes psychiatric) reconstitution of Choreomania may acknowledge its medieval predecessors, but tends to divorce this disease from folkloric legends and superstitions.

Choreomania entered western medical discourse as early as the sixteenth century. The Renaissance polymath Paracelsus (born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim in 1493) rejected the medieval assumption that demonic possession caused dance mania. Instead, he studied the physiological symptoms of choreomaniacs (dance maniacs) and prescribed specific remedies. In the following century, Thomas Sydenham renamed Choreomania as Sydenham's chorea (or chorea minor), a disorder characterised by involuntary and jerky motions. (This diagnosis, however, actually refers to a form of acute rheumatic fever.) Due to overlapping physiological symptoms, Choreomania in the nineteenth century had been associated (erroneously) with Huntington's disease, a neurodegenerative genetic disorder.

In an effort to diagnose medieval choreomaniacs, more recent studies on Choreomania applied modern epidemiology to the extant medieval evidence. In the twentieth century, the Swedish pharmacologist Eugene Louis Backman argued that Choreomania was caused by ergotism, a species of poisoned fungus (claviceps purpurea) that exhibits properties similar to that experienced with Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) use. Following the multiple floods that occurred in Flanders and the Rhineland in the Late Middle Ages, Backman suggests that ergot would have infected the grains consumed by medieval subjects, particularly peasants. Backman explains that the ergot in rye induces hallucinations, agitation, intensely colored vision and increased susceptibility to external influences (such as rhythm, which initiates dancing).

Summary

THERE ARE MYRIAD WAYS of approaching the task of inventing music successfully. This truth has become apparent during the years I have worked with fellow composers and talked to them, both professionals and students. Some composers vary their tack considerably from piece to piece, while others plough a familiar furrow, refining tried and trusted techniques through minor adjustments. Their processes are the subject of common curiosity: how does one get started? where do the ideas come from? how does a composer begin getting things down on paper? This chapter is an attempt to answer these questions in the context of Simon Holt's music, focusing on three works that cover different parts of his career. By looking at their starting points we shall see to what extent his approach has changed, perhaps because of the influence of different composers on his work, or through experience gained in a career spanning more than thirty-five years. I was fortunate to be able to base the research for this chapter not only on perusal of the composer's own sketches, but also on conversations with him. The results of our talks will be liberally quoted from; but, given the constraints of space, the descriptions that follow are no more than an introduction to the material.

These surviving sketches are of exceptional interest, not least in light of the argument that ‘sketch studies have become the condition sine qua non for the posing of valid analytical hypotheses’. The first piece under scrutiny is Kites (1983), for chamber ensemble. This was Holt's first major commission for the London Sinfonietta, who were eminent exponents of new chamber-orchestral music in Britain at this time. Based at the Southbank Centre in London, the orchestra had a reputation for curating programmes that balanced new works by internationally established composers with commissions from up-and-coming ones. A young composer could virtually establish a career by writing successfully for the Sinfonietta. Michael Vyner, as musical director of the orchestra, approached Holt and another debutant, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and asked them to write pieces for a concert that was also to feature the Benjamin Britten Sinfonietta. While being excited about the commission, Holt was at first concerned because the specified instrumentation (wind quintet plus string quintet) contained none of the resonating instruments that he loved to use, such as percussion, harp and piano.

Summary

Language and history

Languages expand and contract over time and space. For obvious reasons, this phenomenon attracts linguists, who study language change and its mechanisms. What is less familiar is that this study, apart from its contribution to purely linguistic matters, can yield information which is relevant to historians and archaeologists. This article deals with one type of information: demographic history. More specifically, this contribution centres around the fact that languages spread in two ways:

Summary

On the second floor of the Chazen Museum of Art, on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a wooden sculpture of Christ on a donkey. About three-quarters life size, its exact provenance is unknown, but it is believed to have been made around 1450 somewhere in the Austrian Tyrol. Two other museums in the United States—the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Cloisters in New York—own such an image, both of which have also been dated to the fifteenth century, but are thought to be German in origin. Such sculpted wooden images of Christ on a donkey are generally known by their German name of Palmesel [palm donkey]. Palmesels can also be found in London's Victoria and Albert Museum and Paris's Musée National du Moyen Age. Many more reside in European museums and churches. I have seen Palmesels in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Switzerland. Others, which I have not yet visited, are in Belgium, the Czech Republic and, outside Europe, in Bolivia and Paraguay.

A Palmesel in a museum can be misleading. It invites evaluation in terms of craftsmanship and aesthetics, and comparison to other wooden artworks of the period, often on view in the same room. But the Palmesel was not primarily an art object; it was—and still is, in some places—a partially animated dramatic participant in the processional theatre of Palm Sunday. Mounted on wheels and pulled over cobbles or other rough ground, the image shakes, joggling the figure of Christ and creating the impression that he is actively riding the donkey. The illusion can be enhanced by dressing Christ in a robe, placing a palm or olive branch in his left hand, and having him hold a loose set of reins attached to the donkey's head, such that these added props are ruffled, swayed or jiggled, not only by the jouncing but also by the breeze.

More importantly, the Palmesel—like any good actor—can play the Palm Sunday script in various ways. Just as a single Shakespearean role may be given widely differing interpretations by different actors, so the part of Christ entering Jerusalem on a donkey can be played differently in different places and at different times by Palmesels differing little in appearance, or by the same Palmesel directed in its dramatic participation by a later generation of local clergy and laity.

Summary

BACKGROUND INTRODUCTION

BETWEEN 1985 AND 1994 I worked as a director in theatre, opera, contemporary music and dance with my own company, as joint Artistic Director at the Leicester Haymarket and Young Vic Theatres, and on freelance projects. From 1994 onwards my work shifted to a more studio-based practice. I developed a visual language that integrated performance, film, video projection, photography, extreme garments, sculptural objects and installation. During 2003 the producer/director Cathie Boyd invited me to create the video projections, garments and visual staging elements for a new opera commissioned by Almeida Aldeburgh Opera, Who put Bella in the Wych elm? by Simon Holt. It was during the production period that Simon and I discovered a shared passion for the visual arts and started a dialogue about the nature of collaboration and the challenges of staging contemporary music.

Simon had developed Bella from a newspaper article about an unsolved murder case from 1943. A female body had been discovered hidden in the trunk of a tree by three boys bird-nesting in Hagley Wood. One hand was missing from the body and a piece of taffeta stuffed in the mouth. The story had mystery and intrigue, with implications of magic and the occult, combined with the mythic setting of the fairy-tale wood. The published libretto, which is by the composer, contains no specifications concerning its setting, staging or layout; the only sung roles are for Bella (dramatic soprano) and a Protagonist (baritone: ‘a man in his seventies, anonymous and unremarkable’). The Protagonist's ‘inner voice’ is also sung by the baritone. The two other dramatis personae are a Violinist and a Pianist, who walk on stage as if to give a concert, alongside the Protagonist who is their page-turner. He ‘appears as normal for the first four minutes or so’ but then begins to disrupt the ‘recital’.

Summary

Raju Raghuvanshi is a ghost (2008), H 55

Raju Raghuvanshi is unmarried; he's forty-five; his parents are dead; no siblings. He's had to move to Bamni nearby. For here in Katra where he lived, they rush into their houses, locking all the doors, locking all the windows, crying ‘Ghost! Ghost! Ghost! Ghost! Ghost!’ at the sight of him. He was in prison, you see, where he was hospitalised. Rumours were rife: he's fallen ill; he's been moved to another town; he's dead; cremated. Ganeshi, his cousin's wife, performed the last rites so his spirit could rest. ‘Imagine our surprise when he turned up alive,’ she said, ‘We thought he was dead.’ Poor Raju. Poor Raju, Raju Raghuvanshi; he's technically a ghost. ‘Now I have to prove I'm alive. N. V. Vayangankar, Chief of Police, will help me. I have property, you see, a few acres of land. I know their game. They shall not beat me. I say to them: “But, can't you see that my feet are the right way round? If I was a spirit or a ghost, they'd turn backwards.” I was not gone long, now I don't exist.’

The Legend of Melusine (2013), H 72

It's Saturday and the Lady Melusine is bathing, as ever, behind closed doors. She had married her husband, Raymond, Duke of Aquitaine, on one condition: ‘You are forbidden from seeing me bathe!’ she said. Because, you see, she is cursed! Every Saturday, she changes; changes into a serpent from the waist down; changes into a fork-tailed mermaid. Her enchanted bathing eases the pain; the pain of her changing. Her splashing, silvery, scaly tails, flash like mirror shards.

A wight boy spins this yarn. A wight, yes, a wight.

She bears ten sons and, with magic, builds entire castles over a single night. With these castles their riches grow. But, of course, stories like these always end badly. Driven jealousmad by thoughts of cuckoldry and through a crack in the door, Raymond glimpses her demon-change and screams a scream too loud to stifle. Melusine, her secret exposed, her bat-black wings flexing, her tails writhing, flies out from her tower, shrieking a wild, animal shriek and circles the castle; a monster, forever.

A wight boy spins this yarn. A spirit; an imp; a ghost.

Summary

In the early sixteenth century, a Rhetoricians’ company from the town of Tienen won the first prize in a theatre contest in the nearby town of Leuven with a farce entitled The Vagabond [De schuijfman]. This farce reaches its climax in a scene featuring two horses with riders on their backs. One of these is a deceased woman's corpse and the other is a mounted priest who is trying to exorcise the woman's alleged wrathful spirit while being chased by her animal. The playtext has survived in a multi-volume collection assembled by late sixteenth-century members of the Haarlem chamber of rhetoric, De Pellicanisten, also known by its motto Loyalty Should Prove [Trou Moet Blijcken]. The Haarlem collection includes two more farces in which horses appear. In The Moon [Die mane] a central scene revolves around the protagonist's problematic handling of a horse that is supposedly confiscated from a werewolf. It shows how both handler and horse, enclosed in a supposed magic circle, become increasingly distressed due to the protagonist's attempts to keep the werewolf at bay by making noise with a ratchet. The horse in The Flea Trapper [De vloijvanger], finally, is presented as part of a partridge hunter's equipment and later used by the play's protagonist in an attempt to capture fleas.

In this chapter, I propose to investigate these three equestrian farce episodes in the light of what in my view is one of the best-kept secrets of the drama written and performed in the early modern Low Countries: the fundamentally pioneering spirit in which it was created, both on the page and on the stage. With regard to the relationship between page and stage, theatre culture saw a fundamental change under the Rhetoricians’ guidance, as I will demonstrate in the first part of this chapter, a change in which ‘the page’ increasingly came to dictate what was happening on the stage. Though artificial horses must have been part of a much older and broader repertoire of conventions, this growing primacy of the text probably contributed to their emergence in dramatic literature. The second part of this chapter substantiates the general observation that stage actions in Rhetoricians’ theatre were firmly guided by the page.

Summary

Religious belief provided much of the intellectual foundation for Jacobitism. In order to appreciate fully the extent, appeal and significance of Jacobitism throughout the British Atlantic world, it is necessary to understand its complex relationship with the variety of religious beliefs which nurtured it. Roman Catholics, members of the Church of England and Scottish Episcopalians each in their own manner held to notions of loyalty which helped to perpetuate Stuart claims to the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the empire throughout the Atlantic. Jacobitism was, for example, an integral aspect of Scottish Episcopalian belief from 1689 through to at least 1745. Similarly, it energised religious controversies that plagued the Church of England throughout the eighteenth century. Older works on nonjurors have also illustrated the complex relationship between religious beliefs and Jacobitism. English Catholic Jacobites also expressed Jacobitism in terms of both support for their co-religionist James and also an abiding royalism. Religious beliefs, therefore, were integral to the ideological foundations of the Jacobite movement and thus bred, nurtured and inculcated Jacobitism at all levels of society.

Despite the relationship between Jacobitism and religious beliefs, little attention has been paid to the intriguing possibilities that this connection presents in the broader context of the British Atlantic. Scholars have only recently wrestled with the complexity of Jacobite ideology in a British context, and little of this scholarship has survived an Atlantic crossing. This is partly because in the immediate aftermath of 1688 the ideology of Jacobitism was itself somewhat broad and ill-defined. Initially, Jacobites in the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland had little to bind them together other than a belief in the hereditary right to the throne of James vii&ii. If this were true for the various states of the British archipelago, it was equally if not more true for the entire British Atlantic.

Yet, over the next twenty-five years, as the process of anglicisation promoted a degree of ideological conformity among the various Episcopalian Churches, it also effected the development of a more coherent Jacobite ideology. Though possessing divergent goals following a restoration, various groups of Jacobites increasingly drew on a shared ideology.

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Introduction

Summary

Part I - Context

7 - The Geography and Dialects of Old Saxon: River-basin communication networks and the distributional patterns of North Sea Germanic features in Old Saxon

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7 - Redefining the Cello's Voice: Musical agency in feet of clay

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8 - Decadance in the Late Middle Ages: The Case of Choreomania

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Notes

Frontmatter

13 - Sketching and Idea-Gathering

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List of Tables

Abstracts

3 - Frisian between the Roman and the Early Medieval Periods: Language contact, Celts and Romans

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Index

10 - Inanimate Performers: The Animation and Interpretive Versatility of the Palmesel

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Index

12 - Oblique Themes and Still Centres: A conversation between

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Index

Appendix B - Texts by Simon Holt for Raju Raghuvanshi is a ghost and The Legend of Melusine

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9 - Writing, Telling and Showing Horsemanship in Rhetoricians’ Farce

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2 - Jacobitism and religious belief in the British Atlantic world

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Abbreviations

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