Magic and Horror: Sound and Music in Theatres of the Past

Show notes

Guest in this episode are: Dr. Anna Ricke, who studied music theatre studies (B.A.) at the University of Bayreuth, musicology (M.A.) at the Cologne University of Music and Dance where she also wrote her PhD on "Smaragda Eger-Berg (1886-1954). Bohemienne - Musician - Sister. Conditions of artistic emancipation in Viennese modernism“. She is currently co-editor with Prof. Dr. Antje Tumat of the forthcoming „Handbuch für Schauspielmusik“ (Handbook for Theatre Music).

Dr. Julia H. Schröder also holds a doctorate in musicology on the „In- and interdependency of music and dance in the Cage & Cunningham Collaboration. Her research interests include contemporary art music, 20th century music, sound art, graphic notation, music and dance as well as music/sound design in theatre and sound studies. She publishes and lectures internationally on these subjects. Research and teaching activities at various Berlin universities. Schröder co-conceived and co-edits the section "Auditive Perspectives" of the academic e-journal kunsttexte.de. Projects include: Theatre Noises (TU Berlin, FG Audio Communication), Landscape Sound Installations (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, ARS), On the Position of Music Listeners (Free University Berlin, SFB 626, Aesthetic Experience in the Sign of the Dissolution of Artistic Boundaries)

References mentioned in the conversation include:

Walpole, Horace: The Castle of Otranto (1764) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_of_Otranto

Rein, Katharina, Techniken der Täuschung. eine Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Bühnenzauberkunst im späten neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Marburg: Büchner, 2020.

Robertson, Etienne Gaspard, Mémoires recréatifs, scientifiques et anecdotiques d’un physicien-aéronaute, 1831.

Butterworth, Philip, Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and Magic: Conventions of Performance in Early English Theatre: Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies (Peter Harrop, Ed.), Routledge, 2022.

Pisani, Michael V., Music for the Melodramatic Theatre in Nineteenth-Century. London & New York, Iowa 2014.

Kelly, Michael, Reminiscences of Michael Kelly of the King’s Theatre and Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 2 Volumes, 2nd Edition, London 1826.

Forthcoming: Ricke, Anna, "'[M]uch too terrible for representation'. Musik und Geräusch in Matthew Lewis’ Melodram The Captive (1803)", in: Musik und das Unheimliche, ed. by Christoph Hust/Ivana Rentsch/Arne Stollberg, München 2023.