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Music as a Chariot

Author Richard K. Thomas
Release Date: 2018/02/01
ISBN: 9781351382076
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Book Description

Music as a Chariot offers a multidisciplinary perspective whose primary proposition is that theatre is a type of music. Understanding how music enables the theatre experience helps to shape our entire approach to the performing arts.

Beginning with a discussion on the origin and nature of time, the author takes us on an evolutionary journey to discover how music, language and mimesis co-evolved, eventually coming together to produce the complex way we experience theatre.

The book integrates the evolutionary neuroscience of the human brain into this journey, offering practical implications and applications for the auditory expression of this concept—namely the fundamental techniques artists use to create sound scores for theatre.

With contributions from directors, playwrights, actors and designers, Music as a Chariot explores the use of music to carry ideas into the human soul—a concept that extends beyond the theatrical to include film, video gaming, dance, or anywhere art is manipulated in time.

Table of Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Foreword
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. 1 Why This Book?
    1. Introduction: An Ear-Opening Experience
    2. Old School Aesthetics
    3. When Sound Gets Divorced from Music
    4. Who Should Read This Book
    5. Overview of the Book
    6. Ten Questions
    7. Things to Share
    8. Note
    9. Bibliography
  9. Part I The Nature of Time
    1. 2 Let There Be a Big Bang
      1. Introduction: If a Tree Falls in the Universe …
      2. The Nature of Light and Sound
      3. The Evolution of Hearing and Seeing
      4. The Evolution of the Brain Leads to the Ability to Express Emotions
      5. Eyes and Ears, Space and Time
      6. Ten Questions
      7. Things to Share
      8. Notes
      9. Bibliography
    2. 3 The Great Mystery of Time
      1. Introduction: Babbling in Babelsberg
      2. The Mammalian Invasion
      3. We Are Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made Of …
      4. The Relativity of Time
      5. Ten Questions
      6. Things to Share
      7. Notes
      8. Bibliography
  10. Part II Music = Time Manipulated
    1. 4 What Is Music?
      1. Introduction: What’s in a Name?
      2. Music Is Organized Sound
      3. Narrowing Our Definition of Music
      4. Music Is Visual as Well as Audible
      5. The Elements of Design
        1. Energy Characteristics
        2. Temporal Characteristics
        3. Spatial Characteristics
        4. Complex Elements that Combine Energy in Time and Space
        5. The Importance of These Elements of Music
      6. A Proposed Definition of Music
      7. Ten Questions
      8. Things to Share
      9. Notes
      10. Bibliography
    2. 5 Primate Numbers
      1. Introduction: Who’s on First?
      2. Music, Language and Theatre: The Really Early Years
      3. Bipedal Primates
      4. Ten Questions
      5. Things to Share
      6. Notes
      7. Bibliography
  11. Part III Song = Music + Idea
    1. 6 Campfire Songs: Rhythm and Entrainment
      1. Introduction: Welcome Homo
      2. One Giant Leap for Mankind
        1. Early Homo
        2. Homo erectus
      3. Running, Tempo, Pulse, Tactus and Entrainment
      4. Tempo, Pacing, Tactus, Entrainment and Theatre Composition
      5. When Music Meets Mimesis
      6. Conclusion
      7. Ten Questions
      8. Things to Share
      9. Notes
      10. Bibliography
    2. 7 Music and Language
      1. Introduction: “All Theatre Starts with a Script”
      2. Brain Gains
      3. Fantastic Voyage
      4. Conclusion: Song = Music + Idea
      5. Ten Questions
      6. Things to Share
      7. Notes
      8. Bibliography
    3. 8 Consonance and Dissonance: The Evolution of Line
      1. Introduction: The Roots of Who We Become
      2. The Evolution of Line
      3. Consonance and Dissonance
        1. What Is Consonance and Dissonance?
        2. Subcortical Consonance and Dissonance Perception
        3. Cortical Consonance and Dissonance Perception
      4. Consonance and Dissonance in Theatre
        1. Line/Melody
        2. Harmony
      5. Conclusion: Consonance and Dissonance and Time
      6. Ten Questions
      7. Things to Share
      8. Notes
      9. Bibliography
  12. Part IV Theatre = Song + Mimesis
    1. 9 Ritual, Arousal, Reward, Ecstasy
      1. Introduction: From High Mass to Ecstasy
      2. The Development of Ritual, Shamanism, and Altered States of Consciousness
        1. Theatre = Song + Mimesis
      3. The Neuroscience of Arousal and Reward in the Altered States of Consciousness of Shamanism and Theatre
        1. Introduction: Dreams, Altered States of Consciousness and Theatre
        2. The Basic Neuroscience of Arousal
        3. The Effect of Music on Physiological Systems
        4. The Effect of Music on Psychological Systems
      4. Cognitive Models for Music in Theatre
        1. Robert Thayer’s Model of Psychological Moods
        2. Berlyne’s Theory of Arousal in Aesthetics and Psychobiology
      5. Conclusion: Experiments in Ecstasy
      6. Ten Questions, Part I
      7. Things to Share, Part I
      8. Ten Questions Part II
      9. Things to Share, Part II
      10. Notes
      11. Bibliography
    2. 10 Music, Mimesis, Memory
      1. Introduction: Traveling Backward in Time
      2. The New Stone Age
      3. Memory
        1. Introduction
        2. Sensory Memory
        3. Long Auditory Store/Short Term Memory/Working Memory
        4. Long-Term Memory
        5. Creating and Retrieving Long-Term Memories
        6. Implicit Memory
        7. Explicit Episodic Memory
        8. Involuntary Explicit Episodic Memory
        9. Autobiographical Memory
      4. Conclusion: The Origins of Theatre and the Problems of the Oral Tradition
      5. Ten Questions, Part I
      6. Things to Share, Part I
      7. Ten Questions, Part II
      8. Things to Share, Part II
      9. Notes
      10. Bibliography
    3. 11 The Bronze Age and the Invention of Writing
      1. Introduction: Theatre Becomes Drama
      2. The Bronze Age
      3. The Emergence of Written Language
      4. The Transition from Oral Tradition to Recorded History
      5. Conclusion: Lost in Translation?
      6. Ten Questions
      7. Things to Share
      8. Notes
      9. Bibliography
    4. 12 Conclusion: Evolution and Greek Theatre
      1. Introduction: A Case Study
      2. The Origins of Greek Music: Music = Time Manipulated
      3. The Development of Greek Song: Song = Music + Idea
      4. Music as Math Made Audible: The Greeks Revisit Consonance and Dissonance
      5. The First Autonomous Theatre: Theatre = Song + Mimesis
      6. Plato and His World
      7. Aristotle’s Theatre
      8. Conclusion of the Conclusion
      9. Eleven Questions, Part I
      10. Eleven Questions, Part II
      11. Things to Share
      12. Notes
      13. Bibliography
  13. Index
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