期刊名称：Nota Bene : Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Musicology
印刷版ISSN：1920-8979
电子版ISSN：1920-8987
出版年度：2013
卷号：6
期号：1
出版社：University of Western Ontario
摘要：Benjamin Britten's Curlew River(1964) defies traditional genre labels, exhibiting characteristics of opera,Japanese Noh drama, and religious ritual. Set in medieval England and given a Christian theme, Curlew River isbased on the Noh play Sumidagawa and uses a unique language of physical gesture inspired by Noh traditions.The integration of these physical gestures with the music is one of the ways in which Curlew Riverprojects anatmosphere of ritual. In this paper I examine two passages from Curlew River, each of which demonstrates aclose connection between the development of individual musical gestures and the progression of physicalactions performed at the same time. In the arietta "Near the Black Mountains," sung by the character of theMadwoman, the subtle development of a single musical figure is linked to the gradual transformation of theactor's posture. A similar relationship is present in the Ferryman's introductory scene, in which physicalmovements act as punctuation for a sequence of musical statements. In both instances, musical and physicalgesture are integrated into a unified form of expression, the intensity and focus of which lend Curlew Riverits
