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Appia, Jaques-Dalcroze, and Hellerau, Part One: ‘Music Made Visible’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Richard C. Beacham
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Abstract

While Appia's name is dutifully linked in our theatre histories with the full realization of the revolution in stage lighting wrought by electricity, the nature of his broader scenographic philosophy has remained little understood, and his own writings are not readily accessible in English. Still less have English-speaking theatre people given due attention to the work of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, creator of the system of eurhythmies – and virtually nothing has previously been written about the unique collaboration between these two innovators, which began in 1906, and eventually flourished in the unlikely setting of a German ‘garden city’, dedicated to the humanization of modern industrial practices – Hellerau, or ‘the bright meadow’. Here, Richard Beacham, who has published a study of Appia's earlier work in Opera Quarterly (Autumn 1983), describes how the two men came to meet and to plan for the possibilities offered by the projected Hellerau festivals: in a subsequent article, he will assess the extent and nature of the work they achieved there.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , May 1985 , pp. 154 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

Notes and References

1. For a full account of Appia's earlier work, see Beacham, Richard C., ‘Adolphe Appia and the Staging of Wagnerian Opera’, Opera Quarterly, Autumn 1983.Google Scholar

2. Appia, , ‘Introduction to my Personal Notes’, unpublished essay of 1905, trans. Volbach, Walther, Appia Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, typescript p. 35.Google Scholar

3. Giertz, Gernot, Kultus Ohne Gotter (Munich, 1975), p. 12.Google Scholar

4. Appia, , ‘Theatrical Experiences and Personal Investigations’, unpublished essay of about 1924, trans., Volbach, Walther, Appia Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, typescript p. 383.Google Scholar

5. Wagner, , ‘The Art Form of the Future’, in Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen (Leipzig, 1907), p. 90.Google Scholar

6. Appia, ‘Theatrical Experiences’, op. cit., p. 378.

7. Ibid., p. 376.

8. Appia to Dalcroze in a letter of May 1906, quoted by Stadler, Edmond, ‘Adolphe Appia et Emile Jaques-Dalcroze’, in Martin, Frank A., ed., Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (Neuchatel, 1965), p. 417–18.Google Scholar

9. Quoted by Stadler, Edmund, ‘Adolphe Appia und Emile Jaques-Dalcroze’, Maske und Kothurn, X (1964), p. 662.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., p. 664–5.

11. Appia, , ‘Eurhythrnics and the Theatre’, 1911, trans. Volbach, Walther, the Appia Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, typescript p. 71.Google Scholar

12. Appia, ‘Theatrical Experiences’, op. cit., p. 379.

13. Dalcroze to Appia, 1907, quoted in Stadler, ‘Adolphe Appia et Ernile Jaques-Dalcroze’, p. 423.

14. Appia, ‘Eurhythmics and the Theatre’, p. 71.

15. Ibid., p. 75.

16. Dalcroze, in a tribute at Dohrn's funeral, 11 Feb. 1914, printed in Feudel, E., ed., In Memoriam Hellerau (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1960), p. 32.Google Scholar

17. Giertz, Kultus Ohne Gotter, p. 119.

18. Karl Scheffler in a tribute at Dohrn's funeral, In Memoriam Hellerau, p. 49.

19. Dalcroze to Appia in a letter dated 28 Mar. 1910, quoted in Stadler, ‘Adolphe Appia et Emile Jacques-Dalcroze’, p. 429.

20. Ibid., 11 April 1910, p. 430.

21. Dalcroze in an undated letter to Appia, in the Appia Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

22. Nietzsche, Friedrich, ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’, Werke, II (Leipzig, 1922), p. 376.Google Scholar

23. Quoted in Giertz, Kultus Ohne Gotter, p. 142.

24. Appia, ‘Eurhythmics and the Theatre’, p. 72.

25. Giertz, Kultus Ohne Gotter, p. 123.

26. Storck, KarlE. Jaques-Dalcroze (Stuttgart, 1912), p. 88.Google Scholar

27. Quoted in Giertz, Kultus Ohne Gotter, p. 131.

28. Dalcroze to Appia, 3 June 1911, quoted in Stadler, ‘Adolphe Appia et Emile Jaques-Dalcroze’, p. 439.

29. A proposition to be defended in a subsequent article. The work at Hellerau has been thus characterized by, for example, Hern, Nicholas, ‘Expressionism’. in Hayman, Ronald, ed., The German Theatre (London, 1975), p. 116.Google Scholar