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Appia, Jaques-Dalcroze, and Hellerau, Part Two: ‘Poetry in Motion’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Richard C. Beacham
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Abstract

In the first part of this feature, published in NTQ 2, Richard C. Beacham described how the pioneer of modern stage lighting, Adolphe Appia, and the creator of eurhythmics, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, came to collaborate in 1906 – in the development of the Hellerau ‘garden-city’ project. Here, they planned to provide an opportunity for active artistic participation in a specially designed performance space. The author takes up the story with the beginning of classes at Hellerau in 1911, and preparations for the two festivals which followed – including the revelatory production of Gluck's Orpheus. The First World War brought the collaboration to an end – but not before it had put into practice for the first time many of the scenic and interpretive principles of modern staging. Richard C. Beacham published a study of Appia's earlier work in Opera Quarterly (Autumn 1983), and plans to complete the present NTQ feature with an assessment of ‘The Legacy of Hellerau’. His forthcoming full-length study of Appia will be published by Cambridge University Press.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , August 1985 , pp. 245 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

Notes and References

1. Quoted by Stadler, Edmond, ‘Adolphe Appia et Emile Jaques-Dalcroze’, in Martin, Frank A., ed., Emile Jaques-Dalcroz (Neuchâtel, 1965), p. 440.Google Scholar

2. Wolkonski, Serge, ‘Meine Erinnerungen’, in Feudel, E., ed., In Memoriam Hellerau (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1960), p. 11.Google Scholar

3. These letters are to Walther Volbach, and are in the Appia Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

4. Wolkonski, in Feudel, op. cit., p. 12–13.

5. Quoted in Stadler, op. cit., p. 440.

6. Ibid., p. 441.

7. Craig, Gordon, On the Art of the Theatre, preface to second edition (London, 1912), p. vii.Google Scholar

8. Craig, Gordon, Daybook II, entry for 27 12. 1911, quoted in Bablet, Denis, The Theatre of Edward Cordon Craig (London, 1981), p. 174.Google Scholar

9. Quoted in Stadler, op. cit., p. 441.

10. Appia, Adolphe, ‘Eurhythmies and the Theatre’, 1911, trans. Volbach, Walther, the Appia Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, p. 72, 74 of the typescript.Google Scholar

11. Dent, Alan, Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell: Their Correspondence (New York, 1952), p. 137–9.Google Scholar

12. Quoted in Purdom, C. B., Harley Granville Barker (London, 1955), p. 144.Google Scholar

13. Von Salzmann, Alexander, ‘Licht, Belichtung und Beleuchtung’, Claudel-Programmbuch (Hellerau, 1913), p. 70.Google Scholar

14. Martin Buber wrote of the Hellerau lighting: ‘The material can appear now soft, now hard, now flat, now round. With its change changes the image of the space that alters the light from a narrow one to one that opens into the infinite, from one clear in all points to one mysteriously vibrating, from one signifying only itself to one intimating the unnamable. But it is itself something unnamable, this space. It is shaped by a principle whose name we do not yet know and of which we know only a symbol drawn from the senses: creative light.’ See Martin Buber and the Theater (New York, 1970), p. 82.

15. Appia, Adolphe, ‘Actor, Space, Light, and Painting’, an essay of about 1920, trans. Volbach, Walther, the Appia Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, p. 105 of the typescript.Google Scholar

16. Storck, Karl, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (Stuttgart, 1912), p. 98.Google Scholar

17. Breuer, Robert, ‘Hellerau’, Schaubuhne, VIII, 28–9 (1912), p. 50.Google Scholar

18. Seidl, Arthur, in Die Hellerauer Schulfeste (Regensburg, 1912), p. 41.Google Scholar

19. Marsop, Paul, quoted in Giertz, Gernot, Kultus Ohne Götter (Munich, 1975), p. 148.Google Scholar

20. Quoted by Edmond Stadler, op. cit., p. 445.

21. Appia, Adolphe, ‘Theatrical Experiences and Personal Investigations’, unpublished essay of about 1924, trans. Volbach, Walther, Appia Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, p. 379 of the typescript.Google Scholar

22. Quoted in Stadler, op. cit., p. 445.

23. Stadler, ibid., p. 445.

24. Wolkonski, in Feudel, op. cit., p. 23.

25. Adolphe Appia, unpublished letters to Henri Odier, of 9, 10 and 19 June 1913, Appia Archives, Swiss Theatre Collection, Bern, Switzerland.

26. Bonifas, H. C., ‘A propos des fêtes d'Hellerau’, Jeunesse Liltéraire, 29 06 1913.Google Scholar

27. Wolkonski, in Feudel, op. cit., p. 25–6.

28. Bonifas, op. cit.

29. Appia, Adolphe, The Work of Living Art, trans. Albright, H. D. (Coral Gables, 1960), p. 110.Google Scholar

30. Gordon Craig, letter to Appia of 4 May 1914, Appia Archives, Swiss Theatre Collection, Bern, Switzerland.

31. Sinclair, Upton, World's End (New York, 1940), p. 5.Google Scholar Sinclair opens his book by using Hellerau as a suggestive example of an attitude towards the humanizing force of art upon life which was soon to be brutally overwhelmed by the First World War.

32. Wolkonski, in Feudel, op. cit., p. 28–9.

33. Dent, op. cit., p. 139.

34. Storck, Karl, ‘Die Hellerauer Schulfeste’, Der Turmer, XV, 11 (1913), p. 707.Google Scholar

35. Bonifas, op. cit.

36. Wolkonski in Feudel, op. cit., p. 24.

37. Quoted in Giertz, Kultus Ohne Götter, p. 169, 167. In the autumn, Claudel staged his own Tidings Brought to Mary at Hellerau, without, however, enjoying the full collaboration of Dalcroze, Salzmann, or Appia. Appia wrote to his cousin, Henri Odier, on 21 Oct. 1913, two weeks after the opening: ‘At Hellerau the dramatic society which has nothing to do with Jaques or his pupils has had a disaster with the Tidings of Claudel. I wasn't very upset, I must admit. What folly, to want to use a room and material which are the particular representation of a grand idea and which only live because of it and through it! To put there the old declamatory games and nonsense! It's precisely new cloth on old costumes, only backwards. What is more, for the moment at least, and under the extreme form which I gave him, this mise en scene can only come to life through music. At least they've had some useful experience.' A letter to Walther Volbach dated 13 Aug. 1960 from a participant at Hellerau confirms Appia's contribution: ‘Yes, Appia made the designs for the Claudel drama, and I saw the production. It was extraordinary, imaginatively designed, quite simply with steps, levels, and light.’

38. Bonifas, op. cit.

39. Sinclair, op. cit., p. 5.

40. Wolkonski, in Feudel, op. cit., p. 29.

41. Karl Storck expressed the feeling of many who witnessed the work at Hellerau when he wrote: ‘Where has there ever been anything comparable from a school, much less from a new enterprise arising virtually from the ground up which, after only two years’ work, accomplished anything remotely as important?’ See ‘Die Hellerauer Schulfeste’, p. 707.

42. From article on ‘Jugendstil’, Die Welt, 16 April 1960.