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‘I'm not ill, I'm nervous’ – madness in the music of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Ruud Welten
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Extract

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's fascination for madness is clearly reflected in at least three of his works: Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969), Miss Donnithonie's Maggot (1974) and Caroline Mathilde (1991). What are the consequences of this fascination for his music? How can madness in Davies's oeuvre be understood? In this article I will argue that, in spite of all his modernistic aspirations, Sir Peter's work shows a postmodernist tendency expressed iii the regular occurrence of the theme of madness, and the way it is disseminated through his music.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 196 , April 1996 , pp. 21 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Subject: ‘the observing agency’. ‘The observed agency’ is then object.

2 Th. Adorno, W., Philosophic tier neueu Musik (Frankfurt am Main, 1949) p. 157 Google Scholar.

3 Ibid, p.161.

4 Ibid, p. 166.

5 Foucault too, in his archeology of power, shows how the rise of absolute monarchies presupposes a constituted subject. Carl Gustav Jung saw the king and his court as the archetype of the inner domain of man. The king represents the dominant power in our consciousness, individually or collectively.

6 Foucault, M., Histoire tie la folie à I'âge classique, (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar.

7 Ibid. p. 175.

8 Ibid, p.282.

9 Davies, Sir Peter Maxwell, Preface to the score of Eight Songs for a Mail King (London, 1969)Google Scholar.