Ru
EnA. Naumov
Word and music in B. Ferdinandov’s stage productions: “Oedipus the King”
The article is based on documents from the archive of the director B. Ferdinandov and has a purpose of introducing the materials of the production based on Sophocles’ tragedy “Oedipus the King” translated by V. Shershenevich, staged at the Moscow Experimental Heroic Theatre in the autumn of 1921. Ferdinandov used a specific technique of text delivery, combined with very parsimonious plastique – yet with a welldeveloped musical background. This was the first experience of consistently used “measure and rhythmical method” invented by the author and further extended to the visual and audible components of productions. Composer Evgeniy Pavlov was an important collaborator of the director during the work on Oedipus. Only fragments of clavier of the music he composed for the production have survived, but even they provide an idea of the significance of the musician’s contribution to the musical plot of the production. Apparently being well acquainted with the work of their contemporaries, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov and others, Ferdinandov and Pavlov introduced an almost exhaustive number of textual and musical combinations into the production: singing, metrical and rhythmical recitation, free text pronunciation in the old melodrama style. The correlation of theory and practice, identification of typical methods of linking music and words in a performance constitute the range of academic aims of the article. With such a careful documentation, it is not difficult to imagine a reconstruction of a production of 1921 on the contemporary stage, which in part is consonant with Ferdinandov’s own ideas of a “theatre as a museum”: productions from previous epochs in various styles would prepare modern public for new experiments, justifying them and linking the present to the past. This is the main finding of the study. Another significance of the surviving materials, also envisaged by their creator, is the possibility of their use as a teaching aid for drama artists, just as relevant today for singers.
Key words
B. Ferdinandov, Experimental Heroic Theatre, “Oedipus the King”, Sophocles, recitation, rhythmic declamation.
For citation
Naumov A. Word and music in B. Ferdinandov’s stage productions: “Oedipus the King” // South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2023. No. 3. Pp. 85-92.
