A Survey On The Theatricality Performance Of Schumann's Song Cycles

Schumann has been known as a musical poet,whose song cycles contain very high literary factors,and would play an important role in training the aesthetic capacity of students,bettering their musical and literary learning. For many years,however,people pay special attention to the lyricism of his song cycles,and put the theatricality aspect aside. To much extent,this is closely related to the fact that when we refer to theatricality, we simply mean the dramatic aspect of the theatricality of opera. In this thesis,we shall give a precise survey of theatricality aspect in Schumann's song cycles,and aim to provide theoretical criterion and practical guide to the performances.Through the analysis,we detect that,there are abundant theatrical aspects in the contents of poems,musical rhythms and emotional expression terms in Schumann's song cycles and embodies as follows: The protagonist's inner emotional conflicts are manifested in the lyrics; the heroes'emotional changes are showed in melodic colors; the emotional characteristics of them are revealed in emotional expression terms.Such an important feature of Schumann's song cycles inspired us a lot on performing his works better: One could deduct his song cycles wonderfully as long as we do as these: Above all,deepen understanding should conceive of the lyrics and thoughts of the song cycles; meanwhile,motion design and performance should accord with each other, singing in harmony with the accompaniment; last but not least,we should tell the differences between the theatricality in song cycles and operas.More over,the overall understanding of Schumann's song cycles would play an important role in our teaching of vocal music. To be precise,it would help us to understand the characteristics of the 19th century German and Austrian Art Songs,improve the co-ordination ability of students and their piano accompaniments; and strength the breath control,training,coherent and unified voice.