Julia Heimerdinger of the Vienna University of Tunes and Performing Arts examines how suicide is addressed in songs, what functions are fulfilled with it, and what legends are woven all-around individual songs.
Ludwig Hirsch sang of demise as a “significant black bird”, Billie Holiday getaway as a “black carriage of ache”, like a black carriage of mourning. What both song lyrics have in prevalent is that they inform of suicidal ideas. They are component of a custom that dates again to antiquity and to which Julia Heimerdinger of the Vienna College of Tunes and Accomplishing Arts (MDW) has been working for 7 years now. The musicologist examines how suicide is fashioned in tunes and its lyrics and to what extent the audience should really sympathize or be discouraged.
“permit me die”
Early evidence of suicidal tendencies in tunes can be uncovered in the Roman epic poet Virgil and in his pastoral tunes, in which he can take up the motif partly in the design of the Greek poet Theocritus. Baroque will work this sort of as “L’Arianna” (performed for the to start with time in 1608) by Claudio Monteverdi are joined with the “suicidal airs” to ancient myths and literature. “Arianna enters the water for the reason that her lover has sailed. She is rescued by the fishermen and then sings the lament “Enable me die,” says Heimerdinger. The tonic is D minor, ideal to the sadness and tragedy of the text.
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