The Tale of Januarie.
An opera in four acts (music by Julian Philips, Middle-English text after Chaucer by Stephen Plaice) for soloists, chorus, actor, large orchestra and on-stage band. Commissioned for the cross-departmental performing and production resources of Guildhall School of Music & Drama, published by Peters Edition. This multi-component single output is represented by vocal/full scores and a recording, the link to which is provided in the composite PDF (which also includes supporting contextual information).
- Submitting institution
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Guildhall School of Music & Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- PHIJULC
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘The Tale of Januarie’ is a main-scale opera conceived as a practice-based research contribution to the translingual strand of ‘Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community’, a large multi- and interdisciplinary project funded under the AHRC’s Open World Research Initiative. It embodies research in three main areas:
1. The construction of the work questions how our understanding of language functions inside opera’s different musical contexts. The familiar source material, Chaucer’s ‘Merchant’s Tale’, and relationship with modern English render the sung language strange yet familiar, while spoken text delivered by Priapus as both narrator (Act 1.b) and protagonist (Act 4.2c) ensures heightened audience sensitivity to text throughout.
2. The plasticity of Middle English (its softened final consonants and variety of stress, word-order and spelling) and its composite nature are exploited to question how language-as-instrument can project meaning through music. This enables diverse linguistic/musical registers – bawdy Anglo-Saxon (Act 2.3), courtly French (Act 2.2), ecclesiastical Latin (Act 1.6) – while Middle English malleability is systematically investigated for syllabic potential (e.g. manifested as playfulness, instrumentalising phonemes for comedic or dramatic effect, Act 1.4: Cok, Act 4.2c: Coo Coo).
3. The text-setting process investigated how synergies of the linguistic and non-linguistic function, especially in degrees of perception of meaningful patterns/conceits. A musical structure, deriving from Chaucer’s Four Seasons frame, is projected through burgeoning intervallic expansion, from Act 1 (Winter, ic 0, 1) to Act 4 (Autumn, ic 5, 6), supported by a partitioning of the orchestra and concertante ensemble in Pythagorean tuning (Act 1.5). This structural seed grows into musical characterisation married to the textual: May's blossoming linear patterns (Act 2.3) succeeding Januarie’s barren angularity (Act 1.2) and Janus-(i.e. Januarie-)faced palindromes (Act 1.2 b.1-46).
A document detailing further instances where the music engages with these three research areas is provided among the supporting contextual information.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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