The sound of a character
(2016)
author(s): Meric Artac
published in: Codarts
Art branches have nourished and affected each other for centuries. They formed common disciplines
and evolved into new formats. Interdisciplinary relationships have offered the artist enrichment of
artistic expressions.
Music Theater is a concept that brings together music and theater disciplines, and during it’s history it
evolved into different forms. Composers’ goal to merge their compositions with performing arts
formed a basis for forms like Opera, Singspiel, Operetta and Musical. Argentinian composer Mauricio
Kagel introduced the term “New Music theatre” for new forms of music theatre that are different than
the before mentioned traditional forms.
These musical genres, involve stories, various characters, and dramatic situations. For a composer who
incorporates visual art, the score is most of the time related to the story and its characters.
The composer who is also the stage director builds a bridge between two art forms and creates a world
of sound in which she connects music and theater. The particular sound world of a visual aspect has
changed through the centuries within art movements, and each composer presented to the audience
their own adaptation of a story and the sound of their characters in different forms.
This study explores a composer who incorporates visual art’ formed of music, and how this
incorporation is staged.
Unifying two strong art disciplines like theatre and music, the strength of this combination, and the
idea that each theater character carries out a different color and sound increased my desire to improve
myself in this field. I was introduced to this world which combines theatrical and musical elements
during my Master studies, and It was my ambition to write the story of my pieces, develop the
characters as well as the music.