MUSIC AS LANGUAGE OF COMMUNICATION: THE SOUND OF MUSIC (ENGLISH AND LINGUISTIC PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
Introduction
This paper concentrates on the efficaciousness of music to the human psyche and its communicative inherence; it deliberates on its sonorous alluring effects in softening a heart that seems inflexible with its powerful suasions, as well as on its rhythmic harsh resonance in rebuffing an unacceptable behaviour in the society. Music as an art form, like every other arts, in spite of its particularity for organizing sounds, the supreme aim of music is to communicate to its audience, to project a musical discourse from a source (singer) to a recipient (listener). Aristotle postulated that music is one of the six elements of drama (tragedy) by saying that the “song-composition of the remaining parts is the greatest of the sensuous attraction” (93). Indeed the sensuousness of music has a strong pulling on listeners, and because it has consistently be part of the theatre.
The Sound of Music as a filmic medium, transported and adapted to the theatrical medium onto the stage bears numerous communication elements. Hence if this topic should be typified under any performative or theatrical genre, for the sake of nomenclature, considering the syncretisation of dramatic features and musical features, better say, hybridization of drama and theatre, it then stands asa case of musical theatre.
Arts as the Fulcrum of Communication
It is an established phenomenon for centuries that all forms of arts have messages and aesthetically communicate to us in varying creative dimensions.Without arts, apparently there would be no communication. The whole gamut of arts, traditional and contemporary, encompasses activities as diverse as:
Architecture, music, opera, theatre, dance, painting, sculpture, illustration, drawing, cartoon, printmaking, ceramics, stained glass, photography, installation, video, film and cinematography, to name but a few (Art Glossary, Encyclopaedia of Art).
All the above forms of arts communicate to man but in differing medium. The performing arts which is commonly referred to as public performance events broadly consist of acrobatics, busking, dance, drama, marching arts (brass bands), music and many others, all communicate messages to their audiences in unique ways. The plastic and visual arts which have to do with painting, sculpture, film and photograph also communicate to us. One thing we cannot underestimate about the arts is the preponderance of its whole valuable messages pointing at, and feeding man. Speaking of the sole aim of the arts, Jack Bornoff unequivocally states that, “the whole of the work of art, its all- embracing message, is directed at the whole man, his intellectual and spiritual being, his emotions-perhaps even to the subliminal” (20). Another undeniable feature of all arts is that they are imitational and representational, that is, they either imitate nature or represent reality, and their source is life and nature and social realities.
Hence focusing on the functionality of music as a performing art in theatre productions.The commonly known or conventional role of music in theatre production is the interlude (a musical composition inserted between the parts of a longer composition, a drama, or a religious service), such as the chorus in the Greek theatre; just to foreshadow and to fill in the “inaction” time of a dramatic plot, a fragmentary role to sum it up. John Russell Brown’s testimony about this is just as remarkable as he states that, “Music that is played or sung is signaled by stage directions, and its contribution to how the play works is usually limited to particular moments” (45). However, the place of music in the performing art is quite invaluable irrespective of the limited allotment usually given for its interlude role in the total theatre;John Russell Brown further throws more light on that “Music sustains its effect over longer time spans than words do, and, when sung by a particular character, it holds back other dramatic development for its duration” (45). This obviously points out the effective power of music; this intriguing feature of music is one vehement functionality that manifested in TheSound of Music on the live theatre at the Open Air Theatre, University of Abuja. If music could hold such magnitude of effect, how about when a whole play is like a collection or a piece of music? John Russell Brown also gives a smuganswer by stating that:
