Schubert, Barthes, and Kristeva: Interdisciplinary Intersections in “Der Leiermann”
In this essay I will argue that a perpetual dialectic exists between a performer’s emotive, interpretive impulses and principles of vocal technique by employing concepts developed by Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Edward T. Cone. I will demonstrate this by sharing two recorded excerpts of Schubert’s “Der Leiermann,” each of which suggests a radically different conclusion to Winterreise’s narrative arc. The first recording features a vital, polished voice, while the second presents the aged, world-weary tone of an elderly protagonist staring straight at Death itself. Despite the refined technique and execution in the first recording, the singer’s compromised vocal condition in the second recording somehow renders the interpretation more deeply profound and evocative.
In “The Grain of the Voice,” Roland Barthes cites Julia Kristeva’s concepts of the phenotext and genotext to compare the styles of two different singers (Barthes 1977, 182–3). However, another of Kristeva’s models, the Semiotic Chora, is more readily applicable to the process of signification that occurs in a performance. Kristeva’s Chora is the space between two polarities wherein a subject oscillates continuously between emotive, pre-linguistic drives and socio-linguistic structures that allow for signification (Kristeva 2002, 35–9). Similarly, a singer may maintain an approach that is consistent with healthy vocal technique, abandon such technique to imbue the performance with a greater sense of his or her emotive, dramatic impulses, or fuse these approaches in limitless ways. Edward T. Cone argues that by entering into this process, performers exhibit agency equal to that of the poet and composer (Cone 1974, 22–3). This interdisciplinary intersection provides performers and listeners with additional tools to render and interpret a given performance in a manner that transcends traditional models of performance and criticism.
In this essay I will argue that a perpetual dialectic exists between a performer’s emotive, interpretive impulses and principles of vocal technique by employing concepts developed by Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Edward T. Cone. I will demonstrate this by sharing two recorded excerpts of Schubert’s “Der Leiermann,” each of which suggests a radically different conclusion to Winterreise’s narrative arc. The first recording features a vital, polished voice, while the second presents the aged, world-weary tone of an elderly protagonist staring straight at Death itself. Despite the refined technique and execution in the first recording, the singer’s compromised vocal condition in the second recording somehow renders the interpretation more deeply profound and evocative.
In “The Grain of the Voice,” Roland Barthes cites Julia Kristeva’s concepts of the phenotext and genotext to compare the styles of two different singers (Barthes 1977, 182–3). However, another of Kristeva’s models, the Semiotic Chora, is more readily applicable to the process of signification that occurs in a performance. Kristeva’s Chora is the space between two polarities wherein a subject oscillates continuously between emotive, pre-linguistic drives and socio-linguistic structures that allow for signification (Kristeva 2002, 35–9). Similarly, a singer may maintain an approach that is consistent with healthy vocal technique, abandon such technique to imbue the performance with a greater sense of his or her emotive, dramatic impulses, or fuse these approaches in limitless ways. Edward T. Cone argues that by entering into this process, performers exhibit agency equal to that of the poet and composer (Cone 1974, 22–3). This interdisciplinary intersection provides performers and listeners with additional tools to render and interpret a given performance in a manner that transcends traditional models of performance and criticism.