The opera Aniara by Karl-Birger Blomdahl premiered in 1959 and gained much attention forcombining its general serial style with other musical stylistic elements, as it alludes to and citesworks of other styles such as romanticism and jazz. This circumstance was considered amongother things to have led to Aniaras success, as it made the modernistic music more accessible to ageneral audience. I analyse two scenes in Aniara which contain allusions to and citations ofEllington's Ko-ko, Alfvén's Midsommarvaka, Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, Beethoven's Ninthand the Swedish psalm Tryggare kan ingen vara regarding their intertextual meanings andaccording to Claudia Gorbman's theory of narrativity in film music. The overall function of theallusions and citations is to describe the conflicting emotions and mental states of the people ofthe spaceship Aniara: how they react to the occurring events during their voyage in space andtheir lack of hope. The intertextual references deepen the understanding of the narrative, and thesections with allusions are perhaps comparable to the aria in 1800th century opera, while themainly modernistic passages have a function similar to the drama-propelling recitative. Stylisticdiversity was not new in 20th century opera at the time of Aniara's premiere, however, the clearintertextuality of Blomdahl's allusions in service of narrative can be seen as ahead of its time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-134820 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Balogh, Alexandra |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för kultur och estetik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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