“Overdue”

Concert Song as Seen explores the “minimal” physical performance of a singer cemented into the crook of a piano, performing an art song recital in which she may successively take on as many as 20 characters in the course of an hour, without benefit of scene partners, movement over the stage, costume or make-up, or even director. It turns the concept of “performance practice” on its ear, adding to the existing literature on the musical interpretation of the art song repertoire an examination of what actually happens on a visually perceived, bodily level in the singer’s performance. The book explores the rich connections between art song performance and the history of solo verbal and physical performances, such as rhetorical delivery during the Baroque period, melodramas of the nineteenth century, and oral interpretation of literature in the twentieth century.