MuzLink: Connected beeswarm timelines for visual analysis of musical adaptations and artist relationships

The rise of open data in the cultural domain is democratizing access to complex datasets usually presented as large multivariate and multilayered graphs. However, the exploration of such datasets is challenging for laypersons. The objective of this work is to develop and evaluate a new method for exploring and understanding a specific type of multilayered graph that combines a large bipartite graph with a set of tree structures. This paper proposes MuzLink, an interactive visualization tool that allows the user to navigate, search, locate, and compare collaborative and influential relationships between musical artists through the exploration of musical adaptations. The proposed tool is based on a set of connected timelines visualizing how an artist’s collaborations, inspirations, and influences evolved over time. This design study is conducted in close collaboration with BAnQ, the national library and archives agency of the Quebec government. A controlled user study, done with a group of BAnQ users, and two case studies, show how the proposed approach is capable of performing a considerable set of analytical and exploratory tasks.

Prelude

Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court offers a fascinating beginning to the study of musical adaptations of Arthurian legend. Similar and yet vastly different to the other sources considered in this book, Mark Twain harnesses the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table for a nineteenth-century American reader. Unlike ...

“I'll wait”: Crip-Queer Temporality and Reproductive Futurism in Musical Adaptations of Dürrenmatt's Der Besuch der alten Dame (The Visit of the Old Lady)

On 29 January 1956, a new play by up-and-coming Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt had its world premiere at the Zurich Schauspielhaus. From the stage of the venerable playhouse, the young playwright's “tragic comedy,” Der Besuch der alten Dame (lit.: The Visit of the Old Lady—a title I shall employ to distinguish it from a well-known but much-changed English adaptation), presented the story of billionairess Claire Zachanassian's return to her impoverished hometown after forty years. During those intervening decades, she used a string of strategic marriages to amass considerable financial assets, but lost a hand and a leg in various transportation accidents. The people of Güllen, a rundown town whose claim to fame is that Goethe once spent the night there, start off the play finalizing their plans for a strategic grand reception at the train station: they have high hopes of convincing their prodigal daughter to save them from poverty and return them to their former glory. That daughter, however, has justice—not salvation—on her mind for the cruel town that exiled her as an unwed, pregnant teenager. After secretly using her fortune to buy and close each of the town's factories, Claire has returned. At a banquet held in her honor, she offers the bankrupt town “one billion” in exchange for the communal murder of Alfred Ill, beloved citizen and father and heir apparent to the mayorship. He also happens to be the high-school sweetheart who perjured himself to betray Claire and the child they conceived all those years ago.

Peculiarities of Adaptation of the Novel by F.M. Dostoyevsky “The Idiot” in the Opera by M. Weinberg of the Same Name

The article is devoted to the issues of correlation between the literary source and the musical drama. The opera “The Idiot”, finished by the Russian composer Mieczysław Weinberg in 1986 and performed on the leading Russian stages in the creative season of 2016-2017, has become the object of scientific interest. The libretto written by A.V. Medvedev is based on the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky of the same name. Musical studies of Dostoevsky’s works started emerging during the life of the writer. It was expressed in the use of musical terminology in the criticism and scientific studies concerning literary works by F.M. Dostoevsky. In 1916, S.S. Prokofiev created the opera “The Gambler”, which became the first opera adaptation of the writer’s prose, congenial with the literary source. Since then, the creative heritage of the author of “Demons” has repeatedly attracted composers’ attention. Musical adaptations of Dostoevsky’s literary works today comprise more than seventy compositions in various genres. Operas are of particular interest, since dramatic and musical texts are equally important in conveying the implications of the writer’s novels. The specific features of the interaction of prose and musical drama in this article are revealed using the intertextual analysis methods, which highlight the relevance of the topic addressed. The libretto is studied as an important component of the opera in the light of the trends of the modern science of music. The techniques of the dramatist’s work with the literary source are considered. The libretto texts that are not introduced in the novel and their sources are revealed; the logics of the reference of the “The Idiot” opera creators to Dostoevsky’s meta-text and the legacy of other authors in the context of artistic conception are explained. The article determines the functions of the characters of the first and second action plan, gives their brief description and indicates their role in the dramaturgy of the opera

MusX: Online Exploring and Visualizing Graph-Based Musical Adaptations

This paper introduces MusX, a visualization-based system that helps to search and explore a large multivariate bipartite graph of artists and songs. An additional tree structure for the song nodes is also inherited from the musical adaptation relations. In tight collaboration with a public national library and archives institution, we propose a novel artist-centered interactive set of representations, focusing on several identified user tasks. This online system is targeted towards laypersons, willing to quickly navigate artists' body of songs and explore their relationships to other artists through their implication in song creation. In this paper, we present a detailed description of MusX along with design and technical considerations, and the demonstration scenarios we intend to present to the audience.

Muzlink: Three Level Connected Timelines for Artist-Centered Musical Adaptations Exploration

This design study tackles the visualization of a multivariate bipartite graph of artists (songwriters, composer, singer) and songs. Furthermore, this dataset has an additional tree structure for the song nodes, inherited from the musical adaptation relations. In tight collaboration with a national library and archives agency, we propose an artist-centered interactive representation, focusing on several identified user tasks. Data and task abstraction, design considerations, and a preliminary insight-based case study are presented.

Fidelity versus Freedom in Miloš Forman’s Film Version of Hair

This chapter looks at the 1979 film version of the stage musical Hair (1968) and the very different political climates in which each appeared. The chapter describes the film as a radical rewrite but also regards it as remaining faithful to the central ideas within the 1968 Broadway show, even returning key elements of the first off-Broadway production, in 1967. Charting the musical’s journey from stage to screen in meticulous detail, the chapter reveals how changing priorities and changing media brought about important shifts in Hair as a work. In particular, the rejection of a draft screenplay by the stage version’s book writers Rado and Ragni in favour of a new text by playwright Michael Weller meant that Hair on the screen was no longer a song cycle, or concept album but instead a completely new rendering by director Miloš Forman, who claimed to have ‘read’ political or social themes already present in the work. In this chapter, Hair becomes a new case study in the fidelity versus freedom debate on musical adaptations.

Music for Wilde: An Annotated Listing of Musical Adaptations of Works by Oscar Wilde

An annotated listing of documented musical adaptations of works by Oscar Wilde, including detailed information on composers, lyricists, performances (venues and dates) where available.

‘Reappropriating’ Romeo and Juliet: the Play Restored to Italy

The story of Romeo and Juliet has been reinvented in a number of musical adaptations. One of the boldest and most sophisticated attempts is Giulietta e Romeo (2007), a two-act Italian production with the music of the French-Italian singer and composer Riccardo Cocciante and with a libretto by the poet Pasquale Panella. As Cristina Paravano argues in this article, the work offers a unique opportunity to rethink Shakespeare and Italy from a suggestive contemporary Italian perspective. What distinguished this production from other musical adaptations was its strong intertextuality on a musical and textual level. By embracing forms of re-creation and re -vision, it created a profoundly and intrinsically Italian version of the story, drawing on and combining Italian musical, literary, and cultural traditions. The result was a combination of Cocciante's pop-rock background, contemporary pop-electronic music, operatic conventions and techniques, and Italian musical tradition, all filtered through the memory of Nino Rota's tunes written for Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. On the other hand, Panella's libretto taps into Shakespeare's Italian sources: while keeping to the Shakespearean plot line, the author adds interpolations from Luigi da Porto's Istoria novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti (1530) and Matteo Bandello's novella (1554, 2: IX). The present paper evaluates how this innovative rendition enacts a further exchange between England and Italy so that metaphorically Italy ‘reappropriates'’ its own story.