From Expresivity to theatrality, Schönberg, Kurtag and others

Abstract

This text is a reflection on the changes that vocal music has experienced during different periods of time, particularly the XXth century, departing from each author’s esthetics and throughout last century’s most influential works that are now a parameter for recent generations. Vocal music has evolved from an excessive expression to a technical acquisition that nourished from the face gesture or was based on it to leave behind its limits. It is clear that there is a connection of music and theater, but not as a fusion as it is in recent examples, in the same discourse that goes beyond the musicality in poetry or the immanence characteristic of the rhythm of speech.