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Article: Alternative vocalities: listening awry to Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King.(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Mosaic (Winnipeg)
- Article date:
- June 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 University of Manitoba, Mosaic. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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On 22 April 1969, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Pierrot Players presented a new "music theatre" work by British composer Peter Maxwell Davies, entitled Eight Songs for a Mad King. It was a veritable succes de scandale. Scored for male vocalist and chamber ensemble, Davies's work, based on a libretto by Randolph Stow, is a musical-theatrical examination of the "madness" of King George III. Over the course of eight songs, the vocalist, who appears to act the role of the "mad" King, engages in a series of delusional musings to himself and feverish exchanges with the members of the chamber ensemble, whom he casts as personages or entities in his fantasies. The ...