Stroking the notion of 'divine frenzy', Andy observed: 'Cornelius was
explicit about what Ficino actually did. We know that music, images,
poetry, (not to mention fumigations and coloured lights) all have an
effect - that's why we do them. Bring them all together and the effects can
be great. Add to that a willing, and intellectually prepared, subject and
the effects could be even greater.'
While this seems to me an aside rather than a development of Shirley's
original post, it is an aside I'd like to amplify because we can trace a
thread from here to contemporary popular culture as exemplified by the rock
concert and the dance party.
I remember M.C. Bradbrook's 'The Rise of the Common Player' (Harvard
University Press, 1962), where it was noted that; 'The theatre of the
Elizabethans, in its social atmosphere, was less like the modern theatre
than it was like a funfair....Merriment, jigs and toys followed the
performance: songs, dumbshows, fights, clown's acts were interlaced.'
This is a considerable remove from inducing 'divine frenzy', however it
anticipates (and may even inform) Filippo Marinetti's futurist concept of
'fisicofollia' (body-madness) where a montage of attractions (music-hall
routines, circus acts, folk songs and dances, skits, costume ballet) is
intended to excite the audience into fervour.
As Marrin Carlson noted in 'Performance' (Routledge, 1996): 'Francis
Picabia's ballet 'Relache' in 1924 featured interaction with the audience,
various "performances" interspersed with the main action such as a
chain-smoking fireman pouring water from one bucket to another and a
stagehand chugging across the stage in a small automobile trailing balloons,
a tableau vivant of Cranach's "Adam and Eve", film clips, and blinding
lights in the eyes of the audience. In his review of the production, Fernand
Leger praised the work for surmounting the boundaries of ballet and music
hall: "author, dancer, acrobat, screen, stage, all the means of 'presenting
a performance' are integrated and organised to achieve a total effect."'
And Antonin Artaud, in 'The Theatre of Cruelty (1st Manifesto)' directed
such elements specifically towards the induction of divine frenzy: 'Cries,
groans, apparitions, surprises, theatricalities of all kinds, magic beauty
of costumes taken from certain virtual models; resplendent lighting,
incantational beauty of voices, the charms of harmony, rare notes of music,
colours of objects, physical rhythm of movements where crescendo and
decrescendo will accord exactly with the pulsation of movements familiar to
everyone, concrete appearances of new and surprizing objects, masks,
effigies yards high, sudden changes of light, the physical action of light
which arouses sensations of heat and cold, etc.'
Speaking in my professional capacity as former Tour Supervisor (SFX) for
Metallica and Janet Jackson, I believe that the contemporary events industry
(despite its technical sophistication) has never surpassed the court
spectacles designed by da Vinci in 1490 and Bernini in 1638.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|