David Lang’s Postminimalist Musical Theater

Abstract

The article explores issues of the American musical theater of the nineteenth century, fruitfully developing on the basis of postminimalism. Among the brightest representatives of this style is the composer David Lang (1957), a member of the group “Bang on a Can”. His theatrical projects of the last two decades demonstrate a new phase in the development of postminimalist theater, the foundation of which was laid by his older contemporaries, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams. Using the example of stage works — “The Difficulty of Crossing a Field” (2002), “Prisoner of the State” (2019), and “Anatomy Theater” (2016) — the author identifies the main features of Lang’s musical and theatrical style and traces a close relationship with the operas of his predecessors. They are brought closer by the appeal to postmodern dramaturgy (fragmentation, discreteness, commentarity), social problems, the desire for genre uniqueness of each performance, repetitive methods of organizing musical facture. In his theatrical work, Lang relies on postminimalism and repetitive technique, which manifests itself at different levels — dramatic, verbal (repetition of syllables, words, phrases in the libretto) and musical. A characteristic feature of Lang’s stage opuses is the synthesis of academic opera traditions and non-academic genres and directions (Musical, jazz, rap), which allows us to draw analogies with the art of crossovers. The Musical in some cases acts as the genre basis of the work (non-academic vocals, dances, a speech episodes). Lang’s theater is a chamber theater, it assumes a small composition of participants, placement of vocalists and orchestra members on the stage, laconic timing of plays. All these factors allow us to make an assumption about the formation in Lang’s musical and theatrical work of the next phase of the evolution of postminimalism, which can be characterized as postpostminimalism.