Week 8: Performance Art - Moon night

My performance art piece is called “Moon night”. The title is derived from the piece I am singing in the performance, Mondnacht by Robert Schumann, which translates directly to “Moon night”. Mondnacht is a lied, or a form of German art song that rose in prominence in the Early Romantic Era. Lieder, which is written for voice and piano, focuses on visualizing a scene through the piano part and having the voice “narrate” the scene. Robert Schumann was one of the most prolific composers of lieder, writing hundreds in his relatively short lifetime. Mondnacht is a personal favorite of mine, having learned it early in my college career. The poetry describes an almost spiritual connection between the heavens and the Earth through nature, and the music portrays this by connecting a higher-pitched, shimmery melody to a lower, more grounded one. 

The performance was at a gazebo on Hoboken’s Pier A late at night, specifically with a view of the New York City skyline and the Hudson River in the background. Growing up in this area, views like these with only a sliver of the Hudson River and the ever-looming presence of the most highly populated city in the country were not only common but also my only connection to nature. My idea of a night sky is framed by glowing skyscrapers and the Earth being an urban landscape. While I am very appreciative for the location I grew up in, the nature of a piece like Mondnacht reminds me of the rapid urbanization that I am a part of.

The outfit I was wearing was a more traditional dress I would wear for a recital-style performance with a blazer over it. The classical music world is one stuck on strict gender roles. Voice types are expected to be gendered, with the assumption being that all sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, and contraltos are women and all tenors, baritones, and basses are men. Even when voice types overlap with one another (an AMAB person going into the traditionally AFAB range and vice versa), it’s noted. An AMAB person cannot be a soprano, they have to be a “boy soprano”. My existence in this highly gendered industry is difficult as I am a soprano who is very proud of their voice, but find myself in between genders, closer to the one opposite of my voice type. With this outfit, I combined the traditional performance attires of both genders, showing my “in-between” identity when it comes to gender.

I partially derived this performance from the work of Yoko Ono. Ono was classically trained in music and was inspired by art songs she learned when making her music and some of her performance art pieces, and lieder specifically was something she was trained in. While she took this training and ran in a completely different direction, I believe drawing back from classical training in experimental art is important. Teaching the rules to know how to break the rules, so to speak.