The Art Of Recitation And Declamation
GA 281
Marie Steiner Seminar
It is not a matter of
observing the temporary,
but the eternal that
lives in man must be observed more and more. —Marie SteinerPreliminary Remarks: The “seminar” — the term was coined by Dr. Steiner — came about because she was unable to come up to the daily lessons in the hall of the Rudolf Steiner-Halde for some time due to a broken arm, and therefore convened a group of about twelve to fourteen personalities — some of them members of her Dornach acting group, but some of them also those who were already active in the field of language in various cities - to work with them through the text examples for the book “Rudolf Steiner: The Art of Recitation and Declamation,” which she was just publishing at the time, with a view to teaching them later. This course, so lively and sparkling, also had a very intimate, personal character due to the limited number of participants. We were all beginners, only a short time, about a year and a half, their students. The following notes were intended for colleagues and friends who were unable to attend the sessions, in order to give them at least a small impression of this work. These notes are all about corrections to what we have attempted, which were given to us in the moment of activity – pointing the way forward. —Gertrud Redlich
Some notes on the LANGUAGE EXERCISES with a view to later teaching:
Articulation exercises
The breath stream should only be mentioned in a later lesson. Try to speak at the front of the lips, to articulate well, so that you bring the language forward. The two main mistakes that occur are palatal and head sounds.
That he lied to you and must not praise it
Don't take nuns in never-ending mills.
Take the I out with the consonants. N and M guide the I sound out well. Feel the directions. Envelop the I with N and M. These consonants resonate and take the I with them.
Learn to listen!
Redlich ratsam
Rüstet rühmlich
Riesig rächend
Ruhig rollend
Reuige Rosse
only articulate. First, pay attention to the consonants so that they lead out the vowels. Then you can tell the students to live more in the vowel, to feel it, to experience the sounds, to be in the sounds.
Knead air dough
Ostentatiously extols
Baths brünstig
Rumblingly cute
Bieder tinkering
Powder patzend
Bergig brüstend
Breathing exercises
Fulfillment comes
Through hope
Through yearning
Through wanting
Wanting blows
In the weaving
It blows in the quivering
It weaves quivering
It weaves bindingly
In the finding
It winds finding
announcing
This exercise can be very helpful for those who are short of breath; it must sound full. The breathing technique is the opposite of that of a singer, who directs their breath. Here you have to learn to exhaust it all at once. This is how you achieve fullness and roundness.
Breathing exercises teach us to speak musically. You have to be objective when doing the exercises, not bring in anything balladic, pathetic or lyrical, but speak soberly and prosaically but phonetically. Do not take pitches that have an emotional effect. Pictorial imagery is not absolutely necessary here.
In the immeasurable vastness,
In the endless times,
In the depths of the human soul,
In the revelation of the world:
Search for the great riddle's solution.
Use the first four lines, especially N, well. Experience the horizontal in “in the times”, the vertical in “in the depths”, a large wave downwards, a large O in “world revelation”.
The message in the last line is figurative.
The flowing of the breath must take you along, shading “Human Soul Depths” a little deeper, tone and breath down. The language needs urgency, one Flin involving the other, a loving laying into the vowels.
You need strong breathing for this exercise, you learn to speak with the inhalation and shape it. “Search” to shed some light. Challenge, seriously! First lines – Flinausgehen in den Kosmos.
Fluency exercises
Lalle Lieder lieblich
Lipplicher Laffe
Lappiger lumpiger
Laichiger Lurch
Experience the waves that the L makes, this is how it brings out the sound. Develop joy in things. The exercise is effervescent and, in affect, says something pictorial – affective-humorous.
You have to learn the fluency exercises by purring them, they are meant to make the speech tools pliable.
Speak on the lips, start at the front, purr lightly!
The articulation exercises are intended to make you aware of the speech tools. The voice should be based solely on the sound.
Whistle cleverly
Horses priestly
Plows nurturing
Peaching peaches Whistling cleverly from bowls
Slipping priestly horses
Bouncing nursing plows
Peaching peaches knotting Whistling cleverly out of bowls
Hatching horse-drawn horses
Hopping over plows
Tying up peaches Heretics now tell tales pitifully
Ultimately slightly skeptical Heretics now snitch pitifully
Ultimately suddenly slightly skeptical
Also on the lips and slightly.
Sling snake quickly
Wound away finds Winding snake snake
Quickly snake snake away
Very light, at the front.
Contrary to force, though
Two-purpose zwickers too little
Twenty dwarves
The sinewy crabs
safely seeking feasting
That smacking Schmachter
snugly quickly
purring flicks
To a Russian-speaking participant: Roll the R less. The German must be able to adjust the R according to the neighboring consonants. Bring it forward!
Only never regret
Greedily grinning
Knots snapping
Pledges knotting
You should use these exercises to feel in which region you are speaking.
Once again, breathing exercises :
It is very important that one also creates good consonant connections in which the sound (vowel) can live. One gradually learns to feel one's breathing without being held back by the imagination. To do this, it is good to practice some words in reverse:
wollen - nellow, eva - ave, etc.
In “Fulfillment,” learn to let go of the breath, to let yourself fall with the breath into the words.
We must gradually achieve penetration of consciousness.
Breathing exercises serve to make us aware of the breathing current.
Articulation exercises to make us aware of the speech tools.
The “immeasurables” also involve directing the breath. The words are steered like boats over the waves, gradually swelling to the fourth line.
When you tell your students about breathing, you may say that you are not committed to any particular method. You learn to practice your breathing with the sounds themselves; your breathing is directed by itself when the sounds are spoken well.
You learn to hold your breath with the five vowels in a sustained stream of breath: A-E-I-O-U.
Send upwards
longing desire
Send forwards
thoughtful striving
Send backwards
conscientious reflection.
Learn to swim with your breath and listen to the sounds. You should start modulating as soon as you send. Feel what consonant connections do to each vowel, for example: n-d in send.
Take three pitches!
Do not hold the things on a string, feel the sounds and resonate with them. The stream of movement must take you with it. There is an essence in these things.
This essence must take you with it, not we must hold it close to our hearts.
Weigh your volition clearly,
direct your feeling aright,
make your thinking rigid:
rigid thinking upholds,
right feeling maintains,
clear volition follows
the deed.
When speaking the last line, lead away from the musical and into movement.
Set your feeling aright: soul-line.
Steal your thinking: rigidly, rhythmically! The sounds themselves set the voice; one has only to yield to them. The voice sets itself according to the sounds. What precedes and follows always colors the things.
One should gradually develop a sense for the difference between artistic lines and intellectual and emotional speech. One must learn to go through to the end with the ego and not always stop intellectually.
When portraying voices from the beyond, for example angels or Madonnas and so on, one would have to learn to stop before it all comes into the imagination. Sentimentality stops right away and is self-indulgent, and therefore not spiritually true. Movement makes it true.
Clear volition follows: look artistically, not want yourself!
You find yourself:
Searching in world distances,
Striving for world heights,
Fighting in world depths.
First line from the conscious will. The breathing person continues through all incarnations, he is more spiritual than the feeling person.
The base nose ate flour
Lawn mass scratched bare
The A long and strong into it. The exercise is actually intended to counter nasal speech, but it can also be used as an A exercise.
Storm-word rumbles around gate and tower
Newt-worm drills through gate and tower
Stupidly, worm-newt rages through gate and tower
This precedes the exercise. It is also very suitable for speaking in the breathing stream. Nuance! The first line is not dramatic, but very dark in the speech stream, like the wind that bypasses. Newt-worm drills: not mentally, not dramatically. Loud. Movement – breath.
Rages foolishly: very dark, dull and bumpy.
At the O, the hard palate must make a bulge.
These three lines are all tuned to U, only differing in movement; the U must be superimposed on the O.
There must always be an increase at the end (newt-worm, worm-newt).
An egg is whitish, whitish is an egg
Lead is new in the litter, new in the litter is lead
The maiden is bluish, bluish is maidenly.
is good practice for squeezed lute. Simple and concrete and out.
Hot, radiant, spiky
strands support tight
nets, useful as
strict paws, strict
folded
a strong articulation exercise! Good for sagging soft palate. The alternation of plosives with L and R sprinkled in between tightens the soft palate. The vowels go into the consonants and are defeated by them.
For pointed and sharp voices:
Walle Welle willig
Leise lispeln lumpige Lurche lustig
Gently flow with L, feel the wave motion, L and W bring out.
Is a stumbling star
Master of mystical stages
Always stand firm on the road
Of earnest endeavor
Standing still and stern
Before the steps of constant endeavor
In a constant mood.
Bring the sound forward, without any inner compassion. Go into the consonant connections and bend them nicely. The exercise is good for those who stutter.
White brightness shines into the black darkness
The black darkness seizes the feeling soul
The feeling soul longs for the white brightness
The white brightness is the willing soul drive
The willing soul drive finds the white brightness
In the white brightness, the longing soul weaves
to learn nuance! You have to keep returning to the repetitive rhythm, letting the breath flow like a wind and using the imagination for nuances; also learning to take breaks every now and then. Movement, movement – don't get stuck in the singing!
How do you explain the hexameter to your students? It is the primal meter. The human organism itself solves the riddle that is given in the meter. You can trace the meter back to the human organism, breath and pulse. There are four pulses in one breath.
Practice the first lines of Goethe's “Achilleis”.
The mighty blaze flared up once more
, reaching for the sky, and the walls of Iios appeared
red through the dark night; the towering forest
's immense structure, collapsing, aroused
mighty glow at last. Then Hector's bones descended, and the ashes of the noblest Trojan lay on the ground.
There are two breaths and two times four pulses (three dactyls and one caesura) in each hexameter. Example: “Sing, O Muse, of the wrath...”
The relation of the pulse to the breath is the basis for the influence of higher beings through blood and breathing.
We will now try to understand the DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RECITATION AND DECLAMATION by practicing the two “Iphigenias”.
From “Iphigenia”
(Weimar version):
Come out, you shadows, ever-moving treetops of the sacred grove, as if into the sanctuary of the goddess I serve, I step with ever-new awe, and my soul does not get accustomed to being here!
(Roman version):
Come out, you shadows, ever-moving treetops
Of the old, sacred, densely leafy grove,
As in the goddess's silent sanctuary,
I still enter with a shuddering feeling,
As if I were entering it for the first time,
And my spirit does not get used to it here.
The “Roman Iphigenia” lives in the symmetry of the metric; in the “German Iphigenia,” I have to vault, point, and intensify from the inner, tonal will element, which vaults and points at the end of the sentence (clamare). Here it is an approach to the oppressive.
Try to understand and develop artistic lines. The content of the two Iphigenias is the same, the artistic line is different.
In the German: high and low tones, strong life in the exhalation, expelling the breath. In the Roman, a musical conducting and use of inhalation. It must not come to the performance, the image is intercepted on the way to the performance, one breathes in the air that flows in by itself.
In order for it to become declamation, the will must be held back and not allowed to flow into the outside world. In order for it to become recitation, the imagination must be held back, remaining in musical enjoyment.
Inhalation is used to speak to everything spiritual, for example, Rudolf Steiner's weekly sayings.
The benefit lies in the musical practice, not in the enjoyment of one's own personality. In this way everything becomes more real, nobler and truer. We gradually learn to illuminate all regions with our consciousness. In the flowing breath, the sculpture dissolves musically.
Two poems are practised, one recited, the other declaimed.
Goethe: “Charon” - recitative (text see p. 31)
“Olympos” - declamatory (text see p. 30)
Before that, some language exercises: Hitzige strahlige / Walle, Welle / Ist strauchelnder / Weiße Helligkeit (for texts, see pp. 169-70).
“Olympos” is shaped entirely from the folk-like, the epic, which pushes everything out of the will, bloodily, toweringly increasing. Pauses! Magnificent images that are thrown down, rough, angular, hard like jagged mountains. Will and contempt. The bird of prey must be characterized, it eats the carcass soundlessly, only in the breath. Start at the soft palate and arch, making the hard palate flatter.
“Charon” is recitative-like, metrical. This is where antiquity comes in, with composed, digested images; the other poem lives in the midst of modern events.
In “Charon” it is more the rhythmic, the musical, the mood and the painting, not high and low tones, but not always the same tempo, otherwise you get no nuances. Not soulful, defensive movements in metrical uniformity and dark shading.
“Heidenröslein” (Goethe); “Erlkönigs Tochter” (Herder) (see pages 28/29 for texts).
“Heidenröslein”: shape the words in the air, but don't stick to the words. It's movement and image. See the image clearly. The little dialog is somewhat dramatic; this is where the declamatory element of will comes in. It's like a folk song, especially in the refrain.
“Erlkönigs Tochter”: it is epic with a strong dramatic impact. One must carve out the dramatic element and the mood. The treatment is recitative-like with a strong dramatic impact. It becomes dramatic when some character takes on a life of its own. But if you let yourself be carried away by your personal temperament, you have lost your style. Don't lose the rhythm that ennobles the whole. Rhythm contains the most diverse movements. The drama seduces, it is tempting to remain stylistically correct. A mysterious mood of fairy tales and legends prevails throughout the poem, so you have to let the vowels slip into the consonants. The poem contains many possibilities for differentiation. Configure it so that you drop the insignificant and change the tempo. Take breaks to create atmosphere. These people – mother, bride – have intuitions that you can shape in the pauses.
A reciter must be proficient in all subjects and must be able to differentiate. Do not work the vowels so strongly; then they are more transparent. Let them slip into the consonants. The mother's pain is to be shaped out of the region of the will, detached from the personal. This is a matter of breathing and technique. Learn to live in the sounds, not so connected with the content. It is a ghostly event, and this gives the color. You have to make it interesting, uncovering backgrounds. Make the diphthongs transparent for the mother, then the spiritual can shine through and the whole thing becomes nobler.
When the vowels are pierced, the spiritual always enters.
LANGUAGE As the greatest miracle that the mind accomplished,
I praise language, which, otherwise lost
In deepest solitude, was born of itself,
Because it alone made the others possible. Yes, when I consider its reason and purpose,
Then only language has conjured up the heavy curse
To which, chosen to be a dull individual,
He would have succumbed before he even woke. For if the unsearchable One and All,Friedrich Hebbel
With this sonnet we must be calm, not conceptual, but flexible and musically plastic. Speak with inhalation, then there is abundance, and make small pauses. Artistically shape the pauses at the right place, do not inhale unmotivated.
A mood of being saturated with enthusiasm through experience and volition. The poem is very strict; the down inflections indicate maturity. Flebbel is superb.
One must always have the poet's basic mood in the poems.
TO THE AERials All-eternal and infinite ether!
Through the narrowest, as through the widest, it flows!
Excluded from no ring of existence!
Still wafted by every breath of life! The only representative of the unexplored!
Its first and most worthy offspring!
The only one in deepest tranquility enveloped!
Opposite you, I too become a supplicant! My roaming eye, that would embrace you so gladly,
Closes in awe before you, ere it fails,
For the gaze comprehends nothing but its own limitations. So also my spirit before God, for it recognized
That it, embraced, never expands so much
to entwine itself around the All-embracing One again. Friedrich Hebbel
One must feel the waves of the ether. A sonnet does not tolerate declamation.
From Rudolf Steiner's “Mysteries Dramas” (“The Portal of Initiation”, seventh scene): PHILIA:
I will fulfill myself
With the clearest light
From the world's widths,
I will breathe in myself
Invigorating sound
From the ether's depths,
So that you, beloved sister,
Can succeed in your work. ASTRID:
I will interweave
Radiant light
With dimming darkness,
I will condense
The sound of life.
It shall resound glisteningly,
It shall resound glitteringly,
So that you, beloved sister,
can direct the soul's rays. LUNA:
I will warm soul substance
And will harden life ether.
They shall condense,
They shall feel each other,
And being within themselves,
Shall sustain each other,
So that you, beloved sister, Can give the searching human soul Certainty of knowledge. PHILIA:
I will beseech the spirits of the world, That the light of their being Enchant the soul's sense,And the sound of their words Make the spirit's ear glad; So that the one to be awakened May rise On paths of the soul To the heights of heaven. ASTRID:
I will direct the currents of love,
Warming the world,
To the heart
Of the initiate;
So that he can bring
Heaven's kindness
To earthly activity,
And a spirit of devotion
To the children of men. LUNA:
I will beg of elemental forces
Courage and strength,
And place them in the seeker's heart;
In the depths of his heart;
So that trust
In one's own self
Can accompany him through life.
He shall feel safe
In himself then.
He shall pluck from moments
the ripe fruits
and draw seeds from them
for eternities.
Regarding this scene with the soul forces:
Here we have completely musically resolved plastic. The words must resound out in the cosmos. One must catch the inhalation, otherwise the otherworldly will not come out. Without this breathing treatment, one cannot resolve musically. With full breath, with too much breath, one cannot do spiritually resolved. It depends on the dosage, one must divide the doses. One should also glide over the auxiliary verbs. Nuances of major!
Luna – Prime Minister, Maria – Supreme Queen.
Truth is always connected with being there with the I the whole time and always going along with things. Truth is always simple. This is achieved by tapering the sounds, not thickening them.
The first thing in artistic speech formation is: learn to yawn! The other: keep the style!
Two sonnets by Novalis (see texts on pages 32/33)
These two sonnets are very recitative-like and very transparent, very calm and – very difficult!
We will start by working on the form, everything else will follow later – for example, the feeling. Our task now is to work on style and form.
Novalis is absolutely a man of the I. You have to feel from the beginning that there is a lofty I behind it. The I-nature can eternally get into everything. Major! In the beginning, it is better to be somewhat forceful, vary the word gestures – and live in the imagination. Maturity, relationship to the supersensible.
Novalis must be spoken in the same way as one who stands in the concrete experience of the spiritual world. The word gestures must grab you immediately.
Consonance. Operate with what comes to your mouth anyway.
If you have to breathe in again, don't drop the word before it, but hold it up. Zändende I-moments in the entries, making the vowels transparent, always being poetic.
Novalis is the embodiment of poetry, his inner gesture is: touching the hem of divinity.
No rising and falling intonation here! With Novalis, you should do the modulation consciously, the content merges into the line.
Hymn to Nature (Goethe) (lyrics see p. 127)
The words must sound hymn-like, therefore the declamation should be free of didactics. Here, everything is surprising. Project the resonance from the hard palate. Nature always has something iron-willed about it. The speech must be consonantal, arising from the breath and sounds, not from the head and heart, in a strong, willful movement. Do not let it become a conversation. High and low tones, they are all beats of the pulse that surge into the breath.
The formation includes: embouchure, resonance line and soundboard. The soundboard is always out in the air, which is nice. Different tempi. Different ways of forming sounds: whether wavy, angular, sharp, and so on. There is more in the sounds than we know. There lie the creative powers, which then spurt out with all the diversity of nature. Our soul is not enough. Into the Gothic pointed arch with the throw. The will element must go through the limbs, you feel it in the arms and legs.
During declamation, inhalation flows up to the brain and then back to the spinal cord. There we have to stop the flow of breath with the will element, not letting it come to action. With this unexpressed will, I can operate in the breath stream. The idea must have been there before, it came with the inhalation into the brain and was dealt with there.
The stream of breathing comes back to the sphere of the will.
Model into the exhalation – but without personal dramatic feeling – into the sound, with pauses and not with strong sound. But always include the limb-man.
From “Die Nibelunge” by Wilhelm Jordan (lyrics see 5.116/17)
Movement is not rushing! Please a held step here, completely into the movement and depth. It does not need to echo; roll along epically in the flow, not always at an even tempo like a barrel organ. The listener must be introduced to the situation. The sound H chisels, works plastically. One must avoid chiseling with non-alliterating words, but one can therefore take them broadly. The song is somewhat more recitative-like with a dramatic impact, but not so strong that the epic is held up. Epic demands that one enter completely into it and completely digest the images. The conclusion is darkly musical, brazen and somewhat dying away.
St. Expeditus (Morgenstern) (lyrics see p. 33 ff.)
“Expeditus” is humorous poetry, not grotesque, and therefore without strong exaggeration. It is recitative, so not so much high and low tones! You could call it communicative conversation. You have to learn to distinguish whether the language flows more in terms of number and measure in the syllables, or with weight, heavy and light. But the images must stand out well within the flow. Please work the matter out very formally.
Goethe's youth poems should also be treated similarly, with esprit, with spirit! Emphasize something, that is, make the syllables stand out a little. The mind from the brain has a little fun with it. Humor peeks into all the pots and takes things out. Therefore, you have to penetrate into every matter. Speak very close to the teeth, as soon as it becomes satirical. A quiet legend and fairy tale mood, not too fast, not echoing and well shaded and pointed, let the vowels slip into the consonants, so that it becomes somewhat unreal and flowing. Design good pauses and stay in the poetic, not conceptual, just a little head, but with the application of all artistic means. Very graceful! Artistically surround with subordinate clauses and slide them in gracefully.
German doesn't just come naturally to the lips.
In the grotesque, you can add a bulge to the end of the sound to make it thicker; it's the exact opposite of spiritual speaking.
THE BOUQUET Old Bohemian A light breeze blows
from the royal forests;
There the girl runs,
There she runs to the stream,
draws the water in
bucketfuls. Carefully, deliberately
She knows how to scoop.On the river to the girl
A little bouquet floats,
A fragrant little bouquet
Of violets and roses.If I, you lovely
little flower, knew who had planted you
in loose soil;
Truly! I would give him
a little golden ring.If I, my darling
little bouquet, knew,
Who bound you with delicate
Baste;
Truly! I would give him
The needle from my hair.If I, you lovely
little flower, knew who threw you into the cool
stream, I would truly give them my wreath from my head.And so she pursues
The hastening little bouquet,
She hurries ahead of it,
Trying to catch it:
Then, alas! then she falls
Into the cool water.J. W. Goethe
The poem is lyrical and has a short melodious theme. It is to be treated objectively. The girl herself is like a breeze. Rococo poems are entirely formal, whereas this Bohemian folk song can be somewhat more intimate. There are quiet echoes of melodies, but movement must dominate. Breeze-like mood. The music must not push the image and the sculpture into the background.
From “Kleine Mythen” by Albert Steflen
JUDGE AND REDEEMER
A man who had shed blood was seized by a waterfall in the night, whipped and dragged down into the abyss. Half-drowned, he snatched himself from the whirlpool. From that time forth, in all his doings and sufferings, he heard the voice of the terrible element. It dripped, trickled, splashed, poured, thundered, as if it wanted to proclaim something, but the tortured man did not know what.
After twenty-five years, the rushing became quieter.
One night he saw the murdered man by a stream, holding a reed in his hand and shouting, “I turn water into blood.
”How?” asked the murderer. ‘By the law,’ replied the murdered man. ‘Judge me,’ pleaded the murderer, ‘so that you may love me again as I love you.’
Then Christ appeared in the place of the judge.
Here we have prose: legendary, somewhat similar to a fairy tale, but the slipping in of vowels is even stronger here than in the fairy tale. There should be something like a veil over the words. One does not speak directly on the lips, but also not in the palate. It must be dream-like, objectively dream-like. In dreams, everything comes unexpectedly. Moonlight atmosphere. The inflections of each syllable downwards. It is imagination, therefore every image must appear despite the flow. Seize the words with the consonants, but dissolve the things as they come. Complete all movements. For the artistic creation, one must allow oneself to be completely gripped by the material, live through it completely and then move away from it. You should go through everything, even cry and sob if you want, but then stand aside and above it.
When you are dreaming, you do not speak from the heart, you cannot go completely into the heart, otherwise it becomes too real. You have to keep a little distance and, above all, enter the picture, completely into the picture. Learn to distinguish between strong emotion and passion.
The listener experiences more intensely when you leave the emotion to him, not overwhelm him with it. Art itself is in all areas of suggestion.
The last movement is quite simple, a light. Strict! Major! Because the judge appeared in place of the Christ.