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Transmedia narration of romantic music: Adaptations of Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “sleeping beauty, Op.66” (1889) and “the Nutcracker, Op.71” (1892)
Author(s)
Date Issued
2025
Publisher
Hong Kong: Hong Kong Shue Yan University
Description
133 pages
Type
Thesis
Programme
MPhil of English
Abstract
While textual narrative is conventionally considered the primary form of communication, it is evident that other communication models are also gradually gaining recognition and are being studied more extensively. In the context of fairy tales, the genre has evolved through various means of transmission, starting with oral storytelling, followed by print works and multimedia and, later, transmedia. In this age of technology, media and cultural convergence, the interpretations of fairy tales have diversified and expanded across different artistic and literary platforms. This research explores musical narratology and its expansion in transmedia stories. Through examining Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty, Op.66” (1889) and “The Nutcracker, Op.71” (1892), and the presentations of these musical pieces in the adaptations of Charles Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty In The Wood” (1697) and E.T.A Hoffman’s Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816), this research investigates the role of romantic music in fairy tales, and how romantic music, lyrics and visual images represent the fairy tales collaboratively. This research argues that Tchaikovsky’s music has the power to shape and represent fairy tales by collaborating with visual scenes, concretizing characterization and plot, and incorporating cultural motifs in the representations. The remaking of Tchaikovsky’s music in the selected adaptations: Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Maleficent (2014), Barbie in the Nutcracker (2001), The Nutcracker: The Untold Story (2010), and The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) have explanatory and expansionary functions to appropriate and reappropriate corresponding fairy tales. That is, while the adapted musical pieces inherit elements from Tchaikovsky’s composition and stay loyal to Tchaikovsky’s narratives, their intonation and musical arrangement are adjusted for the production purposes of the works. Collaborating with other narrative models in the ballet, animations and films, Tchaikovsky’s musical narratives revise and expand the representations and interpretations of fairy tales. In the world of technology, media and cultural convergence, the understandings of “Sleeping Beauty” and The Nutcracker no longer rely on their original texts but integrate the narratives in adaptations, forming a multifarious yet coordinated transmedia narration of the stories.
File(s)
Name
232704M.pdf
Size
6.43 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
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