Greek chorus

The choir was in Ancient Greece initially the name of a circumscribed square dance. Later it meant the round and round dance itself, in particular the related with singing, performed on festive occasions in honor of a deity dance. Finally, the term referred to this union Dancing and Singing, who participated in the drama as a companion of the action ..

History of the Greek chorus

It is believed that the Greek theater chorus originated from the Greek cult dance and singing for various deities out. One of his most important forms was the dithyramb. From the choir, the drama developed. The choir offered a variety of background information to help the audience going to follow the performance. He commented on the central themes of the play and showed how an ideal audience have to react to the drama. He presented mainly the opinion of the masses in history dar. In Sophocles the chorus served as omniscient commentator, which underpinned by its comments, the general moral ideas. He was able to act as invisible as well as participants of the action. In many ancient Greek dramas of the chorus expressed to the audience what the main characters were not able to say how about fears and secrets. Usually, the choir sang, but also spoke short sentences in unison.

The choir was an important basic component of the early Greek theater at a time, in the tragedies and comedies were mostly lyrical authored works. Before the introduction of the theater with multiple, interacting actors by Aeschylus, the chorus of one performer was next to the main character. In the 5th century the importance of the choir began more and more to fade. Later playwrights such as Menander, the choir gave little attention.

Due to the size of the Greek theater, the actions of the choir had to appear exaggerated and their voices to be so loud that everyone in the audience they could see and hear. Here, the choir used techniques such as synchronization, short echo waves, physical theater and masks. In most cases, the choir was composed of citizens who rehearsed under the direction of a choir leader. The tragic chorus consisted of 12-15 singers without masks, in the comedy were 24 singers on with mask and the satyr play were mostly 12 masked singer.

Modern uses of the theater choir

In the present, there is the choir continues in many operas as musical ingredient of the sound composition and the beginning of the 21st century, increasingly outside of musical theater in performances of the major German theaters in Vienna ( A Sportstück, 1998), Weimar ( Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart ), several times at the Staatstheater Stuttgart and in several plays at the Dresden State Theatre. In the controversial Dresden staging of theater director Volker extinguishing, free after Hauptmann's "The Weavers " (2004 ), takes a theater chorus from " Hartz IV - affected" the transpose of the dramas substance in the middle of the conflict-ridden presence of contemporaries into it. The considerable risk that caught by scandal and court decisions for and against nationwide sensation, was very successful in paying audience.

The most important choral productions in German-speaking of the last decades came from Einar Schleef, which often scandalous reactions dramatic substances (Goethe, Brecht, Hauptmann, high Huth ) often building on the antiphonal singing of a female and a male choir and a large part of the original single figures supplied thoughtful texts the chorus replied.

Elfriede Jelinek also uses in her pieces - already happened in what, after Nora had left her husband or pillars of society, but insistent in a sports piece and explicitly in Wolken.Heim - the choir as an "instance ", where the chorus is not a moral authority is but a mirror of the " profane, the ordinary ", embodied by the audience in the theater par excellence.