The figure of the clown has always had associations with the carnivalesque, masks and madness. The ability of Pierrot to be melancholic yet murderous, a trickster yet romantic can easily be traced back to the commedia del arte tradition of the 17th century. However, more interesting still is the older tradition of Carnival. Pierrot's ability to rape, steal, commit bigamy and suicide while simultaneously offering protestations of love or playing practical jokes is understood clearly within the context of carnival, that medieval Feast of Fools replete with drunken orgies on the altar table, indecent gestures, disrobing. The festival upends order. Fools become kings, appetites, both sexual and gormandising replace restraint. Pierrot represents human vice, he is outside of the law, and thus outside of sin. He makes us dream of a life which is purely sensual and freed from the yoke of conscience. Claire Booth and Ensemble 360 explore the fascination with the multi-faceted Pierrot by composers as diverse as Thea Musgrave, Debussy, Korngold, Amy Beach and, of course Schoenberg's groundbreaking Pierrot Lunaire.
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The figure of the clown has always had associations with the carnivalesque, masks and madness. The ability of Pierrot to be melancholic yet murderous, a trickster yet romantic can easily be traced back to the commedia del arte tradition of the 17th century. However, more interesting still is the older tradition of Carnival. Pierrot's ability to rape, steal, commit bigamy and suicide while simultaneously offering protestations of love or playing practical jokes is understood clearly within the context of carnival, that medieval Feast of Fools replete with drunken orgies on the altar table, indecent gestures, disrobing. The festival upends order. Fools become kings, appetites, both sexual and gormandising replace restraint. Pierrot represents human vice, he is outside of the law, and thus outside of sin. He makes us dream of a life which is purely sensual and freed from the yoke of conscience. Claire Booth and Ensemble 360 explore the fascination with the multi-faceted Pierrot by composers as diverse as Thea Musgrave, Debussy, Korngold, Amy Beach and, of course Schoenberg's groundbreaking Pierrot Lunaire.
