Interlude

“ When ten Brink says lviithat the interlude was the species best adapted to further the development of dramatic art, we must understand by interlude the individual, as opposed to the collective drama,—or the occasional performance by professionals for the delectation, and sometimes at the order, of private persons or parties, as opposed to expository or perfunctory plays, plays manipulated by crafts, or associated with times, places, and ends external to art. ”

“ At the end of this, again the original subject, and so finally the end. The most notable features of this novelette are its vigor, the different forms in which the subjects return, and the persistence of the two main ideas—the march and the lyric trio—which form the substance of it. The mystic and fugue-like interlude is merely an interlude. It perhaps represents one of those moments when the mind is too full for clear utterance—a condition more celebrated in fiction than desirable in reality.
The Fantasy Pieces, opus 12, are among the most happy of the smaller works of this composer. ”

“ Mr. E. K. Chambers, in his magnificent and scholarly work, The Mediæval Stage, would apply the meaning of the word Interlude to any kind of play, religious or otherwise, but instead of deriving the word from a “ludus” during the interval of something else, he would give it the meaning of a play carried on between (inter) two or more performers; in fact, a ludus in dialogue.
Ludus is the Latin for a play.
COMEDIAN.
Are you a comedian. ”

“ It may be further noted (i) the elaborate disguisings of Henry VII and Henry VIII, with much action and speechifying besides the dancing, are difficult to distinguish when merely described from interludes. What Hall, 518, calls in 1511 an interlude, seems from the Revels Accounts (Brewer, ii. 1495) to have been really a disguising. Hall, 641, speaks of a ‘disguisyng or play’ in 1522, and Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, i. 136, of a ‘disguising or interlude’ in 1527; (ii) a disguising or dance might be introduced, as entr’acte or otherwise, into an interlude. ”

“ They were followed by Interludes which were much the same as Moralities but were shorter, and as their name shows were meant to come in the middle of something else, for the word comes from two Latin words, "inter" between and "ludus" a play. An Interlude may have been first used, perhaps, as a kind of break in a long feast.
The Miracle plays had only been acted once a year, first by the monks and later by the trade guilds. But the taste for plays grew, and soon bands of players strolled about the country acting in towns and villages. These strolling players often made a good deal of money. ”

“ I admit that I agree.
(Exit)
Note: Can be done as a solo or by a small group (changing "I" to "we," etc.) A dance interlude may be inserted if the song still isn't long enough to accommodate the scene change. ”

“ And the songs without words of the interludes so affect the spirit of the singer that, whether quiet or in motion, he seems, through being a living embodiment of the music, to impress the sense of seeing so that it increases the pleasure of hearing. ”

“ The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting. ”

“ Then followed the slow, half-unwilling, not hopeful march of timeless feet; then a clang as of something broken, then a silence as of sunrise, then air and liberty—long-drawn notes divided with quick, hurried ones; then the trampling of many feet, going farther and farther—merrily, with dance and song; once more a sudden pause—and a melody in which she read the awe-struck joyous return of one. ”

“ There come to us moments of twilight in which it seems as though day and night were in the act of dividing—as if we were in the very process of being created or annihilated; the stage of life and the spectators fly back out of view, our part is played out, we stand far off, in darkness and alone, but we have still got on our theatre dress, and we look at ourselves in it, and ask, “What is it that thou art, now, my me!” ”

“ Love makes us musical. In Storms and Sunshine, Suffering and Joy, Action, Union, Life, Love is the music at the heart of all. Love makes us musical," said all the Creatures.
And from the multitude before the throne, who, through fires of Tribulation and Storms of conflict, had learned the new song, and from depths of Darkness and the silence of Isolation had been brought together in the Light of Life to sing it, floated down a soft "Amen, for God is Love." ”

“ He saw the dance of the hurrying clouds, the open patches into outer space, the veiling and unveiling of that ancient silvery face; and he caught strange whispers of the hierophantic, sacerdotal Power that has echoed down the world since Time began and dropped strange magic phrases into every poet's heart, since first 'God dawned on Chaos'⁠—the Beauty of the Night. ”

“ There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. ”

“ There are scenes—only momentary—so near Paradise—sights, so nearly angelic, that they touch us with a mysterious ecstasy and sorrow. In the glory and translation of the moment, the feeling of its transitoriness, and the sense of our mortal lot, cross and thrill us with a strange pain, like the anguish that mingles in the rapture of sublime music. ”

“ And then mark! how, amid the chorus of a hundred voices and a hundred instruments,--of flutes, and drums, and trumpets,--this universal shout and whirl-wind of the vexed air, you can so clearly distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single string, touched by the finger,--a mournful, sobbing sound! Ah, this is indeed human life! where in the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid sounds of gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly audible to the ear of thought, are the pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart, touched by an invisible hand. ”

“ Let me here make a digression, for a moment, to another land, and another dramatic literature. The French, as you know, adopted in their drama the three unities of Time, Place, and Action, but failed to adopt the Chorus. Now it is the Chorus alone which makes the unities of time and place necessary. The Chorus is composed of men or women, and inasmuch as they have to watch the whole play and even take part in it, their presence is limited by their power of endurance. Human nature cannot, while watching any proceeding, hold out, at the extremest limit, longer than from sunrise to sunset. ”

“ The trumpet of the day of judgment is about to sound; the dead are about to arise from their tombs; in the midst of thunder and lightning, and surrounded by archangels carrying flaming swords, the Eternal is about to pass judgment upon us all! ”

“ The tragic music of its measure, the swift yet solemn harmonies of dialogue and burden, hold in extract the very heart of a tragedy, the burning essence distilled from "Hate born of Love, and blind as he." ”

“ Let music be hushed in silence or even confounded into jarring discord. Let the smiling landscape be blasted into a volcanic eruption. I and my God are sufficient unto each other, heart applied to heart, soul clinging to soul, embracing each the other. ”

“ The world passed away, and behold, at the voice of a trumpet, it hath come back. Beauty faded yestreen from colour into darkness, from life to death, and to-day it hath out-blossomed once again; the Sun was its father, dear gentle Night its mother.... ”

“ We wait as Christians for the hour when, at the sounding of celestial trumpets, this great curtain shall uproll once again and reveal to our amazed eyes that last tremendous scene, in which all things shall be made new. Such is death. It is a pause—that is all—and one that does but make more wonderful the music of an endless life. ”

“ The air is emotional, nectareal, and mellow and yellow and hot-sparkling. The Voices pierce it like a storm of fine steel arrows. I at once set open my spirit-door and through it come the sweet shrill chorus and the marvel echo beginning and swelling and starting away. It wakes vision so that I see—quick, evil, terribly human, in the dazzlingest daytime colors—all those Places where the Voices go. ”

“ But mark how beautiful an order has sprung from the dust and blood of this fierce chaos! how the world, as from a resurrection, balancing itself on the golden wings of Knowledge and of Hope, has reassumed its yet unwearied flight into the heaven of time. Listen to the music, unheard by outward ears, which is as a ceaseless and invisible wind, nourishing its everlasting course with strength and swiftness. ”

“ That which in this world-around presents itself to our contemplation—and therefore contains meaning for our feelings—as movement, we render by movement. Hence all imitation is in the broadest sense dramatic; drama is presented in the movement of the brush-stroke or the chisel, the melodic curve of the song, the tone of the recitation, the line of poetry, the description, the dance. ”

“ Again the scene sank into silence and darkness: such silence as is nature's own, whose voice is ever musical: such darkness as the embowering trees and vast island-clouds made, dimming and drinking up the radiance of the moon. ”

“ Those who are endowed to any extent with the imaginative faculty, must have at least once in their lives experienced feelings which may give them a clue to the exalted sensuous raptures of my triumphal march The view of a sublime mountain landscape, the hearing of a grand orchestral symphony, or of a choral upborne by the “full-voiced organ,” or even the beauty and luxury of a cloudless summer day, suggests emotions similar in kind, if less intense. ”

“ The retrospect of triumphant exultation, the lingering sense of delight, the big shocks of sudden agony, and the slow blank despair, breathed in a voice elastic and tremulous with vital passion and set off with a by-play of exquisitely artistic realism, made up a whole of melancholy beauty and overwhelming power perhaps never equalled. It was at once an anthem, a charge, and a dirge. ”

“ Now the music deepens into a majestic march—now it swells into a holy hymn—and now it dies away elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, uncertain, dream-like, and visionary all; but never else than beautiful; and ever and anon, we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the hush of night—and we awaken as if from a dream. ”

“ The tragedy of love has been presented on the stage in the same way. In Tristan and Isolde, the curtain does not, as in Romeo and Juliet, rise with the lark: the whole night of love is played before the spectators. ”

“ This reminiscent love-music gives way to the Death March, which, from a purely structural point of view, is an epitome of much that is salient in the musical investiture of the entire tetralogy, yet in spirit is a veritable apotheosis, a marvellously eloquent proclamation of antique grief and heroic sorrow. ”

“ Thus in the midst of that tumultuous, tormented age, began one of those quiet melodies of love and rest which are always flowing on in soft musical tones through the din of storms and wars, scarcely heard at all in the great orchestral chorus of history, yet without which the world itself, and therefore its history, would soon fall back into chaos and cease to be. ”

“ In the intervals between the acts of the drama, the chorus chanted verses corresponding to the action of the piece, sometimes pouring forth hymns of thanksgiving or supplication to the gods; sometimes chanting odes on the instability of human affairs as exemplified in the scenes which they had just witnessed. At other times the chorus broke forth into lamentations over the untimely fate of some personage of the drama, or denounced the anger of the gods on the head of a tyrant. ”

“ Exquisite music was heard,—soft voices sang in the distance a chorale of rejoicing;—heaven and earth, sea and air,—all seemed to support the aspiring Spirit as she soared higher and higher, in ever-deepening rapture, when,—as we all watched that aerial flying form with a sense of the keenest delight and satisfaction,—a sudden crash of thunder sounded,—the scene grew dark,—and there was a distant roaring of angry waters. ”

“ But the third calling of the note shall be more joyous, and at the close of it there shall descend or enter the little Twentieth Century who shall strike the City of Dreadful Night a blow, whereupon, figure, throne and all shall tumble with a cry into the earth. At this, the stage being again dark, a hymn of triumph shall be heard from behind, and all the voices of the children as of those lost and now once more found, shall bear triumphant witness to a cause that cannot die. ”

“ The whole scene was as composed as if there were scarce one of us but had a secret thirst for the infinite to be quenched. And it was the infinite that, for the hour, the distinguished foreigner poured out to us, causing it to roll in wonderful waves of sound, almost of colour, over our receptive attitudes and faces. ”

“ Those in the theatre crushed each other to the death—agony. For how long, for how many thousand years, must the earth and the sea, and the fire and the air, utter these things and force them upon us before they are admitted in their full significance? ”

“ No wonder a cold shiver of exquisite and mysterious pleasure courses down our backs whenever we are in the presence of a masterful example of Man’s order! What triumphs of the past that cold shiver remembers, which we are at a loss to recall, but which we still unconsciously applaud every time the regular movements of a multitude, the measured strains of a rich melody, or the swing and stride of a corps de ballet appear before our eyes! ”

“ Hear the sledges with the bells—silver bells— What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle in the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle with a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, in a sort of Runic rhyme. ”