Musikalisches Theater – Szenische Musik

In this chapter I distinguish and discuss the notions 'Musikalisches Theater' (the English translation 'musical theatre' is misleading: I am not referring to the popular genre, but to a phenomenon of a kind of 'musicalized' theatre as we have seen it in recent years with directors such as Christoph Marthaler) and 'Szenische Musik' (scenic music). I describe them as poles on a continuum of interplays between music and theatre. Both are not ontological notions with set immanent criteria, but contextual attribution which highlight particular aspects of the music/theatre interplay and have a range of consequences for the process, performance and reception of theatre which I discuss using a range of case studies. These include: Christoph Marthaler, Lose Combo, Heiner Goebbels, Sebastian Nübling, Mauricio Kagel, Manos Tsnagaris and Leo Dick.