Absorption, Aesthetic Distance and Soft Activism: Examination and Composition of Secular Passions
Over the last seventy-five years, the Passion genre has undergone a huge transformation, with a new subgenre emerging: the Secular Passion. These works allude to the musical features and narrative structure of traditional religious Passions, but replace the central figure of Jesus with another suffering figure. While a number of these works have been analysed and contextualised within the larger Passion genre, no study has yet focused specifically on the subgenre, or on the ambiguities that arise when trying to discern how these works differ from other related forms.
To investigate this subgenre, my thesis turns to literature studies which illuminate the way in which the concepts of absorption (bringing the audience into the story), and aesthetic distance (forcing the audience to recognise the structure of the work), can be applied to musical features of a work. The outcome of an optimal oscillation between absorption and aesthetic distance in a Passion is that the listener will engage empathically with the suffering figure in the story, but will also be distant enough to engage in cognitive reflection on the events that led to their suffering. This thesis argues that a composer chooses to engage with the Passion genre in order to gently persuade a listener towards engaging in in pro-social behaviour as a result of the performance, not unlike the historical evangelising function of the genre. In this way, the goals of a composer writing a secular Passion align with the goals and mechanisms of soft activism.
