Spring Awakening - A Sound Wake-Up Call? by Alexis

One of the reasons Frank Wedekind’s play was banned in America before the 1960s was because the play tested the authority traditionally bestowed onto parents. Within the three acts and fourteen scenes of his play, Wedekind pinpointed the joys and sorrows, hopes and despair, struggles and tragedies of the teenage soul. Through writing his play, Wedekind cited his utter empathy for the misery and tortures of a child unable to navigate through the vagueness of sexuality without receiving harsh condemnation and/or being ignored by adults. The implications of each character’s confusion and thirst for knowledge eventually force the characters to either bend into conformity or to break in the attempt to do so.

For example, the death of Wendla, the lead female character, results from a botched-abortion. Her death may present the dire results when adults refuse to educate adolescents on sex. Adults are also the culprits when provincial teachers punish Melchior, a schoolboy the audience perceives as inquisitive and bright, on the grounds of his “rudeness” and “outspokenness”. His friend, Moritz, chokes in the educational system comprised of endless amounts of rote memorization. Moritz’s inability to pass his final examinations eventually drives him to commit suicide. In the original play Moritz questions, “Do you believe, Melchior, that the feeling of shame in man is only a product of his education?” Later on, referring to his confusion regarding puberty and sex, Melchoir formally synonymies shame and ignorance, “I have gone through Meyer's Little Encyclopedia from A to Z. Words -- nothing but words and words! Not a single plain explanation. Oh, this feeling of shame!”

The extreme traps of an educational system seeking only the proper answer reflect, on a much smaller degree, the self-deprecating effects that I, too, have experienced upon allowing school grades to posses the power to evaluate my worth. Yet, does the music in the production of Spring Awakening due justice to explore the complexity within Wedekind’s original play? Tom Hulce (producer) verifies, “To turn this play into a musical is one of the craziest, genius, least likely to work ideas one could ever have.” In the end, did, “the songs in a very unique way allow these characters from the 1890s to express themselves in an absolutely current way”?

Does the process of transferring a text into a different medium detract from its richness? One source, written by Charles Isherwood, believes that converting the play into a musical production led to the “simplification of the emotional textures” of Wedekind’s play. The argument proceeds by claiming that the substitution of Wedekind’s text for the nearly twenty songs detracts from the play’s “subtle elliptical structure and its character’s intricate psychology”. However, although the musicality of the production reduces the “subtlety” of text, the music does not reduce the complexity of the characters or that of the thematic elements. The music serves to convert the expression of emotional psychology from a purely literary form to a form textured with rhythmic and melodic intricacy characteristic of rock.

Rock, a “slogan against conformity”, fits the characters’ struggles to challenge their traditional and rigid system of education – ranging from Latin to sex. The emotional complexity of the characters translates into the tone of the music. One source, written by Jeremy McCarter, claims that the emotional effects of the “torments of teen-dom” can only be best represented through rock. For example, in The Bitch of Living, the schoolboys recite Latin to their professor. Even through preserving the text of the original script, the pulses of drumbeats and the strums of guitar accurately convey the collective angst of the suppressed teenagers. The genre of music also allows for the expression of the diversity in the emotions of each character: Left Behind is a gentle, solemn melody while Totally Fucked is provocative and boisterous.

Another source believes the music of Spring Awakening to unjustly yank the setting of the play from its historical context as the juxtaposition cannot be perceived in the soundtrack recording. However, I believe it is such paradox between the setting of the play and the modernity of the music that captures the clashes of the controversies within the plot. The raw truthfulness of the modern lyrics gives the songs the power to stand apart from the theatrical production. In All That’s Known, Melchior provides a musical monologue that elaborates on the conflict he discussed in the script:

You doubt them/And soon they bark and hound you-/Till everything you say is just another bad about you

Thought is suspect/ And money is their idol/ And nothing is okay unless it's scripted in their Bible

But I know/There's so much more to find-/Just in looking through myself/And not at them

The simplicity and pureness of the lyrics allow me to attach myself to the underlying emotions of the song in a way that I would perhaps be unable to do if it were written in more authentic, less-relatable language. The melody allows me to sympathize with the characters on a greater degree as I can physically absorb the emotion through my ears and express it through my own voice as I sing the characters songs.

Although it was the music of Spring Awakening that originally grabbed my attention and led me to see the musical production, the storyline as expressed in the melody and lyrics of the music is what has sustained my interest of Spring Awakening. As the characters’ songs represent their emotions, often my choice of song and style of singing it represents my mood. While singing the music of Spring Awakening I can avoid, as Lee Stringer would say, “unnecessary anxieties” caused by striving to conform to pre-existing institutions by turning inward and conforming, or reconnecting, with myself. Although the obviously liberating song Totally Fucked put me at ease when I watched the theatrical production, the more melodic songs like Whispering give me the lasting power to achieve what the characters’ could not – a sense of peace with myself as I conform to rigid and binding societal traditions.