4. The interaction of gestures, lyrics and music in “Jesus Christ Superstar”
A highly important group of variables that always influence the body language in a musical drama derives from the music of the opera and its libretto. Among these variables there are some words of the play, the structure of lyrics, and the music.
a) Gestures and words of the play
In both versions of JCS the correlations between the gesture and the word can be of several types.
The usual case is the coordination of gesture and word meanings. In this case the correlative pairs of the body language signs and verbal meaningful units share many common semantic and pragmatic properties. For example, the word you in a face-to-face dialog in both versions of JCS is usually correlated with the deictic gesture. The gesture is performed in the following way: the arm or an index is stretched towards the person who is called you and points at him/her. Another example of the correlation between verbal and nonverbal units in the play is presented by the verb to crush and the clenched fist. The speech act and nonverbal act are performed jointly, and the meanings and usage of the units that constitute these acts are in harmony.
Another case of interaction between gestures and words is that of clarification. I mean here that the gesture can clarify some semantic components or add some nuances to the meaning of the word. Sometimes such clarification, or more exact explication of the meaning, helps to disambiguate the context. In the scene of the arrest of Jesus, the apostles see the Roman soldiers approaching Christ and exclaim: Hang on, Lord, we’re gonna fight for you! The reaction of Jesus is: Put away your sword. From the literary text of libretto we cannot tell who the addressees of this remark are, whether they are the Roman soldiers or the apostles. Both in JCS-1973 and JCS-2000 the ambiguity is resolved by means of gestures: when pronouncing the words Jesus is looking at the Roman soldier, who has taken out the sword. With this glance and the stopping gesture of the hand he prevents his aggression.
The heroes of fiction often use the gestures that contradict their words. It is interesting that in JCS-2000 version the situations when gestures contradict the accompanied words are rare, and in the JCS-1973 version they are absent at all. It may seem surprising because generally in expressive scenes of texts of any genre and style gestures often contradict words (if words are pronounced at all). In JCS-2000 Judas kneels in front of the priest Annas who orders him to get up of the floor and flings him down. In the episode “Superstar” Judas (or, as noted in the libretto, “Voice of Judas”) asks Jesus about Buddha and Mohammed by saying Tell me what you think about your friends on the top. In both versions this phrase is accompanied by gestures, but in the first version (JCS-1973) Judas emphasizes the word top by raising hands towards the Sky, whereas in the second version (JCS-2000) he is sitting at the top part of the cross that Jesus is carrying. This location clearly contradicts the phrase since one can hardly think of Judas as of “<Jesus’s> friend on the top”.
b) Gestures and the structure of lyrics. Gestures and the music
The association of gestures and words of lyrics dictates in a certain sense the choice of the particular gesture that has necessary semantic and pragmatic characteristics. The points in the play in which the gesture is most likely to appear are connected with some peculiarities of the two-way correlation – between gestures and structure of lyrics, on the one hand, and gestures and music, on the other hand. These points are of different phonetic character.
(1) Rhythmically strong syllables of the verse line or of the musical line. The syllable is rhythmically strong when it is stressed in the verse line, or when it goes simultaneously with the beat of the measure (especially the first beat), or both. For example, the poetic line But to let her stroke you, kiss your hair is hardly in your line has several rhythmically strong syllables; words with the stressed syllables (if we consider this metrical form to be a trochee) are let, stroke, kiss, hair, hardly and line. The syllables that go with the first beat are let, kiss, hardly and line. These words are most likely to be emphasized by gestures, the concrete form of which is determined by contextual semantics and pragmatics. Indeed, in JCS-1973 we find that several of the words mentioned are stressed by gestures: let, stroke, kiss and hardly. In JCS-2000 only one word of the row (hardly) is emphasized by the gesture, which can be named the negative shake of head (in JCS-1973 the gesture that goes together with this word has the same negative meaning, it is raising a finger, the gesture that warns the addressee not to allow some thing to happen).
Another point is (2) the beginning of a reply in the dialog. For example, PRIEST 3: Quick, Caiaphas, go call the Roman guard! CAIAPHAS: No wait! We need a more permanent solution to our problem. ANNAS: What then to do about Jesus of Nazareth? The underlined words are emphasized by gestures (in both versions of the rock-opera).
One more point is (3) the high-pitched sounds (which are usually forte as well) or the musical patterns where each sound in a range is followed by the sound of a higher pitch. Cf. the lines of the song “Heaven on their minds”:
Nazareth, your famous son
Should have stayed a great unknown
Like his father carving wood
He’d have made good.
Tables, chairs and oaken chests
Would have suited Jesus best.
He’d have caused nobody harm
No one alarm.
The underlined lines are in the same position in the text. They have identical rhythmical structure and, according to the musical notation of JCS, they are accompanied with the same melody. But in fact, the singers both in JCS-1973 and JCS-2000 versions treated these two lines differently. They sang the line He’d have made good according to the notation with the low-pitch melody and did not perform any gestures, but the line No one alarm was accompanied with the melody that had the increasingly high pitch and with the gestures (throwing up hands in JCS-1973 and grabbing Jesus by the arm in JCS-2000). The whole peace of lyric is combined with the melody that is characterized with the increasingly low pitch. And only this last, increasingly high-pitch, line of the verse is accompanied with gestures.