ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at Appia's writings in two sections. It explores the philosophical, aesthetic and transcendental claims he makes for the role of music in the 'theatre of the future' and the role of musicality in the concrete reforms he suggested. It discusses the impact of both on the actor and director and concludes with a discussion on how and why Appia's theories can be and have been applied to dramatic theatre. One of the key claims Appia makes is indebted to the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer Appia uses a quotation from him as a motto for Music and the Art of Theatre and refers to it again later in his essay 'Theatrical Production and its Prospects for the Future'. Schopenhauer writes that music does not express the phenomenon, but only the inner essence of the phenomenon; therefore it expresses nothing related to the story, geography, social conditions, and customs; no actual objects of any sort.
