Analysis Of Music In Mother Courage And Her Children

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The songs which are 11 in total, are used to interrupt the acting which can be called “verfremdzeffect” or alienation effect. Brecht neither used the songs as discharge of emotions nor any psychological state but to focus on the theme of the play or to comment on incidents. With the exception of scenes 5 and 11, almost every scene contains a song. The final scenes contain two songs.
Almost every character in Mother Courage and Her Children has been given an individual song. Brecht introduces these songs to bring out Epic Theatre, which generally function as the device to interrupt the action. By the interruption the audience will be able to obtain time to judge and form their opinions regarding the episodes presented to them. Mother Courage is the source of food and drinks for the soldiers. In the Scene-1, Mother Courage sings a song which …show more content…

Thus the song serves as the ground theme of the play. In this respect the song seems to immediately strike the keynote of the play. Also, the song introduces the protagonist to the audience and links her up with war situation, resulting in ironic interdependence of comments and conflict.

In scene-2, Eilif, the elder son of Mother Courage sings “The Song of The Fishwife and the Soldier” by the way of entertaining the Commander and accompanies it with a martial sword dance. It tells of the story of a soldier who had an ambition to prove his efficiency but subsequently meets his tragic end in the course of war. Eilif in fact, unknowingly predicts his own destiny, that is, his own death though he was always expecting a long heroic life. On the other hand the Fishwife in the story may be interpreted as Mother Courage who is aware of the deaths that soldiers

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