Chapter Ten Outline: “Music and Text”

 

Both music and text contribute to the meaning of a work

Questions to ask: What is the relationship between text and music? How may a composer combine these elements? Should music illustrate text? Mimic it? Do the music and text contradict each other?

 

Fitting Music and Text Together

            Music for a song usually fits the mood of the text

            Text painting: enhancing the text in a near-pictorial way in which the music’s movement mirrors the implied movement in the text

 

Focus on the Piano

            Keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by hammers, invented by Cristofori around 1700

            Standard home instrument for the middle class in the 19th century and therefore the accompanist of choice for the Romantic art song

 

Schubert: Winterreise, Der Lindenbaum

            Text for Winterreise written by Wilhelm Mülller

            Meaning in these pieces is a combination of the textual and musical imagery

                        Piano accompaniment paints a picture that the words make specific, or adds layers of meanings not fully present in the text

 

Text as Drama: Winterreise, Die Post

            Piano evokes both the posthorn and the poet’s pounding heart as he waits in anticipation of receiving a letter from his beloved

            A measure of rest in the piano anticipates the poet’s disappointment

 

In History: Schubert’s Winterreise

            Both of Schubert’s song cycles (Die Schöne Mullerin being the other) deal with unrequited love and each sets a series of poems from the rejected lover’s viewpoint

            The abundance of nature imagery, the use of rest as a metaphor for death, and the ideal hero as a wanderer link this work with the Romantic zeitgeist.

 

Polytextuality

            Machaut’s Lasse! comment oublieray/Se j'aim mon loyal/Pour quoy me bat mes maris? challenges listeners in terms of intelligibility and understanding of the relationships between the texts

            No characters are specified or context given—the clues are all in the texts themselves, which must be read in addition to heard

            Machaut creates a piece with multiple layers of meaning as opposed to one that communicates only a single text

 

How Music and Text Communicate

            Semantic content: refers to the meaning of the text or the sense

                        We expect music to reflect the subject or emotions of the text

            Phonetic content: refers to the sound of the text

                        Words can touch us through their sounds just as music touches us through melodic shapes, dynamics, timbres, and rhythms. Variety keeps poetry or music from sounding monotonous.

            Syntactic content: refers to the structure of the text

                        The way in which we say something is often as expressive as what we actually say; musical syntax may parallel that of the text or may expand or contradict textual syntax

 

Can These Qualities Conflict?

            Irony is one way in which a poem can have a double meaning, and in some languages (such as German) certain combinations of sounds result in unpleasant sounds (such as hissing or spitting)

            Schumann emphasizes the irony in Ich grolle nicht through musical means

 

Interpreting Persona

            Who is speaking? What is his/her/their point of view?

            The composer’s persona: Schubert’s Der Leierman: devastating images of isolation and helplessness that find some parallels to Schubert’s own life

            The character’s persona: Schumann’s Die Alten Bösen Lieder: composers often suggest voices other than their own—who has the final word in this song?

The listener’s persona: Dallapiccola’s Canti di Prigonia: understanding the cultural, religious, economic, and political circumstances of composition is important—Dallapiccola sets three texts from individuals in prison awaiting execution in the years immediately preceding and during the Second World War

The performer’s persona: Bob Dylan and his covers: Dylan is known as a poet-musician with a distinctive voice and performance style, but covers by artists such as Peter, Paul, and Mary or Jimi Hendrix bring out new aspects of the songs

 

Across the Arts: Painters Against Fascism

            Painters such as Peter Blume, Max Ernst, and Max Beckmann created works of art that challenged fascism either directly or indirectly

 

Focus on Luigi Dallapiccola

            Grew up in a disputed area—was deported to Austria during World War I

            Influenced by Debussy, early Italian composers such as Monteverdi, and contemporary Germanic serialists such as Berg

 

The combination of text and music is a unique art that is more powerful than the sum of its parts