Music and the Written Word

Dear Colleagues,

Words and song have long been thought to spring from the same expressive impulse. In Disgrace, JM Coetzee writes that "the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul". But what happens when the spoken word becomes text? To what extent can written language behave as though it were a type of music—or music act as a language? This Special Issue will explore the many ways in which music and literature may be linked: music as a theme and a motif in fiction; rhetorical links between music and language in literary texts; the musician as author and the author as musician. Some questions which might be addressed include:

• What is the nature of the challenge faced by a composer setting a literary text to music, and what makes a song succeed?
• What is lost, and what is found, when a literary work is transformed into an opera?
• Can instrumental music tell a story, or move beyond mimesis of extra-musical sounds to convey abstract ideas?
• What are the limits of writing about music? How can words convey music’s effect and its affect?
• How do oft-repeated narratives about composers’ personal lives affect the reception of their music?

Scholars and practitioners in both music and literature are invited to submit proposals for this Special Issue. Practice-based, empirical, and theoretical approaches are all welcome.

Dr. Gillian Dooley
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Title: “Of selfish grief or gladness”: Farewells in Berlioz’s Harold in Italy

Abstract: Lord Byron’s life and poetic works have inspired musical compositions across genres even during his lifetime. The English author’s fictional characters and themes impressed musician composers of nineteenth-century Europe, especially since his Byronic heroes were conflated with their creators’ own melancholic and revolutionary persona. In contrast to the songs and operas, the programme music has raised doubts towards a direct correlation with its poetic programme, however. While verse extracts provided as epigraphs to the music help direct listeners to specific ideas, their absence has prompted dismissals of intermedial relationships, even those proposed by the composers. This article discusses major connections between Hector Berlioz’s Harold in Italy, a Symphony in Four Parts with Viola Obbligato (1834) and Byron’s semi-autobiographical narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: A Romaunt (1812–1818). The title and movement headings of the instrumental piece, as well as the composer’s memoirs, refer to Byron’s Childe Harold as the main inspiration. Nevertheless, references to the composer’s visit to Abbruzzi mountains, his fascination with Italian songs, the previous title, the self-borrowed musical lines, the mention of brigands, and the personal response component sustain debate. In applying my three-fold analytical method, I attempt to clarify what indefinite elements were transmitted from the source to the target art medium. I examine historical-biographical contexts and compositional devices of both the poetry and the music by deploying melopoetics and musical semiotics. Observations on interactions among microcosmic elements and macrocosmic structures in the music and their poetic analogues serve to evaluate how they encapsulate Byron’s legacy.

Title: “‘Ring the bells’: Gothic sounds in Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom”

Abstract: Australian author Garth Nix has set six critically acclaimed and internationally bestselling novels in and around the fictional world of the Old Kingdom, beginning with Sabriel (1995) and continuing most recently with Terciel & Elinor (2021). This loose series of novels, with its bellringing protagonists, is the prime contributor to his reputation as an author of fantasy fiction, although he is also marketed as and known for writing science fiction. There is, however, an overlooked case for considering all his novels as falling within the tradition of the Gothic. In the arena of sound and silence, for instance, Nix’s Old Kingdom writing frequently draws for visceral effect on literary devices first exemplified by early Gothic writers (Lewis, Radcliffe, Maturin et al), which places his work in stark contrast to that of authors in other traditions of the Fantastic (as defined by, for example, Helen Dell). This article examines Nix’s deployment of these sonic tropes and techniques, evident in many examples of sound, silence, and music in the texts, using as key guides Lucie Ratail and Isabella van Elferen’s separate analyses of the sonorous Gothic.

Title: Devotee Smarter than Guru: Rituparno Ghosh’s Bold Experiments with Tagore’s Songs in His Cinema

Abstract: Film directors from both Bangladesh and West Bengal (in India) have frequently used Rabindranath Tagore’s songs in films belonging to a motley range of genres. The songs have been utilized to serve several purposes in these films. The most popular use of a Tagore song in Bengali cinema is to add to the build-up of the atmosphere of the scene in which it features. Next comes the structural use. In such cases, the song contributes to the development of the film’s plot or storyline. Finally, Tagore’s songs have also been used to illuminate a film maker’s message to the audience. If these uses can be characterized as conservative (in the sense that they don’t take any liberty with the content or intent of the song lyrics nor with the style of singing usually associated with those songs), we can identify a use that’s not only deviant but, in some cases, outright radical. One prominent practitioner of this radical deployment of Tagore’s songs in Bengali cinema is Rituparno Ghosh (1963-2013). A relentless champion of representing queer and transgender experience on the silver screen, Ghosh has boldly experimented with three iconic Tagore novels in adapting them for his films. This radical bent is also seen in the way Ghosh has appropriated some of Tagore’s songs not only in the three films based on Tagore’s fiction but also in those whose source of inspiration is other than Tagore. In this article, I examine some of Ghosh’s films to understand the meaning of his radical experiments with Tagore’s songs and the formal strategies he adopts in achieving the objectives of those experiments.