Musico-poetics in Perspective: Calvin S. Brown in MemoriamUlrich Weisstein, Jean-Louis Cupers Rodopi, 2000 - 313 pages The volume is dedicated to the memory of the late Calvin S. Brown of the University of Georgia, author of the first systematically conceived survey - Music and Literature: A Comparison of the Arts (1948) - of the branch of interart studies now generally known as Melopoetics. Part One consists of six original contributions by experts from Austria, Belgium, France, and the United States. Authored by a novelist and a composer/scholar, respectively, the first two essays - Jean Libis's "Inspiration musicale et composition littéraire: Réflexions sur un roman schubertien" and David M. Hertz's "The Composer's Musico-Literary Experience: Reflections on Song Writing" - focus, not surprisingly, on the creative process. The third piece - Francis' Claudon's review of the pertinent research done between 1970 and 1990 - complements the honoree's analogous report on the preceding decades, reprinted in the present volume, whereas the fourth - Jean-Louis Cupers' "Métaphores de l'écho et de l'ombre: Regards sur l'évolution des études musico-littéraires" - surveys the plethora of metaphorical applications, in music and literature, of two significant natural phenomena, the one acoustic and the other optical. Linked to each other, the two remaining papers - Ulrich Weisstein's "The Miracle of Interconnectedness: Calvin S. Brown, a Critical Biography" and Walter Bernhart's "A Profile in Retrospect: Calvin S. Brown as a Musico-Literary Scholar" - offer critical accounts of the honoree's theoretical and methodological stance as viewed, in the first case, from a biographical angle and, in the second, in the light of subsequent scholarly practice. Part Two bundles eleven of Professor Brown's previously uncollected articles, covering a period of nearly half a century of significant scholarly activity in the field. The selection demonstrates Brown's poignant interest in transpositions d'art exemplifying the "musicalization" of literature in the formal and structural, rather than thematic, domain as culminating in his trenchant critique of "music in poetry" as understood, somewhat naïvely, by Mallarmé and his critics, and, to a slightly lesser extent, by his translation of Josef Weinhebers' variations on Friedrich Hölderlin's ode "An die Parzen". Just as Professor Brown's successive anatomies of melopoetic theory and practice illustrate his steadily growing sophistication and the maturing of his mind, so his Bloomington lecture "The Writing and Reading of Language and Music: Thoughts on Some Parallels Between two Artistic Media" reflects his unique ability to assemble, and organize, vast materials and comprehensive data in such a way as to reveal the underlying pattern. |
Contents
3 | |
17 | |
25 | |
45 | |
Ulrich Weisstein | 75 |
A Profile in Retrospect | 115 |
Calvin S Browns Legacy | 131 |
The Poetic Use of Musical Forms 1944 | 145 |
The Musical Analogies in Mallarmés Un Coup de Dés 1967 | 167 |
Josef Weinhebers Hölderlin Variations | 191 |
MusicoLiterary Research in the Last | 201 |
Theme and Variations as a Literary Form 1978 | 235 |
Literature and Music A Developing Field of Study 1980 | 253 |
The Writing and Reading of Language and Music | 259 |
Theoretical Foundations for the Study of the Mutual | 281 |
Notes on the Contributors | 305 |
Other editions - View all
Musico-poetics in Perspective: Calvin S. Brown in Memoriam Ulrich Weisstein,Jean-Louis Cupers Limited preview - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic arts autre ballads Beethoven bien c'est Calvin century Comparative Literature composer Conrad Aiken Coup de Dés criticism d'une deux E. T. A. Hoffmann écho effect English essay example fact French fugue German Harpocrate idea interartielle Jean-Louis Cupers l'art l'écho l'œuvre l'ombre language leitmotif les échos Lettres literary literature and music littéraire littérature Mallarmé melody métaphore métaphorique miroir Music and Literature Music and Poetry musical form musicale musico-literary Musik musique n'est notation œuvre ombre opera Paris peut phrase pitch poem poésie poet poetic Press Professor Brown program music qu'elle qu'il Quincey's reading réalité relations relationships Reprint Review rhythm Richard Wagner roman Scher scholarly Schubert schubertien Semiotics sens siècle sonata sonata form song sound Stéphane Mallarmé structure symphony temps Thomas Mann timbre tion tout transposition Univ Valéry verbal visual voir volume Wagner Weinheber's Weisstein words writing YCGL York
Popular passages
Page 136 - Now opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the mind, generally increases, of necessity, that particular mode of its activity by which we are able to construct out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure.
Page 139 - Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking; and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival, running along the solitary strand in extremity of haste.
Page 136 - The mistake of most people is, to suppose that it is by the ear they communicate with music, and therefore that they are purely passive to its effects. But this is not so ; it is by the reaction of the mind upon the notices of the ear (the matter coming by the senses, the form from the mind) that the pleasure is constructed ; and therefore it is that people of equally good ear differ so much in this point from one another.
Page 141 - Us, that, with laurelled heads, were passing from the cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a garment, they wrapped us round with thunders greater than our own. As brothers we moved together; to the dawn that advanced, to the stars that fled; rendering thanks to God in the highest...