The Tuning of the Word: The Musico-Literary Poetics of the Symbolist Movement - Hardcover

Hertz, David Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080931312X ISBN 13: 9780809313129

Verlag: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987

Inhaltsangabe

David Michael Hertz explicates the rela­tionship between the music and poetry of the Symbolist movement, tracing it from its inception in Baudelaire’s verse and Wagner’s music to its final transformation into Modernism in the works of Schoen­berg. Hertz begins by examining the con­cept of the period, the well-rounded phrase of verse or music, which was at­tacked first in Wagner’s use of the leitmo­tif and unusual intervals such as the tritone.

 

­Such musical elements created a feel­ing of emotion directly expressed, un­hampered by convention. This approach was further developed by Mallarmé, who stripped his verse of its conventional framework in an attempt to create images of pure emotion. Mallarmé in turn in­fluenced Debussy. Hertz shows that in setting Mallarmés verse, Debussy moved further away from the standard har­monic structures of the nineteenth cen­tury, particularly in his use of tonal ambiguity.

 

­Hertz explores the aesthetic of the Symbolist movement as embodied in the unique forms that characterized the era, the tone poem and the lyric play. He dem- onstrates the particular importance of Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mé1isande, which was scored by Debussy. A revolutionary work difficult to characterize, it speaks gracefully of the transformation of Ro­manticism into Modernism.

 

Citing examples of art, literature, and music, Hertz finds ultimately that the Symbolist aesthetic came to encompass the entire artistic world. Only a scholar thoroughly at home in both the literary and musical realms and possessing a sov­ereign command of the cultural climate and currents of the period would be able to deliver exactly what his subtitle prom­ises: a musico- literary poetics of the Sym­bolist movement.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Michael Hertz is currently As­sistant Professor of Comparative Litera­ture, Indiana University. He formerly taught at New York University, where he held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities during the 1983 aca­demic year.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Southern Illinois University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1987
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 080931312X
• ISBN 13: 9780809313129
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 241
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar