{"id":873,"date":"2015-11-20T13:15:31","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T18:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=873"},"modified":"2015-11-20T13:16:10","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T18:16:10","slug":"words-and-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2015\/11\/words-and-music.html","title":{"rendered":"Words and music"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"UNCSA<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a truism that great poetry doesn\u2019t always make for great lyrics.\u00a0 Most composers who have set a lot of poetry can attest to the fact that some of the things that make a poem come alive on the page or when spoken are the very things that make it DOA when set to music.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t heard much discussion, though, of the ways that poorly constructed poetry can make for effective music.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been writing the texts to my own vocal works for about 25 years (longer, if you count all the songs I wrote as a kid), so I\u2019ve had plenty of experience dancing on this particular cracked pavement.<\/p>\n

For the last few months, I\u2019ve been working on an extended choral work, and a prime example of this divergence has cropped up.\u00a0 The text is:<\/p>\n

We saw her fall,
\nher arms extended.
\nWe watched,
\narms suspended.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the page, this quatrain is hopelessly clunky.\u00a0 It gets off to a promising start in the first couplet, but the second couplet thuds: rhythmically inert, a horrible rhyme, an obvious parallel.<\/p>\n

Yet, when sung, the cloddities are given space to shine in a way they never could on the page.\u00a0 The reason?\u00a0 The vocal setting takes the better part of three minutes, with each word explored in detail through repetition, elongation, fragmentation.\u00a0 In particular, \u201cextended\u201d and \u201csuspended\u201d both get hung up on their second syllables, leading to sustained \u201cnnn\u201d passages, which create a long range rhyme that drifts into nothingness.\u00a0 There really isn\u2019t a good way to accomplish that in a poem, but it makes perfect sense in a musical composition.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a truism that great poetry doesn\u2019t always make for great lyrics.\u00a0 Most composers who have set a lot of poetry can attest to the fact that some of the things that make a poem come alive on the page or when spoken are the very things that make it DOA when set to music. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":876,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions\/876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}