4/15/2023 0 Comments Definition of musicalityWe might not all agree that any particular thing is music, but if we do, it will be subsumed under that definition. We can leave the definition of music (and art, poetry, etc) in the realm of the subjective because it's not a matter of life or death.įinally, as far as I can tell, this definition (which came about as an attempt to define why 4'33'' could be considered music), seems to account for anything that anyone has ever considered to be music. Objective definitions are good in those cases.īut, as Cage also pointed out, "there are no aesthetic emergencies". I agree that they are not ideal in all cases, like, for example, if we need to know whether this wild mushroom we picked will kill us if we eat it. Some people don't like these kinds of subjective definitions. But it does mean that anything can be art as long as someone experiences it that way. This doesn't mean that everything is art because not everything is being experienced as art all the time. If you experience something and have that same kind of aesthetic experience that you do with other works of art (music, poetry, painting, etc), then this new object/experience is art. This puts music (and all art by extension) into the realm of subjective. Music is that toward which one has an aesthetic experience while paying attention aurally. This happens with consonants in musical poetry-producing those textures of sound we know are good but can’t quite put our finger on why.ĭiminution shows up in that stunning first line when the space between consonant sounds is shortened in later repetitions.Cage's definition, cleaned up a bit, goes: We can see the consonants of the first half as:Īnd the second half following with similar sounds, in a different order:Ĭan you find the acrostic scrambling in the lovely phrasing of 16th line?ĭiminution and augmentation, Burke explains, are musical terms describing the ways that composers draw half notes into later quarter notes, or vis a versa. “One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral”Īcrostic scrambling, as described by Burke, is when a pattern of consonants (and their cognates) is set, then repeated in a scrambled form. In the 10th line, we see this concealed alliteration play out.Īnd here, in line 13, we see the splendidly concealed alliteration of m cognates beginning with the m in “stumble:” The basics: the same way we make the m sound with our mouths, we make both b and p, and further, the v and f sounds. The sounds d, t, and th similarly are related to the n shape of our mouths. Read Burke’s original essay to learn more about the concept of phonetic cognates, but essentially, the argument for concealed alliteration is that the repetition of phonetically related consonants is a subtle and effective way to build musicality. We’ve made it a rule to never miss the chance to talk about Sylvia Plath’s poetry. Here, we’re going to bring his analytical discoveries to light not through Coleridge, but rather Sylvia Plath & her poem “Morning Song,” a beautiful work about the birth of her child. Within his essay, Burke-like the surgeon who has forgotten more about anatomy than any of us will ever learn-dissects some lines of Coleridge in order to answer a riddle we’ve all faced in our readings: “There were many passages that seemed to have a marked consistency of texture,” he begins, “yet this effect was not got by some obvious identity of sound, as in alliteration.” Part of that great body of work is a small essay, originally published in a 1940 issue of Poetry under the title “On Musicality in Verse.” Kenneth Burke, one of the founders of transformative New Criticism movement, wrote poetry, literary theory and criticism until his death in 1993. However, some techniques are more obscure in analysis, though nearly as prevalent in practice. These show up in every poet’s glossary, for good reason. Some techniques of tonal musicality you likely already know from school: alliteration, assonance, rhyme, etc. We’re going to explore here the tonal sounds poets use to build musicality. Rhythm (or meter) is fascinating and worth your research, but not our concern today. To consider the musicality of a poem in English is to consider two essential ingredients: the tonal sounds of the vowels and consonants, and the rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables. Today, we’re going to dig deeper into how musicality is built according the classic critic Kenneth Burke-explore the gritty details of concealed alliteration, acrostic scrambling, diminution and augmentation. The relationship between music and poetry is romance-so much so that the “musicality” of poetry endeavors as much conversation and analysis as the intricate movements of today’s best composers.
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