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

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 Mallarmé s 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 Pellé as et Mé 1isande, 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.