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

Hertz, David Michael

ISBN 10: 080931312X / ISBN 13: 9780809313129

Published by Southern Illinois University Press, 1987

About this Item

From the Library of John Russell Taylor.

Seller Inventory # PL-16465-M8

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Tuning of the Word: The Musico-Literary Poetics of the Symbolist Movement
• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080931312X
• ISBN 13: 9780809313129
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

David Michael Hertz is 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.