Klarinet Archive - Posting 000110.txt from 2001/07

From: Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: Re: [kl] poetry - a two way street?
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 13:10:42 -0400

<><> Ken Shaw wrote:
Schubert set many Goethe poems, of course, but Goethe refused even to
look at them, and even Schubert's genius could reproduce only the
outlines of Goethe's poetry. Schubert's Goethe settings work because
they're great music, not because they express the poetry in all its
subtlety and variety.

This was one of the examples that the violin professor mentioned.
The audience was noisy before the concert began, and therefore I may
have misheard, but I think that the professor said that Goethe did hear
one of Schubert's compositions and wrote afterwards: "Schubert didn't
understand my poem at all."

I don't speak German. Even if I saw Wagner's lyrics on a sheet of
paper, I wouldn't know if they are in poetic form or not. Do you know?

One aspect of language vs. music is that music often intensifies
the emotion that is being expressed in words. Military music ("They'll
die for our cause if we give them a rousing march") and movie music are
prime examples. Does the 'multimedia' approach take advantage of
commonalities between music and language? Or is multimedia more a case
of overpowering the audience? Or both? Or something else?

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