If Poetry was music

[UnderYourSpell]

I was never a one for Opera until I got into this guy who started as a terrified boy on Britain's got Talent. Even if Opera isn't your thing, just listen. If poetry was music, this would be it.
Which music sings Poetry for you?
Jonathan Antoine - Caruso

 

[Angeline]

To me, jazz can be poetry without words. Just listen to this or this. I hear freedom in the first selection and peace in the second.

But if I want words there is great poetry in Joni Mitchell's lyrics, like here.

Of course there's loads of other examples, but those work for me.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Agree on Joni Mitchell, and I would also call your attention to Steely Dan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A0wGO3c2T8

 

[Angeline]

Agree on Joni Mitchell, and I would also call your attention to Steely Dan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A0wGO3c2T8

And I could not agree more about Steely Dan. The music and lyrics are equally good. They are often dark, satirical or ironic but just amazing. And Donald Fagen's solo work (most of which includes Walter Becker, I've discovered) is also great!

 

[Tzara]

How about music that sets poetic texts to music?

• Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzDAkA67ZsY," Renée Fleming, Aspen Festival Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster. Text by James Agee.
• Israel Citkowitz: "Strings in the Earth and Air," Bethany Beardslee, soprano and Robert Helps, piano. Text by James Joyce.
• Richard Strauss: "Frühling," from Four Last Songs, Renée Fleming, Proms, 2001. Text by Hermann Hesse.

And, yeah, I kind of have a thing for Renée Fleming.

 

[Angeline]

How about music that sets poetic texts to music?

• Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzDAkA67ZsY," Renée Fleming, Aspen Festival Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster. Text by James Agee.
• Israel Citkowitz: "Strings in the Earth and Air," Bethany Beardslee, soprano and Robert Helps, piano. Text by James Joyce.
• Richard Strauss: "Frühling," from Four Last Songs, Renée Fleming, Proms, 2001. Text by Hermann Hesse.

And, yeah, I kind of have a thing for Renée Fleming.

Ok. Well then there's also this and this, for example.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

How about music that sets poetic texts to music?

• Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzDAkA67ZsY," Renée Fleming, Aspen Festival Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster. Text by James Agee.
• Israel Citkowitz: "Strings in the Earth and Air," Bethany Beardslee, soprano and Robert Helps, piano. Text by James Joyce.
• Richard Strauss: "Frühling," from Four Last Songs, Renée Fleming, Proms, 2001. Text by Hermann Hesse.

And, yeah, I kind of have a thing for Renée Fleming.

You would want to look at the wealth of examples in the German art songs or Lieder. One of my favorite poets is Heinrich Heine, and both Schumann and Brahms found amazingly insightful ways to add new dimensions of irony to his texts. There are many other examples.

 

[Piscator]

I'm aware of but not at all knowledgeable of the connections of classical music and poetry.

I definitely third Joni and wonder if she and other artists of the period such as Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Lenon and McCartney and Paul Simon shouldn't be thought of as melders of music and poetry rather than stuck in separate boxes.

And yes my fossil bones are showing.

 

[Angeline]

I'm aware of but not at all knowledgeable of the connectionns of classsicl musicand poetry.

I definitely third Joni and wonder if she and other artists of the period such as Dylan, Leonard Cohen. Lenon and McCartney and Paul Simon shouldn't be though of as melders of music and poetry rather than stuck in separate boxes.

And yes my fossil bones are showing.

My fossil bones agree with your list.

 

[RunningJib]

Give it up for Waits

What a delightful thread.

I have to toss Tom Wait's hat into the ring.

Consider "Burma Shave" and his homage to Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman". Of course, there is also Loreena McKennitt's version

But, let's give Waits his due. Consider "Hang On St. Christopher."

 

[RunningJib]

Consider a second opinion

The true beauty of music is how a given piece of music can be reinterpreted.

Yes, fuzzy kittens are all the rage, but what about a second opinion from the likes of Brad Mehldau? Consider, "My Favorite Things."

 

[Tzara]

You would want to look at the wealth of examples in the German art songs or Lieder. One of my favorite poets is Heinrich Heine, and both Schumann and Brahms found amazingly insightful ways to add new dimensions of irony to his texts. There are many other examples.

I, of course, acknowledge the wonderful contribution to the art song of lieder, but my own particular interest in classical music is 20th-21st century so my examples reflect that. Might you post links to Schubert or other lieder that you find exemplary?

I know you're fond of Schiller and Heine, and I assume there are many examples of their poems set to music.

I defer to your knowledge here, AH. I'm, I think, pretty good at knowing 20th-21st century music, but other than Mahler, not so good at the 19th century.Give me a few examples.

 

[Piscator]

What a delightful thread.

I have to toss Tom Wait's hat into the ring.

Consider "Burma Shave" and his homage to Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman". Of course, there is also Loreena McKennitt's version

But, let's give Waits his due. Consider "Hang On St. Christopher."

Seconded and I'd definitely add Ol'55.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think poetry, in a lot of ways, IS music -- the music of words. And the music of poetry can parallel a whole range of musical styles. I can think of poems that are like a Bach fugue, but I can also think of poems that are more like a jazz piece. One of the cool things about rap music is that it recenters the focus of the music on the lyrics, and how the sound and rhyme of the lyrics are part of the music.

Great poems, to me, always have a musical sensibility about them, but there's no one type of music that always comes to mind.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

I, of course, acknowledge the wonderful contribution to the art song of lieder, but my own particular interest in classical music is 20th-21st century so my examples reflect that. Might you post links to Schubert or other lieder that you find exemplary?

I know you're fond of Schiller and Heine, and I assume there are many examples of their poems set to music.

I defer to your knowledge here, AH. I'm, I think, pretty good at knowing 20th-21st century music, but other than Mahler, not so good at the 19th century.Give me a few examples.

The problem, of course, is that the words are in German, but I'll find a translation that I like.

Here, try this.
Brahms chose to repeat a few phrases from Heine's text in his setting, hopefully you can follow:

O Death, that is the cooling night,________Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht,
And Life, that is the sultry day.___________Das Leben ist der schwüle Tag.
It's darkening, I'm sleepy, ______________Es dunkelt schon, mich schläfert,
The day, it has made me tired.___________Der Tag hat mich müd gemacht.



Over my bed arises a tree,_______________ Über mein Bett erhebt sich ein Baum,
Where sings the youthful nightingale;______ Drin singt die junge Nachtigall;
She sings of love so boldly,______________ Sie singt von lauter Liebe -
I dream, yet it reaches me. _____________ Ich hör es sogar im Traum.

 

[oneblueye]

hey ...

I was never a one for Opera until I got into this guy who started as a terrified boy on Britain's got Talent. Even if Opera isn't your thing, just listen. If poetry was music, this would be it.
Which music sings Poetry for you?
Jonathan Antoine - Caruso

without poetry there is NO MUSIC,
it is the very basis-, the most basic mathematics of the aural experience;
poetry is the 'red and blue shift '
of the sighted experience.
Like the soft switch and walk of a perfect heart shaped ass crossing the street.

Without poetry there is no metre, there is no momentum, nothing to move or to create the melody.
When we musicians write a song whether we use lyrics or not, the thoughts, the emotions, the sensations that drive the melody to be heard are all based in the words that we have no knowledge of or power to speak.

without poetry there is no music.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

By turning it round I think you have missed my point but each to their own.

 

[oneblueye]

hey ...

By turning it round I think you have missed my point but each to their own.

As you have said, "---,to each their own." But I didn't believe that I turned it around so much as keying in on the statement that you made, "if poetry were music ...".
I have a very profound appreciation for the pure mathematics of music of all kinds and a true love of most music. (of which opera is one)