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Poetry and Music

6 or 12 classes

It’s not just a history of text-setting over the past millennium. Poetry is music in words, and music has always aspired to poetry. The class will look at some of the ways in which poetry has informed music over the ages: religious texts, in chant and later in measured polyphony; the development of the madrigal from stand-alone song to miniature music drama; the use of folksongs in both vocal and instrumental music; the explosion of art song in the 19th century, setting the works of great poets in their own right; instrumental forms such as the Ballade and Song Without Words that bring the aesthetic of poetry into pure music, and verse that imitates musical forms; texts written for declamation against music; lyricists of the 20th century, writing texts intended from the start for musical setting. The six-week class will offer an overview of these points; the twelve-week version will examine many of them in more detail, and spend more time on the contemporary scene.