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Feigned chaos: A study of the relationship between music and language in Romantic poetry

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Feigned chaos: A study of the relationship between music and language in Romantic poetry

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Content FEIGNED CHAOS:
A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN MUSIC AND LANGUAGE IN ROMANTIC POETRY
by
Claudia Sue Stanger
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF.SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Comparative Literature)
May 1985
UMI Number: DP22549
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089
under the direction of h.frL Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re
quirem ents for the degree of
Ph.D.
Co
f a
5785
This dissertation, w ritten by
........ Claudia Sue Stanger
D O C TO R OF PH ILO SOPH Y
Dean
January 28, 1985
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
To Dan
ii
PREFACE
Every person who writes a dissertation inevitably
discovers in the process other, perhaps superior, research
topics. This has certainly been the case with this
project. Repeatedly, names primarily associated with one
field of study, either linguistics, mathematics or music,
have surfaced again in another area where the only common
bond that could have brought them together is an
exploration of the relationship between music and language,
and specifically how the two function similarly or
dissimilarly on the basis of their textuality. Socrates'
meditation on both musical and linguistic writing in the
Phaedrus only introduces a persistent pattern. Augustine's
De Musica (387-88), a study of the limitations of the
transcription of musical rhythm, was followed by De
Trinitate (400-416), an extended textual exegesis of
scriptural writing in which Augustine sought to prove the
existence of the doctrine of the Trinity. Marin Mersenne,
a noted mathematician (1588-1648), conducted research in
acoustics, music intervals and tuning that contributed
greatly to music theory. But Mersenne also carried on a
long correspondence with Descartes in which they discussed
iii
not only mathematical descriptions of language but also the
mathematical description of music. Descartes' own interest
in music is evidenced by his Compendium Musicae (1618; pub.
1650), but it is an interest barely recognized in
comparison to his great work on language and understanding
Discours de la Methode (1637). Athanaius Kircher, a
noted philologist and inventor of artificial languages
(1602-1680), published Ars combinatoria which strongly
influenced Leibniz' theory of perception and understanding.
But Kircher was also a music collector who published the
Musurqia, a veritable museum of music myths and
experiments.
This overwhelming but largely unnoticed tradition of
examining the relationship between music and language on
the basis of their characteristics as systems of
transcription has evolved virtually unrecognized. However,
by the end of the eighteenth century, scholars and
philosophers as well as musicologists and poets had begun
to recognize the potential offered by comparing language
and music. Within the last third of that century, numerous
works were published in quick succession. Rousseau's many
works on music, including Dissertation sur la musique
moderne (1743), Lettre sur la musique frangaise (1752) and
Dictionnaire de musique (1767), were supplemented by his
Essai sur 1'oriqine des lanques (1749/54). In Germany,
Herder's Uber den Ursprung der Sprache (1772) was followed
iv
by his study on the important literary tradition of German
folksong, Stimmen der Volker in Liedern (1778-79 ). And in
England, Beattie's problematic but nevertheless extremely
influential Poetry and Music As They Affect The Mind (1778)
was quickly extended by his The Theory of Language (1783).
The persistence of the pattern indicates that something
more than accident has occurred, and I am quite convinced
that a comparative study of the history of interdisci
plinary relationships established in the works of
philosophers, writers and musicians who wrote about both
language and music would provide a remarkable variety of
new interdisciplinary approaches which could be used not
only to explore the relationship between music and
language, but which would also be extremely fruitful for
interdisciplinary discussion in general. This study will
be successful, then, if it engenders interest for further
investigation.
In addition to works cited in the introduction and the
text, this study owes its genesis to other writers and
teachers who are not directly quoted. The works of Michel
Foucault and Roland Barthes both provided conceptual models
from which my critique of traditional definitions of inter
disciplinary criticism could begin. In addition, under the
aegis of the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst, I was
able to participate in seminars on both Heidegger and
Adorno at Eberhard-KarIs Universitat in Tubingen, West
v
Germany. A close reading of both these philosophers
strongly influenced my reconsideration of language,
especially concerning a redefinition of meaning and under
standing that could be formulated independently from logic
and linguistics by relying more strongly on poetry and art.
In the bridge section which connects the theory chapter to
its application in poetic analysis, I repeatedly discovered
confirmation for many of my observations not only in these
writers but also in the works of Croce and de Man. And
finally, this study owes much to the patience and
suggestions of Vincent Farenga and Richard Wingell, and
especially to David Malone who chaired my doctoral
dissertation committee.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface iii
List of Figures viii
Introduction 1
Chapter I
- The Semeiographics of Musical and
Linguistic Writing: The Ancient World 15
- Models of Inversion: Musical and
Linguistic Writing in the Middle Ages 52
- Escaping the Transcriber's Hand:
False Music and Ellipsis 94
- Feigned Chaos: Meaning and Textuality
in Hobbes, Descartes and Leibniz 116
The Bridge: Toward a New Theory of
Interdisciplinary Criticism 132
Chapter II
- Unforgotten Lyres: Music and Language
in Shelley's Poetry 153
- Gracenotes: Music and Language in
Lamartine's Poetry 208
- Magic Mirror: Music and Language in
Brentano's Poetry 249
Conclusion 302
Notes 321
Works and Authors Cited 330
vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1
Figure 2
Evolution of Greek
Musical Writing 28
Evolution of Ancient
Linguistic Writing 36
viii
INTRODUCTION
This study of the relationship between music and
language was initially guided by the contemporary classic
in interdisciplinary criticism which outlines the entire
field of study. Calvin Brown’s Music and Literature (1948)
provides a traditional and comprehensive overview of the
various approaches that could be employed in discussing
relationships between the two arts. However, two other
works also quickly proved to be invaluable to a study of
music and language. The first of these studies, John
Hollander's The Untuning of the Sky (1961), while
restricted to an examination of English poetry between 1500
and 1700, thoroughly investigates the transformation of the
literary use of musical metaphor, reference and symbolism
which occurred during the Renaissance. Secondly, Stephen
Scher's Verbal Music in German Literature (1968) offers
detailed analyses of how the literary presentation of both
real and imaginary music employs specific rhetorical and
structural devices in order to characterize music in words.
Together these three works seemed to define the boundaries
of studies that compared music and literature for an entire
generation of interdisciplinarians.
1
However, in the "Introductory" to his book, Hollander
remarks that any formalistic analysis of poetry must not
only analyze the individual language in which the poem was
written but also "must deal with the written language as
system in itself" (7). This observation was expanded in
his 1970 "Preface" in which Hollander clearly indicates
that the complexity of interdisciplinary studies in music
and literature was only beginning to be revealed. The
current explosion of new ideas and critical models in the
entire field of literary criticism prompted Hollander, less
than ten years later, to call for a more conscious appli
cation of the structuralist approach based on sophisticated
linguistic models. In addition, although never acknowl
edged as such, Calvin Brown's analysis of De Quincey's
"Dream-Fugue" section of The English Mail-Coach had already
borne the stamp of structuralist methodology. Finally, in
remarks before the closing session of the section on
Literature and the Other Arts at the 1979 Congress of the
International Comparative Literature Association, Stephen
Scher noted that the increasingly more stringent
requirements placed on defining the relationship between
literature and music appear to indicate that an extremely
complicated relationship exists between language and music
which heretofore has been inaccessible to the approaches of
traditional interdisciplinary criticism. It is clear that
the current task of interdisciplinary criticism demands not
2
only a familiarity with the canon of musico-literary
studies to date, but also an increasing awareness of trends
in modern criticism, specifically in structuralism and
semiotics, post-structuralism and deconstruction.
These brief remarks on three of the most well-known
interdisciplinary critics do not even begin to address the
myriad of other approaches to the relationship between
these two arts which have been explored by scholars in both
musicology and literary studies— but it is certainly enough
to indicate the immensity of the challenge. An under
standing of and appreciation for music are assumed, but now
a knowledge of both music theory and history are absolutely
essential. Furthermore, in the search for a method or
vocabulary to analyze the relationship between music and
literature in some fundamentally new way, a familiarity
with other major disciplines becomes necessary. A thorough
background in literary theory and criticism requires an
awareness of current research in linguistics as well as an
acquaintance with the history of philosophy, specifically
the philosophy of language.
This study will attempt to gain a new perspective on
the relationship between music and literature by following
Hollander's suggestion. No interdisciplinary studies have
appeared to date which base a comparison of music and
literature on the evolution of musical and linguistic
writing, that is, on the grammatology of music and
3
literature. By way of a brief introduction, the great leap
forward in the transcription of language came first in
Sumeria. Pictograms were replaced with cuneiform letters
which could be restructured and reformulated to form a
greater variety of signs with specific meanings. The
various systems of transcribing language were developed
first in response to trade and for keeping records and
documenting legal pronouncements, and it was only much
later that transcription systems were used to record what
we moderns call art: song, myth, poetry, drama and
fiction. Although our knowledge of this slow process is
derived completely from artifacts, in some cases only
fragments, it is an indisputable fact that all language
theory was developed only after systematized transcription
of language itself had long been in use.
A brief recapitulation of the development of musical
writing, however, reveals that a quite different
relationship exists between theory and systematic tran
scription in the field of music. What is uncovered, in
contrast to the history of language studies, is a reversed
situation wherein an overwhelming amount of music theory
predates the development of systematic music transcription.
The inversion in the historical development of tran
scription and theory is but one example of the general
pattern of inversion that exists between language and
music. However, it is obvious that quite different
4
definitions of expression, understanding and meaning might
well be formulated if a system of transcription predates or
antedates theoretical discussion of how that system could
or should function.
One thesis of this work is that a recurring theme in
the relationship of linguistic writing and musical writing
is their inverted reflection of each other. This basic
pattern describes how similarities between music and
language are frequently turned on their heads, resulting in
a bond not of identity but of diametrical opposition. The
concepts of reflection and of inversion are both powerful
metaphors in philosophical discussion: the speculum is
traditionally associated with perception itself. The
inversion, however, can only occur through a lens, through
the mind's eye as the self observes itself. In the history
of the relationship between music and language, the two
seem to mirror each other at some moments while at other
moments, they exhibit an inverse relationship, one art
filling in the gaps of perception or understanding that the
other has revealed.
Rather than basing interdisciplinary criticism on a
literary use of musical structure, metaphor, sound or
rhythm, qualities which promote an extremely subjective
definition of what constitutes the "musical" qualities of
language, this study takes its direction from Romantic
poetry itself. One repeated theme in Romantic poetry which
5
has taken music either directly or indirectly as its
subject is that to give precedence to one art over the
other* either to music or poetry, insures a failure in both
experience and understanding. By analyzing poetic works
which explore the relationship between music and language,
this study will attempt to illustrate how three poets
conceived of how the two arts work together. The resulting
poetry not only illustrates the conjunctive nature of
experience, but more interestingly it offers an alternative
to traditional models of interdisciplinary criticism.
Hence, another goal of this study will be to recover
lost or forgotten methods of relating the arts. Through
the Middle Ages up to the beginning of the seventeenth
century, philosophers debated the correspondences between
the two arts. However, the slow but continual development
of a complex and highly expressive system of musical
notation effected a shift in the views of the art of music:
composers developed extremely complicated musical forms
that were not only totally independent from linguistic
writing but which also relied upon an extremely refined
system of notation. Musicians, philosophers and writers
began to view music as something more than sequences of
sounds. Commentary on baroque music is probably the best
example of this shift. Music was no longer viewed as
simply a chain of acoustic events so much as it developed
into a representation by use of aural structures of how
6
ideas interrelate and interacted within the mind. The
philosophy of Leibniz is the consummation of a movement in
philosophy which defined music as the most accurate repre
sentation of a particular kind of thinking, specifically
that music could express how relationships are established
between ideas independently from either language or
linguistic writing.
Although Leibniz's discussion of music as the best
example of the je-ne-sais-quoi that overcomes the tyranny
of language's specificity was undoubtedly the most eloquent
and subtle model of the relationship of music and language
in the history of interdisciplinary criticism, his model
was widely misunderstood. Instead of utilizing music and
language as tools for exploring perception and tran
scription, as inverted-mirrors of each other, many
philosophers, poets and musicians after Leibniz exploited
his model for what it seemed to be— an extremely appealing
and flexible metaphor. To a great extent, Leibniz himself
supported this movement by his constant use of music as an
analogy for his model of the universe, the relationship
between body and soul and the interaction of monads. Thus,
after Leibniz, the strong bond was broken between music and
language as two examples of an autonomous writing system
which utilized different methods for expressing and making
ideas understandable.
In its place a model of analogy has been developed
7
which, despite Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft, has
continued to dominate much literary criticism, and partic
ularly interdisciplinary studies. The conventions of
analogy and metaphor dominate criticism which explores the
relationships between music and language. In the age of
empiricism following Leibniz, as Hollander has already
pointed out, the privileged relationship between poetry and
music was undermined, and yet the attractive affinity
between musical symbolism and metaphor has still entranced
interdisciplinary critics well into the twentieth century.
However, much of this apparent sense of affinity is itself
a linguistic mirage created by the way in which metaphors
work. With the exception of certain discussions in aesthe
tics, musical writing has virtually disappeared from much
interdisciplinary inquiry as a model for comparing the
arts.
However, there are works of poetry which maintain a
sense of the autonomy of music and language without
privileging one art over the other, and it is these works
which provide fascinating insights for interdisciplinary
criticism. Long after "the music of poetry" had been
absorbed under linguistic categories, certain poets created
a space in their poetry wherein forgotten characteristics
of music could be discussed. These characteristics have
their origin in the development of music as a separate
system of transcription related to but not dependent upon
8
language. And certainly in comparing the strengths and
weaknesses of both music and poetic discourse as methods of
expression and understanding, some poets were able to
develop a fundamentally radical interdisciplinary vocab
ulary; they experimented with textual manipulation that
demonstrated relationships between the arts on the basis of
their shared origins as transcribable semiotic systems.
This "write-ability" of both music and language is the key
to their definition as grammatologies.
Briefly, this study is divided into two chapters
connected by a bridge section. The first chapter is
primarily concerned with a discussion of the shared gramma
tologies of both music and language, and four areas are
explored in which music and language can be discussed as
reflected inversions of each other. The first is that of
ancient transcription. After initially sharing similar
methods of generating different signs for letters and
notes, linguistic and music writing diverge from this
common ground. But they do not diverge in a random fashion
but rather each adopts and adapts transcriptional devices
which were found to be less useful by the other. A brief
comparison of both Plato's Phaedrus and Derrida's exclusion
of music in his discussion of Plato and language in
"Plato's Pharmacy" (Dissemination 63-171) reveals how the
regular pattern of inversion between music and language is
also expressed in critical texts.
9
Another axis along which music and language writing
mirror each other is provided by the medieval concept of
musica. Read in Piercean terms as a rudimentary semiology,
musica encompasses both music and linguistic writing (as
well as mathematics, an analysis of which goes beyond the
boundaries of this study), and each can be understood as a
separate transcription system which represents different
but interrelated methods of analyzing the world. In this
section the Guidonian Hand and its importance as a music
text is analyzed, and the Hand's place in the history of
musical writing is connected with recent work on medieval
music writing by the musicologist Leo Treitler. The
pattern of inversion which characterizes the relationship
between music and language writing is again illustrated.
The third and fourth sections of the first chapter are
very closely related. The phenomenon of textual silences,
or those moments at which the transcription systems of both
music and writing have broken down, provides another
example of the inverted reflection of music and language
writing. A great interest in this phenomenon was expressed
by both musicians and linguists in the Middle Ages, and a
comparison of the definition and function of musica ficta
and ellipsis delineates another axis along which the
inverted reflection of music and language has been
expressed. In the fourth section, the insufficiency of
defining writing as a mere extension of sound, whether of
10
musical notes or of speech, finds its expression in Western
philosophy with a curious adoption of musical terminology.
Hobbes, Descartes and Leibniz describe a particular kind of
cognition which is distinguished from rational and logical
discourse, and they define this kind of mental activity in
terms of transcription. In addition, all of them
repeatedly employed music and musical terminology to char
acterize this kind of writing-above-all-other-writing, and
they stipulate that this activity is a necessary supplement
to both language and logic in order to comprehend the
world.
The second chapter of this study is devoted to a
poetic analysis based on the new perspective on the inter
relationship of language and music gained by analyzing the
four axes along which they mirror and reflect each other.
The poetry of three Romantic poets is re-read according to
the models of interrelationships established through the
theoretical discussion of theory in the first half of this
study. Readings from the Romantic movement were chosen
because in the years between 1800 and 1830, the whole of
European letters was reacting to philosophical, linguistic
and aesthetic re-definitions of language, and specifically
to various theories on how the function of the self and its
brain were influenced not only by individual national
languages, but by the concept of language in general.
Poetics as a self-consciously linguistic activity had been
11
born. By the end of the nineteenth century, this led to a
wholesale attack on what appeared to be the arbitrary
perceptual divisions between the arts, and for this reason
much work has been done which examines the relationship
between symbolist poetry and both music and visual arts.
However, not much has been done to determine how much the
symbolist movement is indebted to poetic discussions on the
relationship of music and language which occurred fifty
years earlier.
The decision to examine the work of Shelley, Lamartine
and Brentano in particular was made for a number of
reasons. The first is that the poetry of all three had
already been examined in relationship to music, and their
personal interests in and conscious experiments with music
had already been the subject of scholarly research.
However, in the case of each of the poets, it appeared that
many of these studies had either ignored or misread what
seemed to be important connections between poetry and
music. To a large degree, each poet's own exploration of
the relationships between music and language had been
almost completely ignored. Therefore, very early in this
study, romantic poetry was understood as a form of inter
disciplinary criticism in itself. The decision to read
this poetry as criticism then allowed certain patterns to
emerge, and these patterns were repeated not only within
the poetry of one writer, but between poems of different
12
writers who were consciously meditating on the relationship
between the arts in their work.
The initial rereading of the poetry led to an
exploration of how these patterns might have come into
being, and these preliminary findings resulted in an
expansion and application of these theories to the various
poems. Hence, the bridge section which constitutes the
middle portion of this study is exactly that. It is not
only a connection which allows passage from theory to
analysis, but it also attempts to provide a methodology for
working back from poetry to theory. The bridge is a two-
way path, and in it the attempt is made to connect the
various patterns of inter-relationships between music and
language with each other and to extrapolate from them a
methodology that could be used in analyzing poetry.
Perhaps the most important goal of the bridge section
is to illustrate how the relationship between music and
language is not always overtly expressed in either poetry
or prose. The most obvious shortcoming of much interdisci
plinary criticism is that traditional studies have been far
too restricted: Only literature that has taken music as
its subject or has explicitly utilized musical reference
has been analyzed. This, of course, is a sound beginning
point for interdisciplinary study, but a refusal to move
beyond discussions of explicit musical reference in
literature has, I believe, severely limited not only the
13
insights offered by interdisciplinary criticism but also
the usefulness of interdisciplinary criticism in the field
of general literary theory and criticism. Interdisci
plinary criticism has the potential to make long overdue
and important contributions to literary theory, but for
this to come about, the horizons of interdisciplinary
studies must be extended beyond the limited scope of
searching for explicit structural or metaphoric parallels.
Therefore, the most important goal of this study is to
develop a broader methodology for musico-literary studies
that could be applied not only to music and poetry but also
to music and prose, not only to Romantic literature but to
all literature, and finally, not only to studies of music
and literature but to all other studies which adopt an
interdisciplinary approach as the foundation for a study of
literature.
14
CHAPTER I
THE SEMEIOGRAPHICS OF MUSICAL AND
LINGUISTIC WRITING: THE ANCIENT WORLD
It is therefore as if what we call language
could have been in its origin and in its end
only a moment, an essential but determined mode,
a phenomenon, an aspect, a species of writing.
And as if it had succeeded in making us forget
this, and iui wilfully misleading us, only in the
course of an adventure: as that adventure
itself.
- Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatoloqy, (8)
When Jacques Derrida challenges traditional linguistic
and philosophical attitudes about the nature of language in
"Writing Before the Letter," choosing to focus on language
as a system of signification that exceeds the limitations
of presence or "voice" of the authoritative speaker, he
emphasizes that the act of transcription affects our under
standing, perception and interpretation of any event
involving language. This subject accounts for the vast
majority of post-Derridean response, simply because Derrida
called into question some of the Western tradition's funda
mental assumptions about the task of criticism. These
explorations of Derrida's "adventure" all undertake to
examine our basic beliefs, conscious or unconscious, about
the relationship between language, writing and
15
understanding.
In many ways, Derrida's grammatology is a rigorous
philosophical extension of I. A. Gelb's initial exploration
of that field in A Study of Writing (1952). Gelb coined
the expression "grammatology" in his Preface, defining it
as a "new science [which] attempts to establish the general
principles governing the use and evolution of writing on a
comparative-typological basis" (v). Whereas Gelb's study
intended to show how the comparative evolution of represen
tative types of writing affords a comprehensive view of the
development of language as a communicative tool, Derrida
instead proposes that a close examination of writing
destroys the illusion that language functions as an
accurate representation of knowledge. This is certainly
not a new philosophical position, except that, for Derrida,
it is through examining the act of writing that the loss of
authority of language is revealed. His grammatology
explores what happens when, under close textual scrutiny,
language is dislodged from its claims to validity and
certainty.
This comparison of music and language as systems of
notation should then be understood as a grammatology in
both Gelb's and Derrida's applications of the word. As a
form of writing that originally made no claims of authority
in embodying knowledge, music has traditionally lent itself
as a metaphor in literature for a general kind of insight
16
or non-specific understanding. According to Gelb, any
grammatology should trace the development of writing
through its many levels of shifting meaning; hence Gelb
concentrated his study on ideographs and early syllabaries
wherein language made no claim to embody knowledge but
rather developed primarily as a tool of representation. To
modern critics somewhat skeptical of Derridean influence, a
grammatology of musical writing might well act as a foil to
Derrida, embodying to an extreme all of the negative and
chaotic tendencies to which Derridean criticism reduces
linguistic writing. The threat that music might somehow
"reduce" language, that is, drain language of meaning is,
in fact, a conventional relationship that has been
developed in interdisciplinary criticism between music and
literature. However, because Gelb insisted on a close bond
between writing and meaning, Derrida's subtle redefinition
of the expression "grammatology" makes possible an exami
nation of other species of writing than linguistic ones.
One advantage of deploying Derrida's definition of gramma
tology against Gelb's is to allow an examination of music
and language on a very basic level— simply as two
different, not yet equal or unequal, species of writing.
Approached from the opposite side of the debate, parlaying
Gelb's definition against Derrida's presents the possi
bility that some poets and philosophers neither forgot nor
were misled by language as blindly as Derrida might have us
17
believe.
Hence, the first step in establishing a grammatology
of music writing must be an examination of the development
of musical notation in the ancient world. Although some
form of music notation has been in use in the Western world
since approximately the 7th century B.C., the first
accurate descriptions of musical notation did not appear
until over six hundred years later. The first stage of
music studies concentrated on theory. Lasas of Hermine
(ca. 500 B.C.), Pindar's teacher, proposed that sound was
produced by vibration, and in the next century Archytas of
Tarentum, friend to Plato, determined that the sound of the
vibrating string was passed to the ear by the setting into
motion of air (Sachs 199). What followed in the next
centuries in the work of Euclid and the Pythagoreans was
the development of a descriptive theory of music based
primarily on mathematical ratios. However, it was only in
the 2nd century A. D. with the appearance of Aristides
Quinctilianus ' seven volume work TTEPI MQUZ IKHE and
Gaudentius ' %PMONIKH E J lA T firH that descriptions of music
notation were made widely available (Wolf 1: 11). These
sources, among others,^" indicate that two different systems
of musical notation were used in ancient Greece. The older
form, misleadingly called instrumental notation, utilized
transformations of the Doric alphabet to represent a
diatonic scale. The second type of Greek musical notation,
18
called vocal notation, developed out of the older
instrumental notation and employed a greater variety of
symbols to show a larger and more complex musical scale.
Although the technique of adapting letters from the
alphabet as representations for notes was also used in
China and India previous to the 7th century B.C., no direct
influence of the Orient on ancient Greek musical notation
has ever been proven (Wolf 1: 15).
In Studien zur Geschichte der Motenschrift (1878),
Hugo Reimann proposed that the older form of Greek musical
notation represented two overlapping scales. Based on
this, he theorized that the lower scale may have been
intended for the aulos, the upper one for the kithara
(10):
Hypolydian N CL K . H K C F
Hypophrygian (f S) r k- E h h e
Riemann makes two fundamental observations about the organ
ization and development of Greek musical notation. The
first is the obvious similarity between these symbols and
the Doric alphabet, and this bears out his earlier remark
that all systems of music notation are based on the ability
of a culture to develop an organized system of writing
(3). Riemann's second observation is actually a
19
speculation: based on the hypolydian scale as first
recorded by Alypius, Riemann proposed that it may have
embodied a mnemonic device— N recalling the word N nrn
and r* (Y) Y/ rrc*,Tr\, the names for the highest and lowest
tones of the Greek tetrachord (10-11). Whether or not this
second proposal met with general agreement, most
authorities in the field of ancient Greek notation do
concur with Riemann in believing that the development of
another transcription system, called vocal notation, only
occurred after instrumental notation had been in general
use for some time.2
Riemann's work remains seminal for music historians.
But Johannes Wolf's later and more detailed study, Handbuch
der Notationskunde (1913), questions Riemann's conclusions
in a number of areas. The first doubt concerns the charac
teristics of the original Greek scale as described by
3
Alypius. Incorporating research done by Westphal and
4
Thxerfelder , which show a connection between the Doric and
Phoenician alphabets, with his own theory that the most
ancient scale probably encompassed the eruffzn/Jx r fA tL o v > a
scale based on the tetrachord A-B-C-D that encompassed two
complete octaves, Wolf suggested that instrumental notation
was actually based on an extended version of Riemann's
scale (Wolf 1: 12-16):
20
H h E t- r s' F CK 1 < C N Z V
A B c d e f g a b c' d' e' f' g' a'
Riemann had already pointed out that the Alypiusian text
was very problematic, but on this basis Wolf challenged not
only Riemann but also minimized the importance of research
done by A.I.H. Vincent (1846) and Friedrich Bellermann
(1847). Both Vincent's and Bellermann's conclusions were
crucial to Riemann's argument that Greek musical notation
could have adopted signs and symbols generated from a much
broader base, including primitive signs for the constel-
5
lation and from the Hebraic (Chaldean) alphabet. Instead
Wolf, without ever clearly stating his reasons for doing
so, argued that the strong influence of the Phonecian
alphabet on the development of the Doric alphabet, as shown
by Westphal and Thierfelder, should take precedence over
g
Vincent's and Bellermann's theories.
Bellermann, however, argued persuasively for the
importance of the alteration of the symbol N in the
earliest forms of Greek notation. Bellermann suggested
that the rotation of the symbol N originally indicated
enharmonics in instrumental notation. Bellermann believed,
as did Riemann, that the original scale ended at f1; in
this case, Z and V had to be later additions that indicated
g' flat and f' sharp. Crucial also to Bellermann's theory
is his interpretation of ^9 as a rotation and transformation
21
of the symbol N (46). There has been has been support for
Bellermann"s hypothesis among music historians. By
pointing out that Greek notation relied on the internal
organization of Greek scales which were all formed by
combinations of tetrachords, Barbour has illustrated that g
flat and f sharp are vital notes for the completion of the
hypolydian scale (5). Of especial interest for this
comparison of the semeiographics of music and language is
Bellermann's insistance that the pattern of rotating
letters 90° and 180° to indicate semitones was an important
technique which was copied in later versions of both
instrumental and vocal notation.
Why, then, did Wolf abandon Bellermann? A reexami
nation of the Handbuch reveals some biased assumptions
about the relationship between early Greek notation and the
Greek alphabet. The first concerns Wolf's dismissal of the
importance of N as a symbol with characteristics that might
have affected the development of music transcription. Only
in a footnote does Wolf mention Riemann's proposal that
both N and Y served as mnemonic aids, but he makes no
prolonged effort to either support or refute this theory
(Wolf 1: 16). Because Wolf offers no explanation, it is
only possible to surmise why he so quickly dispensed with
Riemann's speculations. In delineating the development of
both instrumental and vocal notation, Riemann gives few
dates. Outside of very general references, Riemann is
22
apparently more concerned with accounting for the step-by-
step processs that described the evolution of ancient Greek
musical notation than with placing these steps into a
specific time frame (9-15). Classical studies were in a
state of tremendous growth during the last half of the 19th
century, so these omissions might simply reveal that
Riemann could not verify any dates he might suggest. But
by 1913, enough was known about ancient music notation for
Wolf to place the first uses of instrumental notation to
pre-Solonian times, that is, before 640 B.C. (1: 15).
Herein could lie the basis for Wolf's abandonment of
Riemann's theory of N-Y as mnemonic aids: the first
complete description of the Greek tetrachord theory, with
its series of overlapping four-note scales that produced
longer modal scales, is generally attributed to Archytas of
Tarentum. Archytas developed a quite complex tuning system
for the aulos and, based on these tunings, some scholars,
including Westphal, even attribute to Archytas the
invention of instrumental notation (Barbour 12-13).
Westphal's theory about the relationship between Archytas'
notation and mathematics will be discussed later. But the
discovery of evidence that would point towards the 5th
century B.C. as the earliest time at which there was wide
spread knowledge and use of tetrachords contradicted
Riemann's speculation that a mnemonic aid might have been
incorporated into instrumental notation over two hundred
23
years earlier. Lacking a comprehensive system of sound
organization that accounted for the importance of such
concepts as nete and hypate, Wolf's abandonment of
Riemann's hypothesis is understandable.
But this still does not explain his preference for the
work of Thierfelder and sections of Westphal over that of
Vincent and Bellermann. A comparison of the core scale in
the two systems of Greek notation as proposed by Riemann
and Wolf illustrates their basic differences. Notice that
Greek notation placed notes in descending order from left
to right. Riemann presents scales in accordance with Greek
rules, but Wolf does not; therefore, the order of notes had
to be reversed from Wolf's text in order for the comparison
to be clear:
HZ N C. <1 K CF s'r hEh H€
a' g' f' e' d' c' b a g f e d c B A G
(Instrumental scale, 7th-5th centuries, Riemann 10, 15)
V Z N C < 1 K C F r r h E h H
a' g' f' e' d' c' b a g f e d c B A
(Instrumental scale, 7th-5th centuries, Wolf 1: 16)
There are two minor differences between e' and d which
could easily be attributed to variations between individual
transcribers. Not so easily explained is the great
24
difference in the symbols used for a'. Both Riemann and
Wolf agree that a' and g' are later additions to the core
scale, but their reasons for adding them are quite
different. Wolf argues that a" and g' are extensions of
the core scale; for the same reason he drops the low G so
that, as explained earlier, the scale conforms to the Greek
a'Ca’ TTijL/a T£A£tov . But Riemann1 s addition of the symbols
for a* and g', though striving towards the same goal of
accounting for the original Greek scale in its entirety, is
based on a quite different perspective on the origin of
music notation and the relationship of music writing to the
Greek, or any, alphabet. This difference is summed up by
the difference in the row of signs that indicate a', g1 and
f' .
Wolf acknowledges that V and Z are similar to N, but
rejected Bellermann's proposal that they could be
variations on the symbol N in favor of Westphal's and
Thierfelder's conclusions that these symbols originated
from the Phonecian alphabet. Thierfelder equated these
symbols as the Phonecian equivalent of the Greek letters
I, Z and N (Wolf 1: 15-16). Although he cited Westphal's
work that emphasized the reliance on an alphabet as the
origin for musical writing, Wolf neither acknowledged
nor refuted later research done by Westphal that illus
trated a connnection between mathematics and music
notation. In Geschichte der alten und mittelalterlichen
Musik (1864), Westphal suggested that there was a corre
lation between Archytas' tunings for the aulos and the
distinctive rotation of its symbol 90°. Because Archytas'
tunings were so unusual in that they incorporated third-
tones instead of the traditional Pythagorean semi-tones
between whole notes, Westphal reasoned that there could be
a mathematical connection between a 90° turn that would
indicate a third-tone as a differentiation from a reversed
or 180° turn to indicate a half-step. Because in a very
graphic way music notation is undeniably connected with
mathematics, Westphal proposed that music writing had at
its foundation another dynamic than that of utilizing an
alphabet, either Greek or Phoenician. It is this proposal
that Wolf ignored.
The recurrence of the thesis that music writing must
be something more than simply alphabet copying begins to
reveal an intriguing pattern with a reexamination of both
Bellermann and Riemann. All three, in greater or lesser
degrees, consider music writing as an independent system of
signs. As they, reflect on the importance of this status,
they actually initiate a search for the rules that could
govern the system of music writing. Interestingly,
Bellermann1s thesis not only takes the origin of musical
signs into consideration, it also describes a basic
principle behind the manipulation of music signs: the 90°
and 180° turning of root signs to produce new signs.
26
Bellerman thought that the technique of rotating letters
might have represented chromatic variations on the base
note (41). Riemann amended Bellermann, as cited earlier;
however, while correcting Bellermann's initial suggestion
for the exact correspondence of the symbols to specific
notes, Riemann extended Bellermann's idea to suggest a
cause-effect relationship between this technique of
altering symbols to the development of the entire system of
Greek notation. Riemann conceded that the pattern of first
laying the signs on their sides and then pivoting them on
their stems was a pattern that governed how enharmonic and
chromatic changes were indicated in instrumental notation
as it expanded over the next few centuries:
Die Art und Weise, auch die Reihenfolge dieser
Veranderungen (erst Umlegung, dann Umdrehung)
wurde dann spater massgebend fur die
enharmonisch-chromatischen Veranderungen der
Instrumentalzeichen (13).
A figure showing the development of both instrumental
g
and vocal notation is given on the following page :
27
Figure 1: Evolution of Greek Musical Writing.
UPPER
S CAL E
MIDDLES
SCALE I
LOUER
S C A L E
(Obere Partie.)
A ' B ' r 1 A ' E ' Z ' h ' © ' r K' A ' M ' N ' Z' O '
v r N ' 1' d ' C . ' > ' V ' < ' K < ' T
X * K
/ "
e" d" c" h "
± X -©■ X A U
A A M A A z
a r
9 '
(Zwischenpartie.)
A b r A E Z H e i
\ / N T U t . > v <
/'
e' d'
(Mittelpartie.)
K A M I N I O n p c
o o . c
a
T Y ( j »
^JEL
9
X Y SI
/
(Untere Partie.)
V P -1 7 F 7 H m — * V w N K W Q
t L r H i t 3 LI E H X h HUH
e d C M A
d b 3
3 <*»_£_
O
" H X B - t a
T - i C L . X • €
F E
(Sp&terer Zusatz.
m
XL
EL
r+ 's r
m
X ’+X
m
XL
I. Underlined signs indicate pre-Solonian, 7th century B.
C. scale based on the Doric alphabet. This scale shows
diatonic steps for the middle and lower scales in
instrumental notation.
I'. Underlined signs indicate later additions (between 7th-
5th centuries B. C.) to the instrumental scale.
II. 5th century B. C. vocal notation was based on Ionian
letters and shows that chromatism was incorporated into
the middle scale of vocal notation.
III.Between the 4th-5th centuries B. C., the technique of
turning and mirroring Ionian letters produces lower
scale and a' and g' of vocal notation in chromatic
steps.
IV. By 350 B.C., the use of diacritic marks produces the
upper scale of vocal notation; F and E and their
chromatic alterations were added to lower scale, vocal
notation.
V. After 350 B.C., the addition of chromatic steps to the
entire instrumental scale by utilizing transformation
techniques (breaking apart of signs into smaller units
as well as 90° and 180° turns) adopted from vocal
notation.
28
Both Riemann and Wolf discerned the basic structural
principles of music notation: that signs, once ordered,
are rotated or inverted to form new signs for other notes.
But neither offered comment on the origin of these
principles. Both assumed the reliance of music writing on
an alphabet, and this assumption influences, in varying
degrees, the ability they will accord music writing to
operate independently from language. Riemann stated that
instead of acting as a key to the understanding of ancient
art, the study of Greek music theory, including music
notation, was a dead discipline (15). Wolf, writing a
little more than thirty years later, was not quite so
condemnatory, suggesting instead that misinformation about
Greek notation passed on to the middle ages by Gaudentius
and Boethius accounts for much of our misunderstanding (1:
29) Wolf reawakened interest in the study of ancient Greek
music notation by proposing that another kind of contextual
relationship existed between the signs. An alteration of a
half-step from the preceding tone will be indicated by a
90° rotation, while a whole step difference from the
preceding tone, if that tone itself is an alteration, will
be indicated by a 180° rotation of the second sign. Wolf
offers this notation of a C minor scale as an example of
these rules for transformation (1: 17):
29
Et-.i./'Fu. on
c d d# f g g# a# c'
That both 90° and 180° turns could indicate the same
sound in two different contexts is analogous to the modern
use of sharps in ascending sequences of notes and flats in
decending ones. But rather than using only two signs to
indicate this same change in any note, each individual note
has its own set of variations depending upon not only the
immediate context (i.e., the individual piece being
performed) but also depending upon the larger context of
when the sign for that note was generated in the evolution
of the notation system. The importance of context recalls
Bellermann's assessment of Greek notation as a system that
originally showed only relationships between signs based on
an arbitrary beginning pitch, rather than one in which
signs had an unchanging relationship to certain sounds
(47). Once an assumed connection between the musical sign
and its pitch (a quite modern development) is shattered,
musical writing can be understood less as a method of
transcribing melody and more as a way of notating
mathematical ratios.
Wolf's observations established a connection between
the context of a musical sign and its appearance. If the
context can change the appearance of a sign, so that one
sound may be represented by many different signs, then an
30
examination of exactly how a string of signs is generated
as well as their rules of combination and recombination
becomes an important element in deciphering musical
writing. This is the foundation for Westphal*s proposal
mentioned earlier in this study. Based on Archytas*
tunings as recorded in Claudius Ptolemy's *A PNONIKA (ca.
140 A.0.), Westphal investigated the relationship between
mathematic ratios contained in various tetrachords
generated by the same scale. The tetrachords were defined
as either enharmonic, chromatic or diatonic, depending upon
9
the intervals between the notes. The Greek modal system
is quite complicated, but of particular interest for this
study is one quality pointed out first by Westphal and more
recently elaborated on by contemporary music historians.^
Westphal discovered that although the enharmonic, chromatic
and diatonic tetrachords of the hypolydian mode differed
from each other, they all had a third-tone interval between
the first and second note in common (Rossbach/Westphal,
1/2: 96). Barbour also points out that an initial third-
tone jump in a tetrachord is not only significant in
ancient Greek music, appearing again in Aristoxenus, but it
also is retained in Ptolemaic tuning systems and therefore
permeated Latin music theory. More importantly, Barbour
reaffirms the importance of a relationship between the use
of a supine or reversed sign first noticed by Westphal; the
degree of rotation of the base symbol was related to
31
whether the sign showed a third tone or a half tone
interval from the preceeding ,note (11-13).
Archytas lived from approximately 540-510 B. C., and
so the time frame of Barbour's extension of Westphal's
proposal meshes with the introduction of a system of
musical writing that could definitely show chromatic and
possibly show enharmonic relationships. In any event, it
is clear that within a century after Archytas' death, Greek
musicians were accustomed to reading both vocal and instru
mental notation. It is also certain that neither system of
notation was restricted to purely vocal or instrumental
uses. Wolf cites one fragment (1: 19) that is a combi
nation of vocal and instrumental notation.It appears
that the shift back and forth between the two systems may
well have operated as a sign of its own: vocal notation
indicated the simultaneous performance of both a singer and
an accompanist, while instrumental notation alone indicated
that the singer was supposed to pause during an instru
mental solo.
Although Westphal, Riemann and Wolf all allude to a
systematic generation of musical signs, no comprehensive
evaluation of Greek musical writing as a coherent system
with rules for the generation of new signs has ever been
undertaken. However, an examination of the complete vocal
and instrumental scales as they existed around 350 B. C.
reveals that three devices were repeated employed in order
32
to generate new symbols as the entire system expanded to
encompass more notes at the upper and lower ends of the
scale over a period of three centuries. The first charac
teristic is that rotated symbols are always turned in a
counter-clockwise direction. The earliest indication of
this pattern can be discerned by the extension of instru
mental notation to include g' and a’; N is first rotated
90° to produce Z. If Riemann's argument is then followed,
the next sign 1 / 1 can then be understood as a mirror image
of the initial sign. Although N is an ambiguous example
because the next successive sign Z can be obtained by
rotating the intial sign in either a clockwise or counter
clockwise direction, by 350 B.C. the counter-clockwise
pattern is clearly evident in the generation of d# from the
counter-clockwise rotation of h to _t or from the
generation of g# by rotating F to . According to the
work done by Westphal and Barbour, mirroring images as well
as rotating signs counter-clockwise are both techniques
regularly employed to generate new music signs.
A second technique of musical writing is the supple
mentation/truncation of an extant sign to generate a new
one. Riemann pointed out that rotation alone was an
inadequate device to generate the required signs in the
expanding musical scales (13) This problem first
arose in the extension of vocal notation to include a lower
scale. Some Greek letters such as the O - ov will
33
never produce a new sign when rotated either 90° or 180°;
other letters such as the capital S ' S cT will only produce
a new sign when rotated 90°. One solution was to
supplement letters with additional marks; in this way the
delta of the middle scale was not only inverted but also
appended to produce a Y from a & (see Figure 1). But a
more common solution was to take the initial sign apart and
use a section of it to indicate a new note. In vocal
notation, the in the lower scale is derived from the B of
the middle scale, and m of the lower scale is a rotated and
segmented theta. Barbour has also noted that the chromatic
steps for a’ and g' in instrumental notation \ A and P ^
were derived from the A of vocal notation (5). A third
device, the use of accents to indicate octave changes, only
appeared quite late in musical writing.
However, the repetitive use of these three devices,
counter-clockwise rotation, segmentation, and accentuation,
over a period of several centuries in different locations
by many philosophers, mathematicians and musicians only
tends to indicate that perhaps this pattern was not
invented independently by artists interested only in music
transcription. And, in fact, these characteristics
actually mimic a pattern exhibited in the evolution of
linguistic writing. In his grammatology, I. J. Gelb sought
to establish a new science that was able to describe the
rules that governed the evolution of linguistic writing.
34
From the outset, he limited his investigation to represen
tative types of writing; his goal was not to present a
history of writing, but rather to prove by the use of
internal structural evidence how writing itself evolved as
a comprehensive system. His first step was to describe the
use of symbols, which he described as the forerunners of
writing, and to argue that this stage of writing was a
purely mnemonic one— that symbols were only used to
remember dates and songs. Gelb was specifically responding
to earlier theories of writing that claimed the use of such
symbols was actually Satzschrift, sentence or phrase
12
writing. Furthermore, Gelb maintained that combination
and recombination of symbols to represent longer ideas did
not develop until the use of pictograms by the Sumerians
13
beginning in the third millennium B.C. From these obser
vations, Gelb then traced the steps that led to cuneiform
writing. The first step was logographic, the extension of
concrete pictographic signs (such as a picture of a sun to
indicate the idea of sun) to include additional associated
ideas (such as a picture of the sun to represent "day" or
"bright"). Because some objects could not readily be
expressed by pictures or combinations of pictures, a second
step, phonetization, developed rather quickly. Phoneti-
zation could be expressed in two ways: either by a full
phonetic transfer of a sound (an example in English would
be the picture of a sun to represent the idea of "son"), or
35
a partial phonetic transfer (as the word "solar" is a
partial phonetic transfer from the Latin "sol"). Phoneti-
zation demanded not only a correspondence between signs and
meanings, but also between signs and sounds. Each sign
must acquire a specific phonetic value, and hence phoneti-
zation led to the development of the first ancient
syllabaries. A final requirement was that signs had to be
oriented in direction, form and order (60-69).
Gelb offers the following table to illustrate the
evolution of Sumerian pictographies into cuneiform signs
(70):
Figure 2: Evolution of Ancient Linguistic Writing
B IR D
^ '
*T
F IS H
>
>
'
D O N K E Y
£ 1
O X
&
fc* I
1
S U N
o
$ - 4 >
q i
G R A IN
f
O R C H A R D
II
331
P L O U G H
V • E !
B O O M E R A N G
%
& L
1
36
Three steps characterize the development of cuneiform
writing, steps which actually overlap and influence each
other in the slow disintegration of the iconic operation of
the sign as a picture or representation of an object. The
first is a 90° counter-clockwise rotation, quickly followed
by an elimination of curved lines and their replacement
with wedge-shaped strokes. The last is the reduction of
these straight-line outlines to a minimal number of
strokes. Gelb accounts for the second step by pointing out
the takeover of Sumerian pictographic writing by the
14
Semitic Akkadians, approximately 3000 B.C. and the
subsequent abandonment of the use of stone tablets.
Utilizing the more plentiful and durable clay found in the
broad river valley at the confluence of the Tigris and
Euphrates, the Semitic Akkadians reduced the detailed
pictograms to stylized outlines that could be quickly
rendered in clay by a stylus. By 2700-2500 B.C., complex
pictograms had been completely replaced by their simplified
outlines. After 2000 B.C., an even more simplified and
abstract version of these outlines developed into what is
15
now called New Assyrian cuneiform script.
Gelb fails to explain the characteristic, 90° counter
clockwise turn. This is a crucial development because it
is precisely this step that first separated an ideogram
from its pictorial equivalent and created the conditions
under which writing could flourish as a non-representa-
37
tional string of signs. Accompanying the introduction of
the use of clay tablets, the Semitic Akkadians also changed
the shape of the tablet from a square to a rectangle.
Presumably for ease of transcription, the tablet was held
horizontally, and the pictogram was inscribed on its side.
However, both vertical reading and writing were maintained.
The change in the direction of inscription applied at first
only to clay tablets, and the first evidence that the use
of left-to-right inscription was replacing horizontal
16
inscription appeared only a thousand years later.
The rather simple act of rotating pictograms had an
enormous impact on the development of transcription. The
breaking apart of the literal correspondence between a
symbol and the object it represented has already been
mentioned. Later, this literally "sliding" characteristic
of linguistic writing can be discerned in the ambiguity of
phonetic transfer that enabled one symbol to represent more
than one concept (sun/son), and finally systematic tran
scription demolished any semblance of a correspondence
between the sign and what it represented. Once begun, the
activity of writing evolved very quickly into one that was
just as concerned with the systematic manipulation of signs
as it was with the investiture of these signs with meaning.
Extreme kinds of experiments in Greek inscription took
place in the evolution of linguistic writing during the
transition period between the seventh and fifth centuries
38
B.C./ the same period that saw the beginnings of musical
writing. These changes indicate that the act of writing
was producing a specific kind of reading and writing
ability which I will call scribal reading. The transition
began as a movement away from the style of North Semitic
inscription that the Greeks appeared to have learned from
17
the Phonecians, which was typically from nght-to-left.
By the sixth century, Greek scribes were experimenting with
boustrophedon, literally "ox-turning." This is a somewhat
misleading term, originally adopted to describe a method of
uninterrupted writing whereby letters were inscribed in
both directions, appearing in their normal position when a
left-to-right reading was required and reversed when a
right-to-left reading was needed. Actually boustrophedon
fragments contain a far greater variety of experimentation,
including alternate lines of inverted characters or texts
where the inscription begins in the middle of the tablet
and proceeds outward in a spiral (Mason 340). By 500 B.C.
the majority of texts were inscribed in a left-to-right or
top-to-bottom fashion (Diringer 144-50).
Ullmann (28) remarks that ancient Greeks and Romans
probably developed a reading ability which moderns lack,
but this remark was made only in reference to deciphering
reversed symbols. A quite different transcribing and
deciphering ability, scribal reading, seems to have
permeated ancient Western culture: the ability to write
39
and read not only vertical and horizontal letters, but also
mirrored and inverted strings of signs. Furthermore, it
appears that it was precisely this kind of scribal reading
that provided a foundation for the development of ancient
Greek musical notation. Furthermore, it is only in modern
musical writing and specific kinds of musical reference in
literature that a vestige of this ancient skill can still
be recovered.
In summary, a few comments can be made about musical
and linguistic transcription systems in the ancient world.
One characteristic shared by both systems is an inverse
relationship between the refinement of the transcription
system and the complexity of each individual sign. In
linguistic transcription systems, the pattern was to reduce
the complexity of individual signs in the movement away
from ideograms towards distinct letters; however, the loss
of complexity in the actual appearance of the signs was
supplemented by an increase in their ambiguity. In musical
writing, a reversal of this process took place: as the
transcription system expanded to encompass higher and lower
notes as well as half- and quarter-tones, the signs
themselves became more complex. Extra lines and modifi
cations were adopted, or signs were broken apart and recon
stituted with parts of other signs. Also, the Greek system
of musical writing contained multiple signs for the same
note. The most elemental features of music transcription
40
then are accumulation and redundancy, contrasted with an
elimination and ambiguity that characterize linguistic
writing.
It is significant that a comparison of musical and
linguistic signs with their different systems of signifi
cation initially reveals a quite simple relationship, i.e.,
individual signs combine and recombine within a larger
system to form longer chains of signification. But this
apparently simple analogy between the two systems is defied
by the operation of the signs within each system. Any
extended investigation of the relationship between musical
signs and linguistic signs and the larger systems that
encompass both only uncovers inversions or reflections.
This indicates something more than that simple is complex;
rather, this pattern typifies musical and literary studies.
An initial assumption of shared characteristics, a
"sisterhood of the arts," forces an interdisciplinarian to
resort quickly to a defense of the contradictions uncovered
by closer examination. As Croce has already pointed out,
this predicament dominated most of the studies of the
relationship between the arts from the 16th century up to
the present, resulting in absurd systems of classification
that attempted to account for differences and similarities
18
between the arts in some comprehensive fashion.
However, not all poetry or prose that takes music
somehow as its subject need confront this situation. Music
41
has quite frequently been a metaphor for activities other
than those which attempt to reconcile the gap between
writing and knowing. Conversely, poetry and prose which is
concerned with these kinds of speculations need not refer
to music at all. But there is a particular kind of
literary activity that is fundamentally radical in its
refusal to gloss over the very problematic relationship
that exists between music and language. These writers can
not ignore some basic contradictions between how language
is supposed to function as a vehicle for meaning and how it
actually functions within the literary work of art. When
this interest is combined with a fascination for music and
how music can be compared with language as a documentation
of thought and emotion, many of these writers have stripped
language of its claim as the sole method of transcription
that can embody meaning.
A second observation concerns the direction of tran
scription which will affect the kind of textual reading
that is performed. And again, the pattern of increasing
simplification of linguistic writing contrasts with a
pattern of increasing complexity in musical writing.
Moreover, the devices that musical writing adopts as
musical transcriptions become more and more complex are not
randomly selected. Instead they are adaptations of devices
which have been discarded as linguistic transcription
underwent its process of simplification. As pictograms
42
were rotated and replaced by cuneiform signs, and these
were further refined through syllabaries into discrete
letters, the direction of writing was standardized.
Mixtures of right-to-left, left-to-right and top-to-bottom
transcriptions combined with rotated, inverted or mirrored
permutations of individual signs were abandoned and
replaced in the Western world with left-to-right inscrip
tion of uni-directional letters. Rather than disappearing,
however, this fluid and multi-directional use of signs,
which I have defined as scribal reading, simply migrated
from systematic linguistic writing to systematic musical
writing. Although ancient Greek musical writing only
evidences rotation, inversion and reversal of individual
signs, the reinvention of music writing in the early Middle
Ages and the subsequent development of polyphony allow
scribal reading to reappear.
It is as if the act of writing itself has certain
characteristics all of which can never be displayed by any
individual system of transcription at any one time, but all
of which will be disclosed through time in different
species of writing. The particular quality about the rela
tionship between musical and linguistic writing is this
see-saw effect: the invention of transcription techniques
in linguistic writing, their slow disappearance as the
requirements of written language changed, and the eventual
reappearance of these devices in an expanding system of
43
musical writing. What musical writing offers, in Derridean
terms, is a trace of the act of ancient writing, a
retention of difference within a structure whereby the
absence of ancient writing is increasingly felt as musical
writing develops. Following Derrida's definition of the
trace (Grammatology 46-48) one step further, ancient
writing's instituted traces of inversion and reflection
actually precedes the entity, that is, an instituted trace
must always come before its systematic expression either in
linguistic or musical writing. According to Derrida, it is
only the possibility of a trace that allows these
oppositions to have meaning. Therefore, the traces of
ancient writing could appear in other systems of signifi
cation. And, indeed, they do, as will be shown later in a
discussion of 17th and 18th century definitions of meaning
and expression.
Finally, the inversions and reflections that charac
terize the relationship between musical and linguistic
transcription systems are affirmed by the duality of
mousike and logos. Both words embody the unification of
abstract but quite comprehensible ideas. The ancient Greek
expression mousike was a synthesis of kosmos and psyche,
the incorporation of a world or universal order in the
individual. Later replaced by the Latin ars musica,
mousike represented a coalescence of several independent
but inter-related elements and was actually an accordance
44
of disparate ideas in much the same sense as the word
logos. (Lohmann 1-4) Out of mousike the seven arts took
shape: the mathematical arts of arithmetic, geometry,
harmony and astronomy as well as the language arts of
grammar, rhetoric and logic.
Logos was comprised of three overlapping skills: the
ability to speak (legein) or speak with (dialegein), to
calculate (logizomai and logizesthai), and to reason (n
logike). Greek terminologies for music and grammar (in the
original sense of the word as writing instruction, later
meaning instruction in sound) are so intertwined that
definitions for what are now independent and seemingly
unrelated expressions evolved through this network of
meaning. For example, the word stoikheion originally came
from the musical term meaning "sound." It was later
adopted to mean "letter," probably through the association
of particular sounds with specific letters. (Lohmann 4)
And later still, it came to mean "element," specifically
for the calculation of atomic weights. Remnants of the
unity of language, mathematics and logic encompassed by the
expression logos can be found in such modern words as the
German "Zahler-Erzahler" or "Bericht-Berichtung," the
French "rapporter" and "compter," and the English words
"teller" or "correspondence."
Music and language in their most broad Greek defini
tions provided the parameters within which much intel-
45
lectual activity took place. But a developing system of
musical writing corresponded to the widespread teaching of
the alphabet to young boys in Greek schools (ca. 500 B.C.)
and introduced another element into this intellectual
atmosphere— the recording of intellectual activity. It is
therefore somewhat misleading to think of the relationship
between music and literature as one which began in unity
and disintegrated into separation, only occasionally
punctuated by some form of reunification in chant, song or
opera. The goal of this study is to illustrate that the
relationship between these two arts has been quite
consistent, and that it is instead critical assumptions
which have developed an interdisciplinary vocabulary that
has misrepresented the relationship between music and
19
literature as a shattered sisterhood. Based on the
initial relationship between their systems of transcription
and continuing with the shared, albeit altered, inverted or
mirrored use of devices that have their origin in the
nature of all species of writing, music and literature have
actually maintained a quite stable relationship with each
other.
A typical and traditional approach for analyzing the
relationship of music and poetry takes the musicality, the
rhythm and meter, of verse as a starting point for investi
gation. However, this approach to interdisciplinary
criticism assumes that music's role in literature is
46
limited to that of device. Initially the device is *
stylistic, but later the assumption is easily extended to
include symbol and metaphor. An alternative and perhaps
more profitable approach might be to attempt to correlate
music and literary criticism, including the history of
ideas as well as semiotic, structural and post-structural
methodology in an examination of the inter-relationship
between the two arts. This difficult task is not made any
easier by either the wide scope of current literary theory
or the reticence of the field of musicology to incorporate
20
critical theory as a legitimate academic enterprise. But
one first step is to re-examine some of the earliest Greek
texts concerning music in terms of another kind of rela
tionship based on inscription, one of inverted reflection.
There are a great number of references to music in
21
both Plato and Aristotle. In his recent study on the
relations of poetry and music, Unsuspected Eloquence, James
Winn traces the origin of the split between music and
poetry to the development of a separate system of musical
notation in ancient Greece that, like all writing systems,
contained so many imperfections and inadequacies that
problems of interpretation were inevitable (18). This
rather conservative estimate of the power of writing stands
in contrast to Derrida's concerted efforts to widen the
definition of writing to include not simply the symbols
used to record speech, but also the generalized system that
47
--------------------------------- j2 "
allows the speech to take place. But there is m
Derrida's work a peculiar avoidance of examining music as
another species of writing, or if Derrida does consider
music, he does so obliquely, using it only to facilitate
his deconstruction of linguistic writing. In his decon
struction of Rousseau in 01: Grammatology, Derrida reads
Rousseau's estimation of the desolating separation of song
and speech and the growth of instrumental music as an
activity that developed parallel to the history of
language, that is, this separation is identical to the
separation that developed between writing and speech. The
threat that found its expression in Rousseau as the degen
eration of music is a graphic threat posed by the
development of instrumental music as a result of
refinements made in an extremely accurate system of musical
writing. The movement in musical interest away from melody
and toward harmony is equated by Derrida with the loss of
the authority of voice threatened by the act of writing
itself (198-200).
However, Derrida is not interested in comparing the
development of musical and linguistic writing but rather in
revealing the tactics by which Rousseau and the entire
tradition of Western philosophy have attempted to establish
the authority of speech and voice over that of writing. As
a result, Derrida makes music essentially transparent,
simply laying it over his analysis of speech and writing
48
like an invisible gel. But his brief foray, thanks to
Rousseau, into a consideration of musical writing is some
what more complete than his estimation of music in his
analysis of Plato where, rather than following the text of
Philebus, Derrida simply dismisses the section on music in
the dialogue as a "detour" (Dissemination 163)♦ For the
master of detours, this is a glaring omission in any case,
but it is made the more so because the reference to music
within the dialogue is integral to an understanding of the
letter (stoikheion) that Derrida deconstructs within his
essay.
Plato's Philebus is a complicated discussion about
pleasure and knowledge, but particularly a discussion about
the limits of various kinds of knowing and how we come to
understand things through a dual process of expansion and
23
reduction of what we apprehend. This dual process has
one limitation: it is impossible to move directly from
infinity toward unity or vice versa in the intellectual
process of ordering knowledge. There is, however, an
intermediate step that is common to both, and that step is
to discover a finite number of like qualitites. Moving
outward from unity involves expansion, a supplement, a
perception of complexity within what first appears to be
one unified whole. Moving inward from infinity is a
process of reduction, of discerning like characteristics
where at first only random patterns appear (18 a-b).
49
According to Derrida, the claim to clarity that letters
make is based on their ability to reduce a potentially
infinite number of sounds to a definite number of charac
teristics. At this point in the dialogue, Socrates
explains the myth of Theuth and the divine origin of
writing. However, Derrida's point is that just this kind
of scriptural metaphor for writing appears repeatedly in
Plato when he is unable to reconcile the existence of the
other, i.e., writing, with Plato's determination to
maintain the connection of speech with truth (Dissemination
163-64).
But Derrida's claim that the irreducible nature of the
text hinges on the other of writing can be made only
because Derrida himself has literally cut out, deleted, one
of Socrates' others, which is music. Sound may be infinite
in speech, but Socrates states that sound is one in music
as well as grammar (17 c). While reduction is necessary to
reach the stoikheion (letters, act of writing) of speech,
expansion (the inversion of reduction) is needed to reach
the stoikheion of music. One sound in music must be
widened until there is a distinction between pitch, and
widened still further until distinctions between intervals
and their proportions can be made (17 d). In the movement
towards transcription traced earlier in this study, echoes
of the inverted relationship between musical and linguistic
writing can already be discerned. The characteristic of
50
musical writing is accumulation, made possible only through
the process of expansion that Socrates describes.
Conversely, linguistic writing developed signs charac
terized by elimination, made possible through Socrates'
description of reduction. The letters, the act of writing
itself, exist at the juncture of these two inverted metho
dologies. The letters of language should be understood as
the inversion of the letters of music, just as musical
writing seems to have turned linguistic letters on their
heads. And both species of writing are reflections of the
same process of writing reflecting itself.
This is but one of many examples of how musical and
linguistic writing have come to mirror, invert and reflect
the qualities of the other in literary description. This
example also illustrates the strange tendency to ignore
this relationship in much critical analysis. In the next
section, a comparison of early Medieval music and
linguistic theory will illustrate how models of inverted
reflection have been repeated in studies which indepen
dently examined musical and linguistic writing, even as
these studies glossed over their shared semeiographic
origins.
51
MODELS OF INVERSION:
MUSICAL AND LINGUISTIC WRITING IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Undoubtedly the greatest influence on musical theory
from the Middle Ages through the 16th century was Anicius
Manlius Severinus Boethius (ca. 480-524). Following
Pythagorean theorems, Boethius founded both his theory of
the origin of music and his system of musical organization
on mathematics and astronomy. For Boethius, music was an
especially coherent model of man's relationship to the
universe not only because its origin could be accounted for
by the theory of the music of the spheres, but also because
its characteristics could be accurately described by mathe
matical calculations. The lowest category of music for
Boethius was musica instrumentalis, or heard music. The
highest order of music, musica mundana, was an inaudible
cosmic music best represented by mathematics and astronomy.
The bridge between these two kinds of music was musica
24
humana, an unheard music demonstrated by right behavior.
Of the three categories, two concern a silent music, but
even musica instrumentalis was not considered simply
performed music. In the first book of De institutione
musica, Boethius made a clear distinction between players
52
of instruments and musicians. The former, whom Boethius
called physical craftsmen, are simply performers who take
their names from the instruments they play, "slaves" whose
primary function is the production of sound (Rand 147).
Musicians, however, have taken the "science of singing," a
science founded on contemplation, as their domain of
expertise (Strunk 86). The musician is one who, unlike the
performer or the composer driven to music by instinct or
inspiration (Rand 148), possesses the faculty of judgment
based on contemplation and reason, one who can best realize
all the qualities, heard and silent, of musica in perfor
mance, behavior or speculation.
The Boethian system of harmony was based on the lyre,
a musical instrument closely associated with the Greek god
Hermes, but generally known to have originated in Asia
Minor. According to Boethius, the lyre originally had four
strings that formed a tetrachord, an interval of notes also
attributed to the god Hermes who in Greek mythology claimed
many of the inventions ascribed to the Egyptian god Theuth.
Boethius adopted the Pythagorean lyre which had acquired
seven strings that sounded two overlapping tetrachords. In
both the Egyptian lyre and its Greek counterpart, the
strings corresponded to the names of planets and were
arranged in an order that correctly reflected the length of
their sidereal years if the sun were replaced by the earth
in a Ptolemaic ordering of the solar system. By Boethius'
53
time, the application of Pythagorean principles had been
extended by proposing that the movement of each planet
within its orbit produced a specific note, which in turn
25
was associated with a vowel and a musical mode :
The Boethian Lyre
met (String) Vowel Mode
Moon
u
Hypolydian
Mercury Hypophrygian
Venus
£
Hypodorian
Sol Mixolydian
Mars
0
Lydian
Jupiter
o
Phrygian
Saturn
I
Dorian
The Boethian lyre should be understood as something
more than an astrological metaphor applied to a musical
instrument. It was more importantly a model that embodied
all of the concepts of musica, both silent and heard, as
they interlocked to form a comprehensive and coherent
system. On one hand, it was a highly speculative model,
albeit somewhat artificial in its assignment of vowel
sounds and musical modes to planetary orbits. Although
Boethius did not directly equate different musical modes
with the emotions, from his interpretation of the Pytha
goreans as well as from writings of his students, we have
2 6
inherited this notion. On the other hand, Boethius'
model was scientifically sound, based on astrological
measurements and computations of planetary orbits. The
54
association of sound with vibrations that could be mathema
tically described was not elaborated on by later Pytha
goreans and its importance seems to have been forgotten or
gone unrecognized until Boethius. This concept, probably
inherited from the Pythagorean Hippasus, is that not only
the length of a lyre's string, but also other variables,
including the thickness and the tension of a string, all
determine the speed of vibration that produces sound.
The empirical proof of the connection between sound
and movement distinguishes Boethius' theory from pure spec
ulation. Plato had proposed in the Republic (X, 617) that
a siren sat on each planet and sang one pure note, but
Boethius offered a verifiable model of sound production.
Thus Boethian theories led to a revival of Pythagorean
thought and of a science that interrelated the disciplines
of mathematics, music and grammar. After gaining some
currency in Western thought, many of Boethius' ideas were
abandoned, particularly those claiming the literal fact of
27
the music of the spheres. But a very important aspect of
the relationship between music and language is at the heart
of Boethius' system. This is neither the use of music-
related metaphors in poetry, nor is it the speculation on
the similarity or dissimilarity of the affective qualities
of the two arts. Instead Boethius advanced the idea that
the fields of music, grammar and mathematics were somehow
structurally related, and a fundamental goal of his work
55
was the attempt to formulate a theory of knowledge based on
discovering the universal rules which governed all three
disciplines. Central to this is Boethius' definition of
the musician, the master of musica, who is not so much
concerned with performance as he is with contemplation.
The true student of musica is one who examines and reflects
on the relationship of variables to each other, and this is
the central focus of the De institutione musica as a
redefinition of the description of music.
Boethius' detailed description of speculative music
elicited an predictable response from practicing musicians,
and by the 14th century, composers and performers alike had
made their reaction to theories of speculative music quite
clear: it was a burden. In Paris at the beginning of the
14th century, Johannes de Grocheo virtually eliminated
discussions of speculative music in performance by formu
lating a tri-partite division of music that ignored all but
the third category of Boethian music. His musical
categories dismissed the fields of mathematics and grammar,
and he stated that prayers and readings do not concern the
musician (Hoppin 79-80). Instead, Grocheo's musician
concentrates on three different levels performance: musica
vulgaris, or popular monody both instrumental and vocal;
musica mensurabilis, or the measured, notated polyphonic
music of courtly and literary society; and musica
ecclesiastica, the liturgical music of the Church,
56
2 8
comprising both monody and polyphony.
Hence, two quite different definitions for "musician"
were in use in the Middle Ages, but by the late Middle Ages
and early Renaissance, Grocheo's description would prevail
in popular usage. Boethius' definition of the musician as
one who studies the relationship of variables, especially
as they affected a system based on rules of combination and
re-combination, would be subsumed under another title in
the Middle Ages. For Greek metaphysicians, the discipline
of mousike was the apprehension of a universal system based
on a collection of individual parts that could be organized
into various combinations depending upon the value of each
constituent part. But for the Pythagoreans and, following
them, Boethius, the field of musica became more analytical,
focusing on the physical properties of all sound and
utilizing the techniques and vocabulary from the related
fields of mathematics and physics. The shift in method
ology alone indicates a dissolution of the unity of
musica— but this dissolution should not be interpreted as
separation. Instead, one part of a heretofore unified
discipline has become the object of study for another part
as each separate discipline became more distinct and
refined. The first evidence of this evolution in musica
was that music became a subject for measurement and
analysis by mathematics. Other such splits are possible
and indeed occurred. For example, grammar became an object
57
for mathematical analysis under Leibniz. The concomitance
of subject and method, of the object analyzed and the tool
used to analyze it, lend many of these investigations an
element of self-reflection. And this is especially true of
analyses of music undertaken by the field of linguistic
study.
As a fissure in the unity of musica opened up room for
exchange between various sub-disciplines, organized
inquiries in philosophy and linguistics were re-establised
in the early Middle Ages, and many of the characteristics
of musica initially associated with the unity of mathe
matics, grammar and music were adopted by linguistic
studies in the 11th and 12th centuries under the name of
universal grammar. Why the concept of musica was rejected
by musical composers and performers, and how this concept
was adopted and transformed by another discipline, is the
subject of discussion for the remainder of this section.
One way of explaining this process is to reject the
concept of musica as a separate entity and adopt the notion
of it as a field within which the instituted traces of
different kinds of writing can occur (See discussion 43-44
of this study). Traces, according to Derrida, articulate
an entire field of relationships and are conceptualizations
that precede any theory which can describe their content.
But it is the presence of a trace that makes articulation
of differences, as well as the signs which articulate these
58
differences, possible. As Derrida makes clear, "Even
before it is linked to incision, engraving, drawing, or the
letter, to a signifier referring in general to a signifier
signified by it, the concept of the graphie [unit of a
possible graphic system] implies the framework of the
instituted trace, as the possibility common to all systems
of signification” (Grammatology 46). If the concept of
musica is understood as the framework for a variety of
graphemes, many different species of writing might be pro
duced, and these different species of writing would reveal
a number of different relationships within the larger
framework of musica.
One semiotic model first suggested by C. S. Peirce is
particularly suitable for describing the relationships
established between language and music as graphemic
systems. Derrida has already remarked on Peirce's contri
bution to "the deconstruction of the transcendental
signified" (Grammatology 49). Peirce's tripartite model of
semiotic functions is based on the relationships estab
lished between an object, its representamen and the inter-
pretant as they interact on a ground. The representamen is
anything which can stand to somebody for something in some
respect or capacity; the interpretant is the equivalent, or
perhaps more developed, sign created in the mind of a
person; and the object is what the representamen stands
for, thing or idea. Because a representamen stands for an
59
object not in all respects, but in reference to specific
situations, the ground becomes an essential feature in sign
29
manipulation. Here it is important to note the
distinction Peirce made between signs and representamens.
A sign conveys a definite concept, and it operates as a
concrete element in the process of communication and
reference. A representamen, however, is an expressive type
to which a coding convention assigns a certain content.
"In particular all signs convey notions to human minds; but
I know no reasons why every representamen should do so"
(1.540). As Eco points out, this distinction amounts to a
differentiation between a theory of signification and a
theory of communication. Eco also points out, however,
that this is a distinction that Peirce himself will often
make ambiguous by his continual oscillation between the two
("Peirce's Notion" 1460).
Peirce developed his semiotic model as a method for
describing the workings of logic. Based on the ground of
ideas, the object was logic proper or that which "is quasi-
true in order to hold good, i.e., a science of truth of
representations" (2.229). According to Peirce, the repre
sentamen of logic is pure grammar, that is, what is true
and embodies meaning in accordance with scientific
intelligence. The interpretant in Peirce's model is pure
rhetoric, for Peirce a post-Kantian discipline primarily
concerned with ascertaining how one sign is generated by
60
another and, by extension, how one thought generates
another thought. Keeping in mind that relationships
between the different categories of musica were an
important part of Boethius' definitions, a return to the
Boethian model illustrates an interesting manifestation of
Peirce's semiotic model. Within the framework or ground of
musica, three partial constructs of signification interact.
There is the signifier of musica mundana, a cosmic order,
its signified represented by musica instrumentalis inter
preted in this world by musica humana or right and moral
behavior. Furthermore, each Peircean semiotic subject has
its own graphie that marks the instituted trace of its
self-writing: cosmic order or astronomy by mathematics,
heard music by musical writing, and moral behavior by
linguistic writing.
Mundana
(mathematics)
Instrumentalis Humana
(musical writing) (linguistic writing)
Musica
(framework or ground
of inscription)
Peirce's model of a comprehensive semiology makes it
possible to conceive of Boetheian musica as a rudimentary
semiotic system. Just as Peirce is concerned with
61
describing logic as a kind of semiotic activity, Boethius
suggested a very rudimentary but nevertheless consistent
system that described different kinds of knowledge and
their relationships with each other. This, combined with
Derrida's description of a grammatology as an investigation
of how the act of inscription formulates the content of the
knowledge being described, also makes it possible to
compare music, language and mathematics as related gramma-
tologies within a developing semiology of musica. A
consideration of all three grammatologies is beyond the
scope of this study; however, a comparison of the gramma
tology of music with that of language uncovers some
interesting parallels.
Some of the most influential medieval examinations of
the universal principles behind language were conducted by
the Modistae in the 13th century. Although earlier
discussions exist in Plato and Philo, and much later with
Roger Bacon, these sources are composed either of scattered
references, or in the case of Bacon, incomplete examination
of basic grammatical principles. The Modistic studies were
founded on the assumption of a direct connection between
the structure of Latin grammar and the structure of
reality, identical in scope to the study of music as a
model of the universe in the ancient world. Based on a
combination of logic and speculation, the Modistic grammars
outlined the concept of a universal grammar that was inde-
62
pendent of the grammatical rules of any national language.
This ideal grammar was the basis for all knowledge
accessible to each individual. Although the central impor
tance of the grammatical structure of Latin has been
challenged by some modern linguists, the Modistae seem to
have taken Latin as the most perfect shadow of an ideal or
hidden form. "Modistic grammatical theory depended upon
(the) relationship of the closest type between the
operation of the mind and the structure of reality and the
central concerns of the Modistae were those of universals,
adequacy, deep structure, and the incorporation of meaning
into general grammatical statements" (Salus 87).
There were strong arguments against the intense study
of Latin as a linguistic ideal. In the Confessions (Book
I, Chapter 9), Augustine made a clear distinction between
spoken languages and a silent language of the soul. The
first kind of language, including Latin, was dependent on
the physical world of sensation, and for this reason it had
far less validity than a second language which was able to
transcend the physical world and through this transcendence
gain access to universal knowledge. All the spoken
languages of the world could be at best imperfect
reflections of this silent discourse, described by
Augustine as the breaking of the strings of the tongue
(12). In retrospect, and from a perspective provided by
conceiving of musica as a trace which has generated a
63
variety of signification, Augustine's metaphor is anything
but arbitrary. He is referring specifically to the strings
of the Boetheian lyre insofar as it represents the procla
mation of truth through speech. Augustine emphasized the
importance of silence over speech again in IDe Trinitate
(Chapter X, Book 15). Here Augustine contrasted the speech
of the heart with that of the mouth, and he claimed that
universal knowledge which knows no national language
utilizes instead a universal, unspoken and silent language.
The quality of silence, which Boethius associated with
the general concept of musica, was appropriated by the
linguistic sub-division of the semiotic system of musica
almost simultaneously at the moment it was abandoned by the
music sub-division. How. silence is treated by theories in
both music and linguistics contributes to an understanding
of their relationship, and Augustine's concept of music as
a silent language of the soul would have a great, but
delayed, impact on the relationship between the two arts.
But Augustine's distinction between spoken, national
languages and a universal knowledge independent of both, as
evidenced in the modist grammars, had a stronger and more
widely developed influence.
In what has come to be known as his Summa Grammatica,
Roger Bacon (1214-1294) conducted one of the earliest
extended analyses of universal grammar. Based on his
reading of John of Garland, one of the first speculative
64
grammarians or Modistae who attempted to raise discussions
of grammar to a higher philosophical level, Bacon undertook
his grammatical study during his lectureship in Paris
(Easton 42). In attempting to explain why Scriptural verse
or certain poetic constructions were able to embody meaning
although they broke grammatical rules of proper expression,
Bacon made a distinction between vox and intellectus. Not
at all dissimilar to Socrates' distinction between speech
and music/grammar in the Philebus, vox encompasses all
expression at the level of language, while intellectus
encompasses any expressions, including ungrammatical ones,
that are able to generate understanding in the mind of the
perceiver. What connects these two levels of the operation
of language to each other are modes of signification
30
(Steele 19-20). Thomas of Erfurt extended the Baconian
model to include a distinction between different kinds of
vox; simple concepts could be expressed by one word while
complex concepts required many words or entire phrases
(Trentman 291). The mental language that all men share is
this machinery by which simple expressions are connected
together to form complex expressions. It is also this
skill that accounts for our ability to decipher ungram
matical or nonsense constructions and perceive the meaning
31
hidden within them. The double-edged nature of Latin as
a model language was thus; more than other language, Latin
exhibited those qualities of intellectus reserved for a
65
silent understanding of universal knowledge. Yet, by being
elevated to this model, Latin provided the foil which was
used first by the Modistae and later by other philosophers
of language to deconstruct the intellectus and examine how
it operated.
Latin provided a quite different kind of model in the
realm of medieval music. A rationalistic movement within
the early medieval church had already resulted in a kind of
music that expressed this philosophic orientation. The
strong linear texture of Gregorian chant focused on a
single melody that was intended to support the Latin text
in a formalistic manner. But post-Classical Latin was not
spoken with a rise and fall in pitch as was ancient Greek.
Therefore, the relationship between pitch change in the
language to the rise and fall of the melody was not really
32
of importance in the development of medieval notation.
During the early Middle Ages and even until the Renais
sance, many treatises on practical music were composed
either in verse or in a dialogue form that mimicked the
Platonic dialogues wherein an enthusiastic student posed
questions to his master (Grout 56). The reliance of music
on language was virtually complete, but the first movements
away from this dependency can be seen in one of the oldest
collections of medieval chant, the Winchester Troper. The
music text is sketched above the words and utilizes neither
a staff nor rhythmic notation. With the advent of a
66
complete system of neumatic transcription in the next
century, melodic and rhythmic indicators begin not only to
take up more space than the written text, but in the case
of complex vocal troping on one syllable, the words
disappear altogether. The best examples of this metamor
phosis can be seen in the Montpellier and Bamberg Codices.
In a recent article on the development of neumatic
notation, Leo Treitler provides a detailed explanation of
this process and proposes a theory which alters traditional
assumptions about the operation of early medieval musical
writing. However, before discussing Treitler, it is
necessary first to examine the work of the monk Guido of
Arezzo who developed another method to transmit melody that
supplemented the use of neumes. By utilizing what is now
called the Guidonian Hand, Guido was able to represent the
entire musical space which concerned medieval musicians by
pointing to the joints of the fingers of the left hand.
Each joint corresponded to a separate note in the medieval
scale, if one begins counting at the top of the thumb and
moves in a counter-clockwise spiral ending with the tip of
the middle finger. Guido's system was based on the
commitment to memory of each neume (note) so that it could
be reproduced whenever a part of the palm was pointed to.
In this way, melodies could be reproduced by a teacher
indicating the correct sequence of notes by pointing to the
appropriate place on the Hand (Grout 60-61):
67
I t jtNFfPcumgffie.tttefifl
C f 0
§ J i i narura bmoRu qj bout*
« © < •
<* tm fi vie bp otflvrccsntu
T h e “G uidonian H a n d “ a m ne
m onic device used as an aid to sight-
singing.
The sign of the hand, with its alternating spaces and
lines formed by the joints of the fingers, creates a
pattern reminiscent of the strings of the lyre turned at a
90° angle. The importance of this reference is that the
lyre was not simply a musical instrument, but was, as shown
earlier, a model that represented the organizing principles
of a higher order of reality. More interesting, however,
is that the sign of the Hand prefigures the most important
features of the musical staff, the completion of which is
also generally accredited to Guido (Hoppin 60). The sign
of the hand now begins to acquire those characteristics
that have been associated with musica, spanning ancient
models of an ideal cosmos as well as future models of a
system of graphemes, that is, of writing itself. As the
use of the Guidonian Hand became more widespread, musical
68
writing could begin to move away from its reliance on
language, despite the fact that as an independent graphemic
system, it was not yet producing texts, unless the palm
itself is understood as a text which is continually re
written. The ability to distinguish precisely the relative
pitch of notes within a melody of a chant was the first
step that medieval music made away from its apparent
dependency on oral transmission, a development in medieval
notation as crucial to the history of music as was the
invention of writing to the history of language.
A brief comparison of the use of Latin as a model in
musical and linguistic studies shows that, although Latin
was adopted as a model by the Modistae, it was used
primarily as a model to investigate another mode of under
standing. Latin was also adopted as a model in practical
medieval music insofar as musicians utilized it as a
support for the melody. The shared role of Latin in both
disciplines was its function as a tool for the investi
gation and refinement of musical and linguistic studies.
However, another similarity between the development of
musical and linguistic writing in the Middle Ages has
remained largely unnoticed. Guido himself offered the
first hint of these ties when he described his new method
of transferring melody as a process of finding "unknown
melodies" (Strunk 123). His tonal system was based on
several observations he had made about the familiar Latin
69
hymn "Ut queant laxis." Guido noticed that not only did
the first words of each phrase in the hymn correspond to
the names of the notes of the Latin scale in ascending
order (ut, re, mi, fa, sol and la), but he also noticed
that each syllable when sounded within the hymn matched the
pitch it named— a remarkable discovery, especially when it
seems to have been traditionally assumed that this
arrangement of the musical text was serendipitous.
In his article "A Poetic Key to a Pre-Guidonian Palm
and the Echemata," Tilden Russell presents a twelve-line
poem dating from the ninth or early tenth century, "Indicis
£ * summo capiens exordia primus." The poem is a problematic
one: it apparently describes the use of a palm to
determine certain fixed notes on a musical scale, but the
poem is at moments so ambiguious that assigning notes to
specific joints of the hand is very difficult. Russell
presents and discusses earlier hypotheses for solving the
meaning of the poem, citing first its possible use as a key
to tuning an eight-stringed instrument and later its
possible application as a mnemonic aid. Russell concludes
that all of these proposals are unacceptable based
primarily on the distortions that must be forced upon the
poem due to the lack of resemblance between suggested
interpretations and the Guidonian Hand (112-14).
Russell then offers an interpretation of the poem that
would result in a palm more closely resembling the
70
Guidonian Hand except that the sequences of notes move
around the palm in a clockwise rather than counter
clockwise direction. The pattern Russell describes coin
cides exactly with mid-tenth century echemata or intonation
formulae for each of the eight modes. The poem was closely
associated with early medieval tonaries, collections of
melodies grouped according to their modes. Therefore, the
echemata, the poem and the palm could be understood as
over-lapping devices whose functions allowed for the
grouping of melodies according to mode.
An interesting characteristic that "Indicis a summo"
shares with the poem "Naturam canimus causamque canendo
notamus," with which it is often associated, is that both
intentionally omit information which would facilitate their
interpretation and application as pedagogic tools in
musical instruction (Russell 118). The cryptic nature of
the poems results in riddles that continue to confound
musicologists. But for a discussion of the relationship
between music and language, a solution to the riddle of
these poems is not as interesting as their impenetrability.
The poems embody the enigmatic relationship between music
and language, one that is fraught with ambiguity, ellipsis
and contradiction.
An important feature of the pre-Guidonian palms is
their experimentation with various methods of utilizing the
palm itself as a text. In discounting earlier interpre
71
tations of "Indicis a summo," Russell acknowledges that
because of the poem's double-meanings, more than one
solution to the riddle is possible, although several of the
possible solutions to the poems' riddles are not completely
satisfactory when worked out as patterns on the palm. This
indicates that the palm could have contained a number of
different sequences including counter-clockwise and
vertical readings (that is, up and down individual
fingers). Russell finally opts for the clockwise sequence,
but the striking similarity of the patterns of
inscriptional experimentation between the palm and early
linguistic writing as documented by Gelb is difficult to
ignore. Furthermore, early and experimental writing in
both music and linguistics resolves this textual experimen
tation by adopting counterclockwise turns; in the
development of cuneiform writing and ancient Greek musical
writing, turns were applied to individual graphemes, but
with the Guidonian Hand, the sequences of graphemes on the
text of the palm finally are resolved in a counterclockwise
spiral.
Whether Guido's discovery that the Latin hymn encoded
the correct sequence of notes in the musical scale consti
tuted a revelation of a music system partially organized by
others and incorporated into the hymn, or if Guido was
indeed the first to notice this arrangement, the hymn and
its use as a pedagogical tool were crucial to the
72
development of medieval notation. It functioned as a
bridge for learning how to read written texts and for
figuring out how to write down heard ones. The Hand
perpetuated the pattern of reflection and inversion first
inscribed by Greek music notation, variations of which will
permeate the relationship between music and language.
Guido's discovery simply continued the tradition that
patterns of inscription adopted by music are simultaneouly
pre-figured and hidden by linguistic writing, while hidden
within music's inscriptional patterns are inversions and
reflections of linguistic writing.
Leo Treitler has recently described a semiology of
music by focusing on the development of medieval musical
writing and defining a music sign according to the semiotic
categories proposed by Charles Peirce. As explained
earlier, Peirce proposed a triadic sign based on the rela
tionship of a perceiver to the three basic elements that
make up any semiotic sign: the representamen or signifier,
its object or signified, and the ground or context. This
structure provided Peirce with the three relationships of
the perceiver to the sign that he considered most important
in describing how signs operate: comparison, based on the
perceiver's ability to compare logically the possibilities
of what a sign could be (grammar in language operates in
this fashion); thought, or the ability of the perceiver to
ascertain the importance of the object to a larger system
73
of information (a sign whose object is not a thing but a
2
law, such as E=mc ); and finally, performance, or a sign
that functions as an object in the world by virtue of
certain qualities that connect the sign with its object.
Because all three of Peirce's distinctions rely on ability
(the "performance capability") of the perceiver to decipher
the sign, Peirce places a special emphasis on the
performance relationship. The framework of our knowledge
of the world depends upon this last set of relationships,
and most of Peirce's work is involved with an exploration
and explication of the triad of signs that compose the
performance level of semiosis: the icon, the symbol and
the index.
Leo Treitler has adopted part of Peirce's semiotic
theory to compare various methods of medieval musical
writing. Acknowledging the importance Peirce himself
placed on the triadic relationship of sign elements on the
performance level and emphasizing the importance of the
relationships between "the use that is made of the
notation, the characteristics of the music to which it
refers, the relationship between music and its
practitioners, and the types and degrees of competence of
the practitioners" ("Early History" 243), Treitler develops
a hierarchy of modes through which music signs have
evolved. The first or symbolic mode is exemplified by
musical writing when, "by mapping the vertical dimension
74
onto the writing surface we make a visual analogue of the
pitch spectrum." An example of this is the medieval
practice of writing pitch changes above the Latin text, a
technique mentioned earlier in this study, although
Treitler cites specific kinds of neumes as an example of
the symbolic mode. The iconic mode, or representation by
virtue of a physical resemblance between the sign and the
referent, is the melodic line as indicated by a succession
of symbolic signs, and the ability to "conceive of melody
as a single, continuous thing . . . notational represen
tation of melody as a graph or picture of melody" (240).
At this point, Treitler is specifically interested in
neumes which not only indicate pitch changes but which are
also sequentially connected to each other so that the
melody has a unity which extends not only vertically but
also horizontally across the page. The indexical mode,
best illustrated for Treitler by tablature, demands a
cause-effect or sequential relationship between the sign
and what it signifies. In this case the performer is
called upon to make a specific response to a given sign
(238-41).
Based on these distinctions, Treitler analyzes the
development of music writing in medieval monasteries
between the 9th and 12th centuries, and he reaches the
conclusion that two fundamentally different systems of
music writing were in use. The first system, which he
75
calls the A class of neumes or music signs, operates
primarily as a symbolic system because each of the signs
works independently from the others and is only able to
represent an arbitrarily high or low pitch by utilizing
only the vertical dimension of the music text. However,
the B class of neumes operate in an iconic mode because
each character establishes by its particular signification
the relationship between it and the neumes which precede or
follow it. Thus a melodic line which combines both the
vertical and horizontal dimensions of the text is estab
lished. Treitler's does not consider Peirce's third or
indexical mode of signification (253).
Treitler's conclusions have far-reaching implications,
not only for musicologists, but also for scholars
interested in the relationship between music and language.
Rather than adopting grammatical inflection symbols from
Latin (the accentus gravis for a descending inflection and
the accentus acutus for an ascending one), Treitler
proposes that composers using the B class of neumatic
characters manufactured their own signs. This hypothesis
requires a shift in our perception of the history of music
writing, transforming it from a mimickry of linguistic
signs to an independent species of writing. Instead of
being restricted to linearity (as were the less successful
A class of neumes), the B class of neumatic signs illus
trates that composers were thinking both horizontally and
76
vertically, melodically and harmonically, as early as the
11th century. Furthermore, Treitler implies that it was
just this fundamentally different way of conceiving musical
writing that led to the development of the musical staff.
In proposing this, Treitler debunks traditional versions of
the history of musical writing by pointing out that
transcription of neumes was based neither on grammatical
inflections nor on rhythmic patterns adopted from poetry or
linguistics. Instead, musical writing has its own
independent historical unity. Finally, by comparing
musical and linguistic writing, Treitler reaches the
conclusion that while musical writing has evolved from the
symbolic to the iconic mode, linguistic writing has
developed in a reversed direction, from iconic to symbolic
(266) .
Some of Treitler1s conclusions confirm a pattern
already associated with the relationship of musical and
linguistic writing— their mutual inversion or reflection of
each other. This is especially true for Treitler's obser
vation that the histories of the two systems of writing
"run in opposite directions." Unfortunately, the pattern
has its weaknesses, obscured in part because Treitler never
assigns as important a role to the indexical mode of
Peirce's model as he does to the iconic or symbolic modes.
According to Peirce's definition of it, the indexical rela
tionship between representamen, object and interpretant is
77
concrete, usually of a causal nature, and often demands a
specific response from the interpretant. But Treitler
fails to mention that the hand and its pointing finger are
not unusual devices in music history. Pictures of
musicians in Egypt (ca. 2635-2155 B.C.) show harpists faced
by a singer who is making signs with his right hand, and it
is supposed that these signs are some kind of mnemonic code
similar to hand signs used today in Coptic liturgy (Abraham
13). The hand was also used to demonstrate the four common
tetrachords of medieval theory (Denis 1: 788). These two
observations indicate that a reassessment of the Guidonian
Hand and its influence on the development of both musical
and linguistic writing is necessary. In fact, the Hand of
Guido reveals the important role that the indexical mode
plays in both kinds of writing.
The indexical mode in musical writing is the hand
itself, the hand that signs, that itself functions
literally as the text. Treitler's narrow application of
Peircean semiology requires the production of a written
text; hence his emphasis on the differences between the
neumes employed in medieval transcripts. But Peirce's
definition of an index stipulates only that it establish a
concrete and sequential relationship, and subsequently
semioticians have frequently used the pointing finger as an
example of a signifier whose relationship to its signified
is indexical in mode.
78
An interesting development follows when the Guidonian
Hand is assigned to the indexical mode and considered as a
particular stage in the development of musical writing.
According to Umberto Eco, "There is no need to have some
thing close to a pointing finger for that finger to acquire
a meaning. The pointing finger has a seme of closeness
and this semantic marker is grasped even if one points into
33
empty air" (Theory 184). What the finger points towards
is the Guidonian Hand, and as musical writing progressed,
first the pointing finger disappeared, transferring its
potential for meaning to the Hand. The Hand then fully
developed as the music text, absorbing an array of marks in
both the vertical and horizontal planes that mask yet echo
their origins in the indexical mode of semiotic
signification.
Unfortunately, it is at this point that the weaknesses
of Treitler1s application of Peircean semiology are
revealed. Treitler's proposal that musical writing has
moved through a hierarchy of modes in its historical
development is a basic violation of Peirce's concept of
semiotic categories. These categories are not fixed in
time, but rather they illustrate the various potential and
simultaneous relationships that can exist between the
different elements of a sign. Peirce himself proposed
various combinations of signs, and as Jakobson has
remarked, "There is no question of three categorically
79
separate types of signs, but only of a different hierarchy
assigned to the interacting types of relation between the
signans and signatum of given signs, and in fact, we
observe such transitional varieties as symbolic icons,
iconic symbols, etc." (Writings 2:700) Peircean categories
were not intended to be a framework that described the
history of semiosis as Treitler has applied them. Rather
Peirce was interested in developing a method of examining
general laws Of signs in an attempt to define logic itself
as a specific kind of sign manipulation.
However, a defense of Treitler's position might be
made by proposing that despite the simultaneously
horizontal/vertical characteristics of the B class of
neumes, there are moments in every musical text where the
emphasis clearly begins to fluctuate between the horizontal
(melodic) and the vertical (harmonic) modes. Thus the
importance of the context and the flexibility of the
Peircean sign could be maintained. The development of
musical writing could then be understood as the increasing
capacity to shift emphasis between the different possible
modes of the sign. Furthermore, this expanded theory of
the development of medieval musical writing includes both
Treitler's theory of neumatic notation as well as the
theory of the Guidonian Hand presented in this study. The
advantage to this is that now the indexical mode is
included in a comprehensive theory of medieval musical
80
writing. However, despite this attractiveness, many
problems still remain because all of these suggested
applications severely limit the powerful scope of Peirce's
semiology.
Treitler also observes that early medieval notation
had another problem to solve: how to transcribe rhythm
clearly. Despite the various theories of the origins of
neumatic transcription, either from accent and punctuation
marks or from signs added to ancient liturgical texts to
show syntactic divisions, the main shared characteristic
between medieval music notation and linguistic writing is
the division of the text into sensus or sense units. Sense
units mark out paths of meaning in the text which allow
readers to group like ideas together into smaller parcels
before connecting them together into larger organizational
or interpretational blocks. Treitler points out that the
use of cadences which distinguish between different
sections of a melody in medieval music correspond to the
use of punctuation marks in the text which unify certain
words into groups. But Treitler also remarks that current
research cannot yet answer the question of which practice
borrowed from the other— he simply emphasizes this common
feature ("Early History" 269-71).
A discussion of the importance of pauses or silences
in both musical and linguistic texts occupies the next
chapter, but in summary, perhaps it is more accurate to
81
suggest that the requirements of first the Gregorian chant
and later the motet fostered an artificial relationship
between language and music— artificial because the musical
text only appeared to rely on the linguistic one for
clarity. In retrospect, it is easier to understand that
this was not absolutely the case. It was only as other
aspects of musical composition became increasingly more
important that the independence of music notation as a
distinctly different species of writing began to be
revealed. If this were true, musical writing as a method
of sign manipulation independent of both spoken and written
language, also preceded any systematic description of this
species of writing. This is a basic rule of all sign
manipulation, but evidence that supports this theory can be
found by observing certain changes that occurred in
performance with the advent of a refined system of musical
writing in the Middle Ages. As composers gained more
textual control, performers lost a certain measure of
freedom. Improvisation, an essential and fundamentally
interpretive skill, was necessary when performers worked
with sketchy musical texts. But as musical notation
developed into an exact system, the role of the performer
was slowly transformed. This role is (and remains) a
problematic one; musical performance emphasizes that
extremely troublesome aspect of performance in general
because it always has the potential to be more than the
82
re-creation of the composer's intention. At its most
extreme, musical performance is actually pre-meditated
violation of intention in the cases when performers seek
out those areas of the composition that allow for the
greatest degree of personal interpretation. The slippage
between transcription and performance, a gap first
uncovered in music texts, would have increasingly important
effects on all theories that deal with systematic
transcription. This aspect of the relationship between
music and language will be discussed in the next section on
musica ficta and ellipsis.
After the development of the Guidonian Hand, the next
practical contribution to music transcription was made
during the 12th and 13th centuries by a group of composers
working in Paris, Beauvais, Sens and throughout northern
France. Until this time, most music transcriptions had
been made at the great Swiss monasteries, but in the early
13th century a shift was made to the School of Notre Dame
in Paris. Probably based on a rhythmic pattern first
outlined by St. Augustine in his De Musica, French
composers sought to extend the rules of poetic rhythm to
include systematic music transcription (Hoppin 222).
Augustine adopted Greek meter as his model, not recognizing
that Latin had a separate tradition and that Greek theories
often could not account fully for what happens in Latin
34
verse. His system was purely quantitative, and he
83
described in detail twenty-eight different metrical feet
which correspond, in part, to those used in contemporary
poetics. But there is one major difference: Augustine's
emphasis on the quantitative aspect of meter dismisses
syllabic stress in favor of relative length of duration of
a syllable. The two basic divisions of time were the
brevis or short syllable and the longa or long syllable.
35
One longa was always comprised of two breves.
Although his extended treatment of rhythm as a musical
device follows traditional definitions, Augustine closely
examines the overlap between the use of rhythm in both
music and poetry. Augustine's argument asumes that an
examination of rhythm in music will lead to a much clearer
idea of how rhythm works in general because rhythmic rules
in music are more clearly defined than those in poetry.
According to Augustine, scholarship in both Greek t
and Latin litteratura makes a claim of being the guardian
of history. All rules of pronunciation, meter and rhythm
are therefore subject to the authority of tradition. But
music, indifferent to this tradition of scholarly
authority, insists on its own rules that, oblivious to
context, demand to be followed (II,i,l). For this reason,
an examination of rhythm in music should reveal those rules
of a self-contained system not subject to change or
alteration as are the rules associated with the study of
poetics. These rules are not invented rules, according to
84
Augustine, but "discovered" rules, ones that already exist
in nature for which the correct study of rhythm has found
names (V,i,1).
Augustine's distinction between two methods of
analyzing rhythm prefigures the distinction made in
linguistics a millenium later by Ferdinand de Saussure. By
enumerating two distinct methods of studying language,
Saussure proposed in his Course in General Linguistics that
the traditional and historical study of linguistics should
be supplemented with one that viewed language as a self-
contained system (1-23). Saussure described a historical
approach as an external linguistics as compared with an
internal linguistics which comprised his Course. "One must
always distinguish between what is internal and what is
external. In each instance one can determine the nature of
the phenomenon by applying this rule: everything that
changes the system in any way is internal" (23). A glimpse
of the fundamental importance of relational differences in
music can be seen in Augustine's renunciation of surface
structures he associates with grammar and literature.
Instead, he proposes that a study of the rhythmic
principles of musica should reveal a pre-existent system by
which appropriate rhythmic judgements can be made.
The difference between rhythm in music and rhythm in
language dominates Augustine's entire study. Metric in
grammar requires that a learned tradition be satisfied,
85
while meter in music appeals to an innate aesthetic
perception that is revealed through proper training. These
distinctions are not unlike those made by Bacon and the
Modistae between vox, expression according to grammatical
rules, and intellectus, ungrammatical expression conforming
to the silent authority of universal grammar. Why
aesthetic perception should judge some combinations of
rhythm pleasurable and others not is the subject of De
Musica (II,ii,2).
Augustine's lengthy examination of the many possible
combinations of feet into meters and meters into verse
eventually leads him to conclude that "meters are count
less. We found that there were 568 of them, even without
including any with silences other than final silences, or
any with mixed feet, or with feet extended by resolutions
beyond four syllables. If we counted all that are
possible, there might be no known number to express their
multiplicity" (IV,xvii,37). One characteristic that
provides for the infinite complexity of music rhythm is the
use of silences. According to Augustine, poets have often
dispensed with the requirements of music meter and have
been allowed a certain license of rhythmic irregularity
because poetry flows with an "impetuous spontaneity."
Music, on the other hand, is "deliciously sensitive"
because it follows rhythmic laws that impose demands on
each line, a requirement which prevents irregularities
86
(IV,ii,3). While irregularities are interwoven into poetic
metrics, musical meter has a regularity that is largely
accomplished by the insertion of silences into the text.
The appropriate use of silences, in fact, will determine
whether a piece has harmony (concordia) or discord
(discordia) (IV,xiv,23). Book IV of De Musica is entirely
devoted to the proper placement of these silences.
The importance of silences becomes clear when
Augustine accords a hierarchy of spirituality to different
levels of rhythmic phenomena. The lowest classes of rhythm
are based on sounds in nature not necessarily requiring a
receiver. These sounds have a potential for rhythm,
according to Augustine, but exist solely on account of the
external world and the physical realm of hearing (VI,ii,3).
The highest order of rhythm is the totally silent one of
Judicial Rhythm (VI,v,16). It is this skill which accounts
for an aesthetic perception that allows recognition of
irregular rhythmic patterns and guides the insertion of
silences or pauses to eliminate these irregularities. It
is this skill, in fact, that makes any perception of rhythm
possible at all.
The connection of silence and musica is by now a
familiar one. There is also a familiar pattern in that
music has provided a model which helps to explain some of
the shortcomings of language. Most importantly, what
Augustine describes is a reversal of the universal grammar
87
of the Modistae. According to universal grammarians, gaps
in the text as evidenced by ungrammatical formulations
reveal a universal grammar which is inserted at moments of
non-sense. Silent additions are made into the lingusitic
text from an intellectus which has the ability to make the
connection between expression and meaning. The musical
text, however, can only retain its musicality insofar as we
are able to insert gaps in the proper places, a skill
Augustine calls Judicial Rhythm. Both universal grammar
and Judicial Rhythm are initially obscured by and only
later, through the proper application of the rules of
silence, revealed through surface structures. The impor
tance of the relationship between the text and its silences
is present in both musical and linguistic writing, but the
relationship between the two grammatologies is inverted
along a common axis.
In continuing the investigation of the divergences of
musical and linguistic writing, keeping in mind that diver
gence here does not simply mean separation, but a parti
cular kind of separation of the two arts so that they
reflect or mirror each other, it is helpful to return with
a critical eye to the Peircean/Treitler model of the music
sign. As Umberto Eco has demonstrated, there are several
problems with Peirce's trichotomy of symbol, icon and index
(Theory 178 passim). One of Eco's main criticisms is ques
tioning whether icons can actually exist, suggesting that
88
what Peirce defines as the iconic mode is actually the
element of a graphic convention which allows one to trans
form, in a text, the elements of a perceptual convention
that have motivated the sign (194). Eco's investigation of
this transformation process and what kinds of replicas it
produces comprises most of his examination of Peirce.
First, Eco makes a distinction between two kinds of
replicas based on how similar the signifier is to its
signified. Replicas can demonstrate ratio facilis whereby
each signifier obeys rules of fidelity by expressing
pertinent characteristics of the model. Eco cites a stop
sign as an example of ratio facilis semiosis because each
stop sign need embody only a limited and very specific
number of qualities in order to be recognized as a stop
sign. Ratio difficilis replicas, on the other hand, need
contain no pertinent characteristics, but are instead
motivated by the nature of the content of the signified
(182-83).
In his criticism of Peircean icons, Eco first
discusses and then eliminates three phenomena that might be
mistaken for iconism: specular reflections, i.e., those
signs or images that exist "not instead of but because of
the presence of the something; when that something
disappears the pseudoimage in the mirror disappears too"
(202); doubles, or exact copies containing so many features
of the original that they could be understood as another
89
exemplar, not its signified— such as two cars of the same
color, year and model (180-81); and replicas ruled by ratio
facilis, as mentioned earlier, two stop signs of different
sizes and hues, but of the same shape and color so that
each can be recognized as a member of the class of stop
sign. Eco then develops a theory of sign production by
redefining Peircean icons, considering only replicas
produced by ratio difficilis, whereby "the signal's
production procedures affect not only its recognizability
as a signal, but also the recognizability of the expressed
content." At this point, Eco also rejects any definition
of signs that considers their expressive qualities or their
ability to induce a feeling or reaction in the perceiver
(203) .
Semiotic replication through ratio difficilis
relationships is a powerful concept when applied to a
comparison of musical and linguistic transcription systems.
The relationship between the two can be re-formulated in
terms of Eco's definition of partial replication: neither
musical nor linguistic writing follows all the rules of
production of the other; nevertheless, each system is
capable of exhibiting,a great percentage of the mechanical
and functional properties of each other. While Eco is
primarily concerned with describing relationships between
signifier and signified, the relationship between the
two signification systems of musical and linguistic writing
90
function interestingly as alternating semiotic signifier/
signified. Eco's theory of sign production, which concen
trates on how models are transformed to produce new
signifiers, describes many of the transfers of signifi
cation properties between musical and linguistic writing.
First, ratio difficilis relationships do not exist
between an image and its object but rather between an image
and its previously culturized content (204). This was the
case when musical writing was first extrapolated from the
alphabet in the ancient world. The previously culturized
content is not the alphabet itself, but rather the function
that the alphabet fulfilled in its ability to stand for
something else in various combinations of individual
graphemes. Rephrased in Eco's semiotic terminology, music
adopted this culturized content from linguistic writing and
produced another image: musical writing. That N might
have two meanings, either as part of a musical phrase or
part of a word, is an example of the culturized content
between music and language. Furthermore, N's (or any
grapheme's) ambiguity in musical writing actually relies on
this slippage. What musical writing adopted from
linguistic writing was not simply a scheme of represen
tation, but more importantly the dynamic of slippage that
can easily set any grapheme free from its meaning. All
interpretive decisions about how to decipher graphemes are
ultimately based on context, as both Peirce and Eco make
91
clear. However, that these decisions can be made at all is
evidence of a culturized content relationship between
alphabetic symbols and at least two different structures
which could provide for their organization into meaningful
sequences. Hence, independently from either content or
meaning, semiotic operations based on ratio difficilis
relationships were established between musical and
linguistic writing.
Greek musical writing is characterized by patterns of
inversion and partial replication of distinct graphemes of
linguistic writing. Early medieval musical writing main
tains this characteristic inversion and partial replication
but on a larger scale, by reversing or inverting the system
by which chains of meaningful signifiers are recognized.
As Treitler has suggested, while the linguistic text became
progressively uni-directional, the success of musical
writing depended on the development of texts that organized
graphemes in many directions, both horizontally and
vertically. Despite the development of such literary
devices as the allegory which introduced a text that could
refer to larger structures outside of itself, the success
of allegory is highly linear in nature, demanding that a
correspondence be made between a succession of events in
the allegory and the religious or moral structure to which
it refers.
Another example of inversions between the systems of
92
musical and linguistic writing involves the use of Latin as
a model. In medieval linguistic studies, Latin best illus
trated the qualities of universal grammar and became an
example of an ideal that stood silently behind every
languaging event, allowing for the supplementation of
meaning into the gaps of the text. Contrarily, in the
discipline of medieval music, Latin provided a model for
the insertion of silences or gaps into an otherwise
unpleasing musical text. The appropriation of silence and
its relationship to inscription is also inverted between
musical and linguistic writing, a relationship best illus
trated by the concepts of ellipsis and musica ficta, the
topic of discussion in the next section.
93
ESCAPING THE TRANSCRIBER'S HAND:
FALSE MUSIC AND ELLIPSIS
One concern in both music and language studies of the
late Middle Ages was the relationship that an expanding and
increasingly more precise system of transcription had with
expression, meaning and intention. In medieval music,
subtle rhythms were appearing that were intranscribable
according to medieval systems of notation. Concurrently,
the accepted use of particular semi-tones within the modal
system began to release musicians from centonization,
taking first the melodic line and later harmonic relation
ships outside of the boundaries of the modes themselves.
What resulted from the use of modes was a growing tolerance
for the use of accidentals and their much broader appli
cation in musica ficta.
Chromatism was common during performance throughout
the 14th century. However, few of these chromatic
intervals were ever marked on a manuscript, or if they
were, there were frequently variations between different
manuscript copies of the same work. The use of accidentals
in performance, known as musica ficta or musica falsa, took
place outside of the Guidonian system and hence was
94
considered "outside the hand" (Grout 61). A confounding
situation had been built into the Western musical scale:
because it is based on the overlapping of medieval tetra-
chords, at certain points the expectation of a whole note
jump is reduced to a half note. It was just these irregu
larities of tonal progression that the eschemata signaled.
As a result, certain melodic and harmonic constructions
became unavoidable. One tri-tone in particular, the
interval between F and B , became known as the diabolus in
musica, the devil in music. As a result, chromatic steps
were inserted at the discretion of the performer depending
upon a number of variables, including the cadence and key
of the melody, or simply for causa pulchritudinis, for the
sake of beauty.
A brief history of the use of musica ficta illustrates
some fundamental characteristics about the relationship
between music and language, and the relationship between
both to transcription. Although it remained in use until
the Renaissance, musica ficta is most often associated with
the Ars Nova music of France. Music in the 13th century
was strongly modal in character, and there was a return to
this kind of music accompanied by an emphasis on strictly
liturgical music by Ockeghem and Obrecht in the 15th
3 6
century. This return to a more conservative musical
style was also accompanied by a regulation in the rules of
application for musica ficta so that notes were added in
95
conventional ways which could be transcribed by an expanded
system of music notation. Therefore, musica ficta is an
excellent example of the situation where certain intran-
scribable elements of music at the performance level were
actually well-understood ones, based at the very least on
an assumption of shared beliefs about melodic and harmonic
possibilities. Grocheo defines musica ficta in his Theoria
as a device typical of secular and polyphonic music (Sadie
9: 664). Philipe de Vitry, one of the outstanding
composers of the Ars Nova motet, remarked that no motet
could be performed without it (Parrish 198). Hence it is
only fair to ask what the characteristics of the motet are,
other than its development as a radical experiment in music
history bounded on either side by more conservative
tendencies, that would make the application of musica
ficta so important.
The shift in the location of the center of music
transcription that has already been mentioned also resulted
in a shift in musical interest from purely liturgical texts
to secular ones. One of the first musical forms to evolve
out of this new temperament was the motet. In contrast to
the plainsong of the Gregorian chant, melismatic organa
with two voices each following a different rhythmic mode
were composed at the abbey of St. Martial in Limoges.
These first melismatic passages were based on the clausula
or short, contrapuntal sections of a Gregorian chant. At
96
the School of Notre Dame, Leonin composed organa of two
voices in which the upper voice, or duplum, was a free-
moving improvisation over the slower moving lower voice,
and later organa of Perotin incorporated three and four
voices. Originally all the texts were in Latin, but as the
motet grew in complexity, a French text was often added.
The French word mot was initially used to designate these
voices (the triplum or motetus) added to the duplum, but
later came to signify the entire polyphonic composition.
The incorporation of the vulgate along with the use of
folksong melodies reflected the general tendency of Ars
Nova music to utilize sources from secular life. This new
art of music became extremely popular, spreading from Paris
to the whole of France and Western Europe.
The motet was a fanciful experiment in combining music
and language made possible by a number of contiguous events
in both of their histories. The first is the growth in
richness of secular life and a corresponding rise in impor
tance of national languages. It is the same kind of exper
imentation that would result in the rise of national
languages in the literary experiments of Dante, Boccaccio
and Chaucer. More importantly, the synthesis of different
languages by the motet eventually had a great impact on
medieval musical writing. As the vulgate text expanded to
become an independent, free-standing melody, a different
kind of musical notation was required. While modal
97
notation had sufficed for a strictly liturgial text, clear
pronunciation and a correspondence between syllables and
notes were a basic requirement in the secular text. Modal
notation suited the plainsong of the Gregorian chant in a
situation in which it was not critical that the secular
audience understand the text. In addition, as the rhythm
of the motetus in French became quicker in comparison to
the Latin tenor voice, a different kind of notation was
required. The setting of some lines might be completely
syllabic, while others are neumatic as in, for example, the
Stirps Jesse of the Abbey of St. Martial (Hoppin 252). The
result was a that the motet exposed a dichotomy between
different notation systems. Modal notation was used for
the Latin text and syllabic notation for the vulgate (Apel
217) .
Syllabic notation required much smaller time divisions
than did modal notation. This problem had been partially
solved in Franconian notation as it was used in the motets
of Petrus de Cruce. Because there was no way to indicate
half- or quarter-note divisions, Cruce simply clumped
groups of notes together in a smaller space and in this way
indicated that more notes needed to be sung in the same
amount of time (Apel 318). Obviously this was not a
complete solution, and one of the technical points at issue
in the rise in popularity of Ars Nova music was whether or
not composers would be able to agree on recognizing a
98
solution that was proposed by Phillipe de Vitry.
The notational problem revealed by the strain between
modal and syllabic notation was that two different longae
(long notes) were recognized in Franconian notation. The
perfect longa was comprised of three breves, the imperfect
of two. Whether a longa was perfect or imperfect was
37
determined by the rhythmic mode. Vitry's solution to
this confusing situation was to propose that duple mensur
ations should have the same value as triple ones in tran
scribing rhythm. Because this was interpreted as a direct
challenge to the authority of the symbolic value of the
Trinity in musical writing, this suggestion met with wide
spread resistance. Vitry also suggested entending the
rules of Franconian notation to apply to smaller units of
measurement. Until the Ars Nova, the semibreve had been
the smallest unit, but Vitry proposed that it too could be
divided into halves and thirds. To indicate the difference
between breves and semibreves of duple or triple mensur
ation, Vitry utilized the dot that had previously been used
as a sign to divide notes into groups. He replaced the dot
with what is now the bar sign and used the dot attached to
a note to indicate that it received a triple beat. An
undotted note received only two beats.
Vitry's proposals were neither immediately nor
universally accepted. Jacobus of Liege argued strongly
against the innovations of the moderns in his Speculum
99
musicae (ca. 1330), pointing out in particular that the new
system of notation actually decreased rather than increased
the possible variations of rhythm that could be employed in
composition (Apel 323). Jacobus equated this lack of
richness with what he saw as a general tendency of the new
musicians to move away from nature as a model, to defy the
notion of an ideal, and to break divine laws by recourse to
refined techniques of musical writing:
The old masters always made the first (semi-
brevis) shorter, the second longer, a rhythm
full of strength and harmonizing with nature
which is always stronger at the end than at the
beginning. The modern musicians, however, main
tain that this is not obligatory and that it may
be done in the opposite way, namely, with the
first being longer than the second, as they
actually do it nowadays. . . . They also say
that it is not necessary for art always to
follow nature (Apel 339).
In many ways. Jacobus' criticisms of the new musicians
were perfectly valid, in particular his criticism that
Vitry's system actually limited the number of possible
rhythmic combinations. Hence in 1342, that is approx
imately twenty-five years after the appearance of the Ars
Nova, Vitry requested that the mathematician Gersonides
(confused until very recently with Leo Hebraeus) demon
strate the clarity and potential of the mathematical rela
tionships inherent in his new transcription system (Werner
283-91). The postulation upon which Gersonides' proof is
100
based is found in Boethius’ De institutione arithmetical
Book I and De institutione musica, Book II (Plantinga
221f). Gersonides used it to demonstrate that the results
of all possible divisions and subdivisons of notes could
neither become confused nor did they limit the range of
rhythmic combination. In consequence, one and only one
basic mode of division based on duple mensuration supple
mented by a dot to indicate triple mensuration was
necessary to indicate an almost infinite range of rhythmic
variety (Werner 290).
The motet provided a flexible vehicle for the confron
tations between music and language on many different
levels. Interwoven with the Ars Vetrus, which utilized
slow rhythmic patterns that so distorted a linguistic text
that its only comprehensible level was as a vehicle for
divine and mystical contemplation, was the Ars Nova, a form
using faster sequences of notes bound to textual clarity
and based on a system rooted in rigid, logical abstraction.
Within this context, musica ficta acted as a bridge, not
only between melodic lines and music notation, or between
abstract chant and comprehensible poetic performance, but
finally as a bridge between two ways of perceiving the
world, philosophical perspectives whose dissonances were
underscored by their differing positions on role and func
tion of musical writing.
However, a recognition of and interest in the
101
organizing principles of expressive activity was not
limited to the discipline of medieval musical writing.
Because both musical and linguistic systems were subjects
for intense study in the 14th century, the presupposition
that the mind could ultimately be engaged only in rational,
logical activity helped to simplify the codification of the
unwritten rules which governed both musical and linguistic
performance. Both disciplines were characterized by the
postulation of an invisible sub-structure which could
transform seemingly illogical or random events into ones
that could be explained in rational terms. This framework
of the mind is best exhibited by Vitry"s proof for his
notational system, but the quest for rational explanation
of complex transcriptional problems was also evidenced in
linguistics.
Although it was initially conceived of as a Latin
grammar, the publication in 1585 (Madrid; 1587 in
Amsterdam) of Sanctius' Minerva, seu de Causis Linguae
Latinae actually produced one of the earliest sophisticated
insights into the nature of language. By comparing the
grammar of Latin with that of other languages, Sanctius
made two observations: the first one, which was in accor
dance with Modist grammars, stated that Latin, like all
languages, contains nonsensical constructions at the level
of performance but that these constructions do not inter
fere with the successful transmission of meaning. Sanctius
102
interpreted this as an indication that, although organized
expressions of meaning might appear to be incoherent or
disorganized, both the sender who generates the signal as
well as the receiver who interprets and organizes these
illogical elements possess logical and rational minds.
Therefore, he concluded, there must be some organizing
principle in language other than those evidenced through
performance which can account for meaning contained in
incoherent statements. In contrast to the Modistae,
however, Sanctius' second conclusion was that any complete
grammar should be able to account for these illogical
constructions by describing the organizing principles
behind syntactic abberation. Sanctius' examination led to
a distinction between different types of grammars. Insti
tutionalized or particular grammars which dealt with indi
vidual languages were distinctly different in scope and
intent than natural grammars which sought to elucidate the
universal features of language in general (Salus 88-98).
Sanctius' treatise is an extended examination of the
relationship between abstract structures and superficial
forms, between conceptualization and its manifestation in
transcription and performance. The former is ideal,
logical and universal; the latter attempts to be, but is
necessarily constrained by subjective and interpretive
judgment. Therefore, Sanctius is very clear about the
rules which connect the two. On the one hand, some
103
abstract descriptions that occur in universal grammar will
never appear in any individual language. Conversely,
certain syntactic features of individual languages can not
be described at the level of abstraction (Book IV, Chapter
II). Sanctius also named four syntactic figures, ellipsis,
pleonasm, syllepsis and hyperbaton, that were acceptable
deviations from the norm because of their use by reputable
authors (Book IV, Chapter I). Of the four, Sanctius spends
the majority of Minerva in a discussion of ellipsis, a
syntactic figure understood as the complimentary form of
restoration, and Sanctius defined ellipsis as the absence
of a word or a phrase necessary to make the statement a
O Q
grammatically correct one (Book IV, Chap. I).
The close resemblance between Sanctius' definition of
the systematic use of ellipsis and the rules of application
f°r musica ficta are immediately apparent. All syntactic
features and especially ellipsis act as bridges between two
systems, the metaphysical principles of grammar that are,
in principle, capable of rational explanation but which
remain beyond the grasp of language, and the normal rules
of grammatical syntax which are frequently long and
inelegant. A second feature of Sanctius' definition is
that it represents a cogent rewording of a general theory
of ellipsis which had been a cornerstone of the Western
grammatical theory but which was subject to revival and
expansion into a broader theory of language in the 14th
104
century.
The term subaudio, to understand a word implied but
not expressed, was used by Domitius Ulpianus as early as
the 3rd century A.D. Later grammarians, including
Priscian, used the term subaudiri to apply to words or
phrases which have a clear meaning in certain contexts
(Percival 247f). The Latin probably is derived from a
parallel Greek word * u rr* K o u itrzf« c used by the Alexandrian
grammarians (Percival 247-48), and the etymology is quite
clear: some important elements of language exist behind,
below, under or in some way hidden from the phonetic or
heard level of linguistic performance. Priscian was quite
well read by medieval grammarians, and his comprehensive
Latin grammar was the most influential grammatical textbook
of the Middle Ages. However, a shift was occurring in the
late Middle Ages, away from the study of grammar as a
propaedeutic to the study of literature to an analysis of
grammar as a rule-governed system whose laws reflected
basic structures in language and thought. Incidentally,
this shift had already been witnessed in Augustine's De
Musica by his call for a systematic study of rhythm not
restricted by the limitations of literary history. The
result was a growing interest in the mediating systems that
explained these rules in grammatical terminology.
One of the earliest examples of this tendency can be
seen in the grammar of Francesco da Buti (1324-1406) which
105
treats verbs in two distinct ways, in terms of the objects
they govern on the right and also in terms of how verbs
39
govern nominal constructions on the left. This first
exploration of hidden structures within language was
followed within the next fifty years by Lorenzo Valla's '
Opus Eleqantiarum Linguae Latinae (1444) and Thomas
Linacre's De Emendata Structura Latini Sermonis (1524).
Both studies examine subaudition, the theory basic to
ellipsis, and both prefigure a discussion of structures
that are hidden beneath the surface level of performance.
It has been shown that Sanctius was familiar with and
quoted extensively from the work of Linacre, and that it
was Linacre who provided him with his theory of ellipsis
(Percival 243-48).
By the late Middle Ages, both music and language
studies were in similar stages of transition. In the 14th
century an influential older tradition in both disciplines
viewed their subjects as part of a natural order, one that
reflected a metaphysical truth. But by the end of this
century, both music and language studies were producing
theorists who, in abandoning the study of literature,
sought to define their subjects as rule-govered sciences.
For a brief century, ellipsis and musica ficta bridged the
gap until, with the triumph of logical analysis and musical
clarity during the Renaissance, the disparity between
natural order and logic was resolved not only in general
106
philosophical discussion but also in discussions of musical
and linguistic writing.
Recently, linguists have begun to reconsider the
importance of examining incomplete messages. A distinction
has been made between language constructions formed with an
intended receiver in mind compared to egocentric speech,
language operating on the border zone of inner or dream
dialogue. In his essay "Parts and Wholes in Language,"
Roman Jakobson made the following observation:
Every message may be and must be dealt with
as a temporal interval within a verbalized or
nonverbalized continuous or discontinuous
temporal context; and we stand before the
nearly unexplored question of the interrelation
between message and context. In particular,
the structural laws of ellipsis have not yet
been subjected to a thorough analysis
(Writings 2: 282).
Jakobson is, in general, arguing against the tendency in
modern linguistics to follow Saussure's bifurcation of
langue and parole, especially when he asserts that
"without a confrontation of the code with the messages, no
insight into the creative power of language can be
achieved" (Writings 2: 718). For Chomskyan grammarians,
ellipsis is understood as one of many transformations of
deep structure at the surface level of performance, hence a
process that can be described by rules of transformation.
One approach has been to define all deletions as represen-
107
tations of left-to-right conventions. Ellipsis is then
defined as one of a number of uni-directional linguistic
actions (Baker 289-303). The drawback to these kinds of
descriptions has already been pointed out: the formal
properties of syntax, including not only ellipsis but also
other transformations of surface structure such as substi
tution and movement, are so enormous that describing all
possible interactions of syntactic transformation would
produce virtually a limitless set of rules. Trans
formational grammarians are faced with the question of
whether or not an unlimited number of rules that can
describe two structures as though they were related is
either necessary or useful (Stockwell 124-26). The
question rightfully arises as to whether or not it is
possible to make any statement that is not, in some way,
elliptical. And in a long text, complete explicitness is
virtually impossible since new information that cross-
references and elides older information is constantly being
added.
A slightly different approach to the problem of
ellipsis has been undertaken by functional grammarians who,
instead of defining ellipsis as a deviation from the
perfect closure of a grammatically complete statement, have
instead proposed that ellipsis is another method of coordi
nation. Their criticism of the handling of deletion by
transformational grammarians is actually a criticism of the
108
basic tenets of Cartesian linguistics, its reductionist
tendencies, and the unclear way in which deep structure is
connected to surface structure by vague transformational
operations. Functional grammarians point out that when a
specific case cannot be described by an extant transfor
mational structure, then another one is invented. In this
manner, again following the functionalists' argument,
although the handling of any particular case might be
clear, it is often not evident if Chomskyan transfor
mational operations on deep structures can produce the
correct surface structures (Dik 249). Instead, functional
grammar contains no rules for describing ellipsis. Only
linguistic expressions which are incomplete or interrupted,
that is, essentially non-grammatical, are defined as ellip
tical, and since these statements cannot fall within the
general study of grammar, they are not explained in gram
matical terms. Instead, the use of coordination is
broadened to cover most cases of ellipsis (Dik 200-01).
For example, the sentence "Music and language are discussed
in Romantic poetry" is not considered an ellipsis for the
sentence, "Music is discussed in Romantic poetry and
language is discussed in Romantic poetry." Instead,
ellipsis is evaluated as a short-hand method of coupling.
In the example given above, nouns are coupled. But in a
broader sense, this kind of explanation for ellipsis could
be viewed as a return to Sanctius' description of ellipsis
109
as an operation that bridges two kinds of grammar, the
individual, institutionalized one with a universal or ideal
grammar. Or, as Jakobson explains:
Neither ellipsis nor reticence nor anacoluthon
can be considered deviant structures; they are
merely lawful derivations from the kernal forms
embedded in the explicit standard. . . . Once
again, this "code variability," which clarifies
why the standard is not actualized in some overt
behavior, has been overlooked more by linguists
than by the less "biased" communication engineers
(Writings 2: 579).
An overall code of language should include rules of trans
forming the optimal, explicit kernal code into various
degrees of elliptic subcodes. According to Jakobson, only
with a complete examination of these convertible codes can
an understanding of the dynamic synchrony of language be
made more clear. It is this theory of constantly fluc
tuating and interrelating subcodes that he believes must
replace the traditional pattern of arbitrarily restricted
static descriptions (Writings 2: 574).
In a recent article, "Language Models and Musical
Analysis," Harold Powers points out that some models pro
posed recently by musicologists which utilize contemporary
linguistic theory are actually very similar to charts used
for over fifty years by researchers in folk-song scholar
ship and the study of Christian liturgical chant (11-12).
In regard to the early work of Nicolas Ruwet, and following
110
him, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Edward Cone and other musical
analysts who use methods based on structural linguistics.
Powers discovers the same weaknesses that functional gram
marians have found in the transformational-generative model
in linguistics. Few musical styles or languages are able
to generate a chart of musical structures that adequately
represent the musical surface. Of the few examples that
do, "the chain of links from surface to structure, from
representational score to metaphoric score, is usually
somewhat longer and less clear-cut" (25).
Other musicologists more committed to demonstrating
that a generative theory of music structure can reveal much
about performance and understanding have pointed out that
the structural model is often adapted as a metaphor in
musical studies, one which is neither rigorously nor
methodically applied. This tendency is, according to Ray
Jackendoff, one that seeks to describe music in its own
terms, borrowing concepts from linguistics insofar as they
are useful to the analysis (883). Jackendoff, himself a
Chomskyan linguist, instead proposes a method that would
establish the value of musical and linguistic universals
independently and only then investigate universals which
underlie both domains. These universals, according to
Jackendoff, could reveal still deeper insights into human
cognition (884). The task that Jackendoff, like Jakobson
before him, calls for is a more flexible definition of
111
"structure" in music studies, less of an emphasis on
formulas and static definitions and more of an emphasis on
adopting structural analyses which problematize rather than
resolve the relationship between music and cognition.
One response from music scholars has come from the
study of medieval plainchant, specifically in the impor
tance of improvisation in the performance of Gregorian
chant. Simply stated, musicologists have traditionally
viewed centonization, or the performance of the melismatic
passages in Gregorian chant, not as a demonstration of
unplanned or unregulated performance, but rather as a
process of creating new melodies from combinations of pre
existing melodic formulas (Hoppin 64). The musical text is
a framework or outline of an incomplete, but understood,
melody, an explanation identical with traditional defini
tions of ellipsis in a linguistic text. The weaknesses of
this definition have been pointed out by Leo Treitler who,
in arguing against a traditionally rigid view of plainchant
performance based on rote memorization of standard melodic
formulas, has instead proposed a formulaic method of plain
chant composition more closely resembling the transmission
of oral poetry according to recent proposals made by Parry
and Lord. Treitler suggests that instead of learning how
to variate and elaborate on a basic melody according to
fairly strict kinds of melodic formulas, which he calls
"formula tabulation," plainchant singers instead acquired a
112
skill that was based on an "internalized sense of a
pattern." This skill, which Treitler calls "formulaic
analysis," refers to a different level of knowledge. It is
not a trained reflex based on memorization, but rather a
skill that can only be transmitted through melodies, and
therefore it evidences an assimilation of melodic
principles and patterns that is far more complex than
simple recitation ("Homer" 360).
An obvious bifurcation has developed not so much
between the disciplines of music and language studies as
within them along the axis of textual omission and supple
mentation. On one side are those theorists in both music
and linguistics who perceive textual aberation as an indi
cation of an understood or hidden structures. On the other
hand, there are those who would define the text as a
malleable artifact which responds to certain "code varia
bilities." Unlike the Doctrine of Figures, a 17th century
experiment that equated certain musical devices with
rhetorical ones, the relationship between ellipsis and
supplementation in music and linguistic texts is one of
kind, not similarity. The degree to which artistic
expression manages to elude transcriptional rules will
determine how important the roles of meaning and under
standing will be. A comparison of medieval lingustic and
music theory illustrates how strong the tendency was to
remove all lacunae from any text, be it musical or
113
linguistic, and failing this to describe these gaps in
terms of a rational structure hidden within or behind the
system of transcription.
Sanctius argued that ellipsis appeared in surface
structures because each individual language could only
imperfectly embody the complete set of rational rules of a
universal grammar. Following this definition, ellipsis in
language is an absence at the level of performance and
notation, a sort of lingua ficta never described at the
grammatical level and one which can never be absorbed by
any linguistic system of notation. On the other hand, as
evidenced by the development of musical writing, the system
of transcription developed to record music is far more
capable than language of absorbing supplements. This
tendency began with the accidentals generated by musica
ficta, and in fact this capability of musical writing is
still evidenced by such transcriptional markings as grace
notes, volume and meter markings, and other quite compli
cated contemporary musical additions.
However, as evidenced by the concern of many theorists
in both music and linguistics with the relationship between
writing, understanding and interpretation, some of the most
difficult problems which both musical and linguistic
writing would face were definitions of intention, meaning
and understanding and the relationship of all three to the
creation of a text. Because these provide major stumbling
114
blocks in contemporary interdisciplinary criticism, it is
advantageous to examine how these definitions and relation
ships came into being. Discussion and examination of if
and how a text is able to embody meaning have not concerned
interdisciplinarians. The result has been a fundamental
conservatism. What has escaped or eluded or been ignored
in much interdisciplinary discussion is the basis for
believing that the two arts of music and literature can be
profitably compared at all. It is this invisible
foundation which is the topic for discussion in the next
section.
115
FEIGNED CHAOS:
MEANING AND TEXTUALITY IN
HOBBES, DESCARTES AND LEIBNIZ
The distinction made in the Middle Ages between a
universal but hidden structure of understanding contrasted
to surface events that might never reveal parts of that
system was quickly compounded into a linguistic model of
deep structure by the Renaissance, and the growth of
linguistic terminology even in the 20th century reveals a
general tendency to characterize whatever occurs in a pre-
lingual, pre-voiced state as deep structure. In his
article, "Speculative Grammar and Transformational
Grammar," John Trentman evidences just this tendency (279-
301). According to Trentman, Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-
1274) followed Augustine in making a distinction between
what Aquinas called an interior word, which Trentman
equates with intention, contrasted to the physical
expression which signified it. In explicating Aquinas'
distinction between intellectual conception (conceptio
intellectus) and its expressions in spoken and written
languages (voces), Trentman remarks that "Aquinas also uses
a number of other expressions to characterize what we might
116
call the deep structure of language.... It is, speaking
metaphorically, what is said in the heart, and its gramma
tical structure can be contrasted with that of what is said
in the mouth" (286-87; emphasis is mine). Trentman's use
of the Augustinian heart-metaphor, one which he will extend
to prove the existence of the concept of deep structure in
early philosophical linguistics, is particularly
interesting in that this metaphor reveals the slow absorp
tion by linguists of originally quite non-linguistic
conceptual categories.
Neither Augustine's nor Aquinas' voice of the heart
readily conforms to Trentman's application of it as a
linguistic deep structure. Heart's voice as described by
both Augustine and Aquinas is a particular kind of
activity, either reflection or meditation, which takes
place previous to and before it can be particularized by
any kind of linguistic expression. This is an important
distinction, for if the inner voices of Augustine and
Aquinas are interpreted by linguists for their value in
validating current models of language, other kinds of
mental activity are ignored or dismissed, particularly
mental activity that continues to take place outside of
linguistic categories. Events such as ellipsis, reticence
and anacoluthon that Jakobson has mentioned indicate that
much pre- and post-voiced activity affect a text, and a re
examination of the development of these activities begins
117
to reinstate the importance of unvoiced mental activity as
something other than linguistic deep structure.
Probably under the influence of Roger Bacon (Verburg
597-98), Thomas Hobbes circumvented theories of universal
grammar and developed a theory of expression that did not
rely on either linguistic or grammatical structures as a
basis for explanation. Hobbes first made a distinction
between words or names used for contemplation compared to
those used for communication. When words or names function
as notae, they are simply "sensible things taken at
pleasure, that, by the sense of them, such thoughts may be
recalled to our mind as are like those thoughts for which
we took them." These notes (or marks) are most importantly
mnemonic aids which are utilized to recall our own thoughts
to ourselves. Signa, however, demonstrate a cause-and-
effect relationship between a thought in one mind and the
understanding of this thought by another mind. Therefore,
signs are arbitrary names used for the purpose of communi
cation, while notes facilitate contemplation. Hobbes
stipulates that both notes and signs are necessary for
philosophic discourse.^
Hobbes' distinction was not a new one. His proposal
of a personal language that was equal in importance with
philosophical discourse echoed Plato's distinction between
diakrinein and didaskein as two integral components in the
activity of legein (Verburg 596-97). The Humanist movement
118
in philosophy, of which Bacon and Hobbes were both a part,
argued strongly for the democratization of language. And
from the point of view of a Humanist linguist, Hobbes
rescued rhetoric from its secondary role in the
intellectual activity of the 16th and 17th centuries. And
indeed, linguists have brought Hobbes to their defense.
The criterion imposed on language was no longer thought;
after Hobbes, all language and especially spoken language
attained an autonomy, if not a dominance, over thought
(Verburg 597).
Hobbes' criteria for understanding were based on
thought transferred through language. In the Leviathan,
he defined understanding as conception caused by speech.
However, according to Hobbes, words are inconstant signi-
fiers because their use is dependent on a constellation of
variables, including sensory perception, the intent of the
speaker, and the possibility that word associations might
not be shared by the participants (3: 28). Signs which
fail to establish their cause-and-effect relationship
always remain conjectural. In this case, understanding is
never full, and meaning is never completely evident (On
Human Nature 4: 17-18). Understanding, then, is a fairly
restricted activity; nevertheless, it is one of man's most
characteristic traits because this ability to name things
and communicate thoughts to the minds of other men
permeates civilization. But understanding is always
119
uncertain, and Hobbes stresses it is a process which is
always subject to doubt and which therefore must be
utilized with prudence.
One activity that acts as an auxliary to understanding
is ratiocination, reasoning in thought without words. This
mental activity is non-linear conceptualization, that is,
it does not operate in a cause-and-effect manner. Although
he experimented with mathematical expressions to describe
this activity, Hobbes' mental calculus was restricted to
simple computations such as addition and subtraction,
multiplication and division. These descriptions were not
very successful, and they certainly did not attain the
subtlety of Leibniz's experiments. Hobbes' definition of
ratiocination, especially as it contrasts to understanding
by use of words, is an important one. First of all, it is
silent. Secondly, it is an activity that occurs in all men
without the use of words:
But how by the ratiocination of our mind, we
add and subtract in our silent thoughts, with
out the use of words, it will be necessary for
me to make intelligible by an example or two
(1 : 2 - 3 ) .
The example Hobbes supplies for ratiocination is the
ability to perceive a square. Rather than measuring each
side and each angle before being able to identify a figure
as a square, the mind has the ability to perceive the
120
proportions of all the parts and their relationship to each
other without the use of language (1: 4). Thirdly, ratio
cination is the use of notae for the aid of the memory
whereby we register our thoughts to ourselves. It is a
distinctly different activity compared to the use of
siqna which are used to declare our thoughts to others
(1: 80). Perhaps the most important attribute of ratioci
nation is that memory is required. Memory, the particular
vehicle of notae, has a peculiar quality; as Hobbes
describes it in the Preface to Gondibert, "Memory is the
world, though not really, yet so as in a looking-glass" (4:
449 ) .
Ratiocination, the activity symbiotic to logical
reasoning, operates within the mirror of memory. While
using logic, says Hobbes, one must always take heed of
words. Metaphors and tropes embody the deceptive nature of
language, but are less dangerous than ordinary language
because the insecure relationship between idea and word is
openly professed (3: 28-29). But it is a reliance upon
words and reasoning alone that results in a misconstrued
perception of the universe. Despite its non-communicable
nature, ratiocination, or literally the reflection of the
world through a silent utilization of notae, is a necessary
supplement to reasoning. And if mental activity is to ever
approach some reliability in terms of perceiving the world,
this activity must include these non-linguistic as well as
121
linguistic operations.
As mentioned earlier, mathematics had already been
applied as a tool for solving notational problems in music
writing, and by the beginning of the 17th century, the
first wave of interest in artificial languages based on
mathematics began to sweep across Europe. Beginning in
England with the work of Bacon and Hobbes, and moving into
France with the work of Descartes and Leibniz, mathematics
came to be viewed as a sort of transcendent rationality,
and the various applications of mathematical principles
began to dominate European philosophic discussions.
However, the re-awakening of a basically Pythagorean
description of the mind did not renew the relationship
between music, language and mathematics. Instead, mathe
matics became the vehicle for describing and solving
problems of logic in language, a process remeniscent of the
application of mathematics as a transcendent problem
solving tool that Vitry employed to provide a logical
foundation for Ars Nova musical notation.
In a language-oriented philosophy, as Western philo
sophy is, the relationship between understanding and non-
linguistic expression has proven to be an important one
when trying to analyze the relationship between music and
literature. How philosophies of language explain
problematic linguistic constructions such as paradox or
ambiguity will determine to a great degree how such expres-
122
sions as meaning and truth are perceived. After Hobbes, a
new perspective on the use of language redefined what
constituted an understanding of experience. Beginning with
Descartes and continuing with Leibniz and Locke, discussion
focused on the relationship of meaning and language, and
whether understanding precedes or is preceded by the use of
language.
With the publication of Discours de la methode (1637)
and Meditationes de prima philosophia (1641), Rene
Descartes directly confronted the problem of defining
meaning and its relationship to language and the mind. The
central Cartesian concern was finding the location of
innate ideas. After concluding that the mind does not so
much respond to ideas from outside sources as much as it
categories outside stimulus on the basis of certain innate
ideas, Descartes' central concern was discerning the rela
tionship of these different internal structures. In a
discussion dealing primarily with the relationship of music
and language to meaning, one accurate summary of Cartesian
influence on interdisciplinary discussion is provided in
the Third Meditation of Descartes' "Meditations on the
First Philosophy." In it clear distinctions are made
between three categories of ideas: innate ideas which are
engendered only through the process of thinking; adven
titious ideas, which are those developed by the mind in
response to sensory stimulus; and factitious ideas, which
123
originate in the imagination (Works 1:160). Descartes and
Cartesian philosophers in general have placed considerably
more importance on the first category of ideas so that the
activity of thinking is one that primarily utilizes innate
ideas and therefore is a non-lingual process that occurs
without involving either the senses or the imagination.
The phenomenon of non-linguistic thought according to
Descartes can be described as the clear imprint that a
mental concept, like a template, makes upon the plasticity
of the mind. The more true the concept, the clearer it is
engraved. Although the world of sensation is necessary for
the commerce of ideas, the words themselves are not to be
trusted. As soon as a pure mental concept is forced into
expression through language, it loses a measure of its
truth value, and Descartes was a philosopher much concerned
that false doctrines of linguistic form not conceal the
truth of an idea, a point he makes explicit in the Discours
de la methode:
Et si j'ecris en frangais, qui est le langue
de mon pays, plut6t qu'en latin, qui est
celle de mes precepteurs, c'est a cause que
j'espere qui ceux qui ne se servent que de
leur raison naturelle toute pure, jugeront
mieux de mes opinions, que ceux qui ne
croient qu'aux livres anciens (77).
In this remark Descartes seems to suggest that a gap exists
between the purity of natural reason, which he has somehow
124
been able to capture in French, and the writings of the
ancients. It is interesting that French is the language
most closely associated motets and the use of musica ficta,
and Descartes' general support of alternative means of
communication to the Latin language is further evidenced by
his keen interest in mathematics. But finally, Descartes
emphasized that any systematic expression should be under
stood merely as a vehicle with varying degree of success at
expressing and communicating ideas.
However, one of Descartes's most influential obser
vations on the condition of the mind was its propensity to
to acquire certain ideas (Works 1: 442). Much work
currently conducted in linguistics focuses on this
statement, and Cartesian linguistics has extended
Descartes' observvations on the mind to encompass the
existence of a complete deep structure based on the logic
of language. It is this deep structure which accounts for
the ability to acquire certain ideas (Padley 236-37).
However, Descartes' "propensity" included all levels of
mental activity, not simply ones able to be expressed by
linguistic communication but also mathematical and,
presumably, musical conceptualization as well. Whether or
not an idea or the predisposition to acquire a certain idea
exists in the mind, Descartes' philosophy rests on a much
broader structural foundation, that is, on the principle
that the mind contains concepts or structures which precede
125
the any of the signs used to express them.
Additionally, Descartes' skepticism of communicative
systems places an importance on subjective perception that
would mark both classical and romantic philosophy. The
separation of an idea from the systematic expression of
that idea indicates that any communicative system can only
incompletely reveal or express a concept. Despite this,
the Western philosophical tradition relies on the
assumption that clear and logical thinking will reveal the
underlying truth which lies hidden behind any system of
expression or transcription. Unfortunately, none of
Descartes' discussions of the relationship between meaning
and writing differentiates between different kinds of tran
scription systems. Perhaps because musical writing had
only been established as an independent system of tran
scription less than a century before, this, combined with
Descartes' orientation towards recent advances in
scientific thinking and the incumbent criteria for clarity
of thought, helps to explain why Descartes only considered
mathematics of all other transcription systems as an alter
native to language. However, in retrieving for language a
central role and in arguing for its superiority as the best
mirror of mental activity, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
broadened the scope of inquiry to include different kinds
of sign systems.
Leibniz consolidated a number of different techniques
126
for understanding language, utilizing different histories
of language and comparative linguistics as well as
examining a number of different sign systems. Although his
theory of language was never collected into one work,
Leibniz is such a consistent thinker that an examination of
his work reveals a quite unified linguistic theory
(Heinekamp 519). For a number of reasons, Leibniz felt
that Descartes had erred in giving priority to mathematics
as a system of signification that most clearly expressed
ideas. First of all, in refining his theories about how
the rational mind works, Leibniz proposed in On the
Universal Science: Characteristic that language was only
one method of representation among others which the mind
uses in reasoning:
Signorum igitur numero comprehendo vocabula,
literas, figuras chemicas, Astronomicas,
Chinenses, Hieroglyphicas, notas Musicas,
steganographicas, arithmeticas, algebraicas
aliasque omnes quibus inter cogitandum pro
rebus utimur. Signa autem scripta, vel
delineata vel sculpta characteres appellantur.
Parro tanto utiliora sunt signa, quanto magis
notionem rei signatae exprimunt, ita ut non
tantum repraesentationi, sed et ratiocinatori
inservire possint (7: 204).
Leibniz believed that truth which can be perceived is
directly related to the system of representation used to
discover that truth; hence his interest in developing a
sign system based on a characteristica universalis.
127
Following Descartes and Kircher, Leibniz experimented with
numbers and mathematical functions as a method for
representing complex ideas. In a general analysis of the
operation of transcription upon the soul in an extract from
Bayles' dictionary, Leibniz used music as an example of how
all forms of perception alter our understanding of the
universe:
J'ai montr£ ailleurs que la perception confuse
de l'agrement ou des agremens qui se trouve
dans les consonances ou dissonances consiste
dans une Arithmetique occulte (4: 550-51).
The qualities of universal characteristics were not
defined by any one system of transcription but rather by
the operation of perception itself. In his argument
tracing the privileged position that poetry claimed in the
late 17th and early 18th centuries for describing the
operation of music, John Hollander cites Leibniz's remark:
When Leibniz in a famous remark referred to
music as a kind of "occult arithmetic," he
merely meant that a hearer's perception of the
mathematically analyzable relations in musical
arrangements of varying pitches, durations,
timbres, even of the compositions of tones
themselves, are, by the hearer, unconsciously
tabulated (12).
Hollander stresses the notion of the unconscious affect
that music has on the hearer, and he ties this remark to
128
the popular cult of the affective qualities of music that
attracted much interest in the 18th and 19th centuries.
But Leibniz's remark, taken somewhat out of context, was
included in a more general analysis of the operation of
transcription upon the soul. Leibniz's use of "perception
confuse," which Hollander somewhat freely translates as
"unconscious tabulation," is actually a description of
vague or obscure, that is, non-logical, perception.
Leibniz uses music to illustrate this activity when input
is indistinct or of short duration. Therefore, occult
arithmetic is not a description of music; rather music is
used to illustrate a particular kind of Leibnizian
knowledge:
II faut que le raisonnement tache d'y suppleer,
comme on l'a fait dans la Musique, ou l'on a
decouvert les proportions qui donnent de
1'agrement (4: 551).
Here Leibniz indicates that musical perception demands
a skill which is very similar to Augustine's Judicial
Rhythm. This quality operates on the level of general
mental activity but is especially evident when mental
activity takes place despite the incompleteness of its
verbalized or written expression. For Leibniz, knowledge
is not a domain ruled by the logic of language; instead,
this very limited kind of understanding must be supple
129
mented by "perception confuse," or occult arithmetic. What
Leibniz advocates is a return to the concept musica as a
semiotic model that encompasses many levels of perception
as well as the different sign systems which can express
relationships of ideas within and between these different
structures of knowledge.
Reinterpreted from an interdisciplinary perspective,
Leibniz suggests that neither poetry nor language can
explain music so much as an examination of music by
language reveals the perceptual gaps inherent in all texts,
and espcially linguistic ones in which the gaps between
different levels of perception are obscured. However,
quite substantial problems are introduced in using language
to try to explain how different perceptual structures
relate to each other. Descartes attempted to avoid this
trap by utilizing mathematics as a language of universal
understanding. Leibniz proposed instead that a close
examination of how sign systems other than language affect
understanding would illustrate the working relationship
between the soul or spirit as it meshed with the material
world. It is precisely at these junctures or interfaces
that the most interesting cognitive activity takes place,
and linguistic descriptions of the operation of music were
Leibniz's most favored vehicle for describing this
activity:
130
Car, puisque le livre de Musique, les yeux et
les aureilles ne sauroient influer sur l'ame,
il faut qu'elle trouve par elle-meme et m0me
sans peine et sans application, et sans le cher-
cher ce que son cerveau et ses organes trouvent
par l'aide du livre. C'est parce que toute la
tablature de ce livre ou des livres qu'on suivra
successivement en chantant, est gravee dans son
ame virtuellement des le commencement de I1exis
tence de l'ame; comme cette Tablature a ete gravee
en quelque fagon dans les causes materielles avant
qu'on est venu a composer ces pieces et k en faire
un livre. Mais l'ame ne sauroit s'en appercevoir,
car cela est enveloppe dans les perceptions confuses
d'ame, qui expriment tout le detail de 1'univers.
Et elle ne s'en apergoit distinctement que dans le
temps, que ses organes sont frapp^s notablement par
les notes de cette Tablature (4: 549-50).
Occult perception is indistinct or unclear perception,
and this is what forever relegates both music and language
to a subordinate position in comparison to mathematics.
But it is in precisely this confusion that Leibniz finds
the je-ne-sais-quoi of art that holds the secret of
transcribing all super-logical mental activity.
131
THE BRIDGE:
TOWARD A NEW THEORY OF
INTERDISCIPLINARY CRITICISM
Wir wollen in unserem Wissen vom Gebrauch der
Sprache eine Ordnung herstellen: eine Ordnung
zu einem bestimmten Zweck; eine von vielen
moglichen Ordnungen; nicht die Ordnung.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophische Untersuchen §132
Lacking meaning, one compensates by making sense.
One tries making sense and fails. Teeming with
both wandering joys and violent storms we sense
something but are not ready to articulate it.
Machaut, in allowing his structures to follow
their own, rather than purely textual, limita
tions, demands the most scrupulous attention to
his detailed observations of the fruits of grace.
- Henry Rasof, "Chance Music"
Traditional interdisciplinary criticism has always
taken its direction from the arts which it has examined.
As a result, discussion of the interrelationship between
music and literature has focused on those instances when
one art has clearly taken its structure or subject from the
other. Undeniably, this approach has been and still is a
rich source for discussion. Both music and literature that
have transformed the other provided and continue to provide
fascinating examples of the fertility and imagination of
132
the artistic mind. However, the proposal central to this
particular study is that these discussions are extremely
self-limiting. This traditional approach, an amalgam of
internalized rules which delineates not only the boundaries
between the arts but also the boundaries of critical
inquiry, is itself a fascinating topic for further study,
but the primary concern of this investigation is to explore
beyond these boundaries: Instead of attempting to define
the relationship between music and language as one of
shared qualities, sometimes more, sometimes less
successful, perhaps it is advantageous to chart a theory of
interdisciplinary relationships based on techniques that
neither art fully manifests but which have nevertheless
provided a foundation by which the two are able to be
differentiated at all. The basis chosen for comparison in
this study is the development of both music and language as
systems of transcription.
A comparison of musical and linguistic grammatologies
in the first half of this study indicates that there are
some characteristics which are consistently shared between
the two although these characteristics are not immediately
apparent, or even considered to be particularly imporant,
in criticism produced either by each separate discipline or
by interdisciplinary discussion which insists on an abso
lute certainty of exchange between the arts. However,
poetic discussion of the interrelationship between the
133
arts, while more oblique, does in fact provide quite a
number of musico-literary fulcrums, each of which could be
understood as separate vertebra in the spine of a larger
interdisciplinary discourse. The purpose of the second
half of this study will be to recover these discussions
within the poetry of three different Romantic writers.
Treitler has observed that systems of musical writing
which were developed in the Middle Ages seemed to incor
porate transcriptional devices in an opposite or inverted
manner when compared with linguistic writing. However,
this characteristic inversion had already been displayed
two thousand years before in the relationship between
musical and linguistic writing. By progressively adopting
transcriptional devices which linguistic writing progres
sively eliminated, ancient Greek musical writing revealed
its phylogeny not only as a species of writing, but more
importantly it revealed some of the fundamental operations
of all systematic transcription. Individual alphabetic
graphemes were rotated, inverted and deconstructed by music
writers, techniques which allowed music to adopt a
culturized code that had been developed in language and yet
to remain distinct as a separate kind of writing that was
actually a recovery of forgotten methods of transcription.
The few studies which have explored the similarity between
the use of signs in music and language, however, have been
restricted to comparing musical structures with linguistic
134
models.
Ultimately, however, it is not simply writing itself
which is at issue. The most fascinating aspect of any
study of writing, and especially those studies which
explore language in a broader sense, attempts to account
for how acts of writing transform or alter those activities
of conceptualization which they claim to represent. From
this perspective, a consideration of writing, both musical
and linguistic, is also a re-consideration of the nature of
all communication. Wittgenstein concisely summarizes the
difficulties of using language to examine language, a
subject with which much 20th century philosophy as well as
literary criticism has been captivated. A possible
solution to this difficult problem, a Heideggerian one, is
to adopt the special use of language within poetry as a
model. However, this study will focus on particular
moments in Romantic poetry— specifically those poetic
discussions of music, language and textuality. What this
investigation will attempt to demonstrate is that a compar
ison of language and linguistic textuality with music and
musical textuality within Romantic poetry suggests another
one of Wittgenstein's "many possible orders." In addition,
these same poetic discussions themselves provide a new
perspective from which to compare music and literature,
laying the foundation for another approach to interdis
ciplinary criticism.
135
This investigation utilizes poetry as a kind of
historical document which has recorded and explored writing
as a general method of recording different languages. This
poetic recall relies on memory, an ability which Hobbes
described as a mirror of the world. The first half of this
investigation has uncovered a number of instances in which
music and language writing have mimicked each other, both
in parallel but more frequently in exactly opposite or
divergent patterns. What is explained in the second half
of this study are the moments in which poetry utilizes
language in order to recall, as if in a mirror, some of
language's own forgotten or abandoned traits which have
been developed and re-expressed in music. Although these
traits were initially graphic, poetic recall of music
reveals that music could be understood as simply another
species of writing, a recognition which led inevitably to
an exploration of the relationship between many kinds of
inscription to meaning and understanding.
The use of a mirror as a model for investigative study
has not only permeated philosophic discussion of language,
but it has recently been employed in linguistics where the
goal was to examine two different languages in the same
language group to determine whether or not similar func
tions that link the two were unique. The conclusions
suggest that it is possible to characterize the relative
transferability of linguistic functions in opposite direc-
136
tions along bridges which link similar structures in
different languages (Wixler 89-123). Rather than adopting
a linguistic model to compare with musical strutures, this
study proposes that, based on linguistic and philosophical
discussions of language, a model can be developed with
which various functions of musical and linguistic writing
can be compared. Hence, the first step of this bridge
section will be to define those functions which link music
and language as transcription systems and to summarize
clearly the functions Which move across these bridges in
opposite directions.
The first bridge delineated by a comparative gramma-
tology of music and language is how individual signs can be
manipulated in order to form more complicated signs. As
evidenced by an examination of both language and music
writing in the ancient world, musical writing initially
adopted only alphabetic signs from ancient Greek, but later
musical writing began to exhibit various methods for
systematically generating new signs which had been
discarded by linguistic writing, specifically rotation,
truncation/supplementation and accentuation. Several
additional observations indicate that what might at first
appear to have been a dependent relationship of musical
writing on linguistic writing was actually nothing of the
sort. On the contrary, musical writing, in its application
of these textual devices for different purposes, actually
137
demonstrated an inverted relationship with linguistic
writing.
The first instance of the inversion between musical
and linguistic writing can be observed in the difference in
the relationship between signifier and signified in the two
kinds of writing. In the development from quite complex
pictographs to distinct letters, linguistic writing
evidenced a general tendency towards simplified signs which
incorporated greater ambiguity in the relationship between
signifier and signified. The example given within the text
was that the sign for "sun" came also to represent its
phonetic equivilent "son," and although this particular
situation was short-lived, the function of ambiguity
becomes increasingly more significant even though new
linguistic signs are continually generated. However, in
musical writing the growing number of signs only evidenced
a built-in redundancy in the system of transcription. The
examples given in the text illustrate that in the adap
tation of linguistic writing devices, musical writing
systems provided multiple choices for the representation of
each distinct note depending on the key or the context of
that single note. Instead of an increase in ambiguity in
the relationship between the signifier and its signified,
musical writing evidenced an increased redundancy in this
relationship.
Another example of the inversion that occurred between
138
ancient systems of musical and linguistic transcription is
in the activity of recording and reading. Linguistic
writing originally demanded a multi-directional reading and
writing skill because no specific orientation existed for
either individual signs or for lines of texts. Boustro-
phedon was ultimately replaced with a uni-directional line
of individual standardized signs. However, ancient musical
writing developed an increasingly more fluid utilization of
signs which redefined not only the shape of the music text
but ultimately the nature of the reading and transcription
skills associated with that text. The increasing fluidity
of sign manipulation in ancient musical writing would, by
the Middle Ages, break apart the strictly linear chain of
signs into a text that reinvested the text with a multi
directional use of signs.
Probably the single most important characteristic of
the kinds of textual manipulation discarded by linguistic
writing that was adopted by musical writing is that sign
manipulation in musical writing is not dependent upon rela
tionships of signifiers to meanings as much as it depends
on recognizing relationships between signifiers. It is
just this dynamic of musical writing that makes discussions
of music and meaning so difficult. Musical writing imposes
an infinite delay on the conditioned response associated
with linguistic writing of binding a signifier to its
signified. This delay allows signifier/signifier relation
139
ships to take precedence. The status of the signified is
questioned so severely, in fact, that it ultimately appears
to be unnecessary. The threat that this kind of writing
poses for linguistic writing is obvious. Linguistic signi
fiers are successful only because they seem to point
outward, outside of the sign system itself, toward another
system defined by the relationships between signifieds.
But musical writing demonstrates that the interdependency
of signifier and signified can not be assumed for every
species of writing. Instead, this bonding between signi
fier and signified should be understood not simply as a
special characteristic of linguistic writing but as a char
acteristic of a particular kind of linguistic writing which
has been concerned from its genesis and by virtue of its
development with the nature of ambiguity and the problems
ambiguity poses in terms of meaning and understanding.
From a deconstructivist perspective, establishing a
system of writing based on signifier/signified relation
ships is not, can not ever be an unmotivated step.
Instead, the importance of signified/signifier relation
ships actually evidences an intrusion or invasion or
imposition of a superstructure on the systematic use of
signs, a slow manifestation of higher orders or deeper
structures of meaning which precede and shape, like a
parasite invading its host, that system of transcription
which it overtakes. In contrast, the chains of signifi-
140
cation in musical writing, made inaccesible to this overlay
of inscription and intent by a saturation of redundancy,
evolved as a system which had reference only to its own
systematic development. The rules of this species of
writing do not follow signifier/signified relationships
established in linguistic writing but rather develop as
rules which illustrate how signifiers operate only in rela
tionship with and in reference to each other. The
principles of fragmentation, permutation and rotation which
linguistic writing was forced to discard in its attempt to
solidify the bond between signifier and signified, between
sign and meaning, were embraced by musical writing. When
rotation, reflection and inversion appear in poetry, as
they repeatedly do in Shelley, Lamartine and Brentano, they
do so in connection with music, and specifically in
connection with a music which exhibits forgotten or masked
functions of linguistic transcription. In this way, poetic
comparison of music texts with language texts is a way in
which lost or forgotten relationships between different
species of writing and understanding can be recovered.
Rotation, reflection and inversion, techniques slowly
abandoned by linguistic transcription and adopted by
musical writing, actually form a what Jakobson would define
as a subcode. Jakobson proposed that everyone belongs
simultaneously to several different linguistic communities
based on the different functions of message, addressee and
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addressor and the changing relationship between all three.
Jakobson attempted to delineate various subcodes in order
to discern the rules by which we can move between different
linguistic communities, rules which he defines as rules of
convertibility. At this point it is tempting to pursue
these rules of convertibility in interdisciplinary
discourse in much the same fashion in which Chomsky did by
postulating the foundation of a deep structure upon which
the discourses of both music and language are built. This
interdisciplinary deep structure would then be able to
account for various aspects of the interrelations between
the two. However, the entire concept of Chomskean deep
structures is itself so thoroughly linguistic that it, in
fact, provides yet another example of an inversion between
music and language as species of writing. But the rela
tionship in this instance is not based on the attributes of
music and language as systems of transcription; instead
their inverted relationship is based on their limitations
as species of writing. This inversion between musical and
linguistic writing takes place across a second bridge
between the two defined by that point at which both systems
of transcription are no longer able to fully inscribe
either musical or linguistic discourse. Instead, both
methods of writing begin to rely on a complicated system of
ellision.
In the Middle Ages, there was a distinct shift away
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from the study of literature as a source of information or
as a model of instruction. As witnessed in St. Augustine's
De Musica and Sanctius' Minerva, both poetry and prose were
suspect vehicles if the objective was to establish
universal and unchanging principles that governed language.
Simultaneously there was a shift toward taking Latin as a
model for the discovery of these principles, and the
universals embodied most fully in Latin were also assumed
to provide models for musical judgement as well, evidenced
particularly by Augustine's definition of judicial rhythm.
The abandonment of the "literary" in favor of the
"scientific" did result in a list of rules or procedures
for the study of both music and language, but these were
rules which attempted, as do many rule-governed systems, to
gloss over or ignore their own incompletenesses.
Augustine's silences and Sanctius' ellipses were just such
glosses. These explanations relieved both music and
language studies of the burden of history and tradition
from which poetry and prose could not escape. These
discussions add another link in the chain of musico-
literary discourse. By appealing to the authority of an
inner, subconscious or innate subjectivity that was able to
connect surface levels of incomplete performance to a
universal hidden order, these gaps themselves define
another bridge along which music and language demonstrate
an inverted relationship.
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The most distinctive function that appears to move in
inversion across the bridge of ellision connecting music
and language is the function of silence. Textual silences
simultaneously facilitate two distinct kinds of activity.
First, silences problematize the very nature of signifi
cation, and secondly, textual silences unmask a particular
kind of performative ability, that of being able to inter
polate not only missing but contextually supplied
information, but also of being able to insert spaces,
pauses, blanks and intervals. Unlike acts of improvi-
sational music-making or extemporaneous linguistic perfor
mance, these non-acts of inserting silences hold in their
vacancy more potential than the presence of sound, either
musical or verbal. Before the unconscious and its dream-
work, and beyond the boundaries of phenomenology, even
before the act of writing can reveal itself, this arche-
writing exists as a spacing which, according to Derrida,
constitutes the very origin of signification. What lies on
either side of silences and how the silences themselves can
be filled accounts for one very significant axis between
language and music.
Closely aligned with textual silences and inextricably
connected to theories of both musical and linguistic
lacunae are various theories of how these gaps could be
filled. All of these theories deal primarily with the
performance level of both language and music, and they are
144
concerned with if and by how much elements which do not or
can not appear in a text are determined by that text.
Hence, another inverted function across the bridge of
ellision between music and language textuality is the
function of supplementation. Like rules governing textual
silences, rules of textual supplementation were originally
intended to explain hidden but universally understood
structures. However, especially in recent studies, explan
ations of ellision which rely on deep structures have been
questioned on the grounds that rather than exhibiting some
fundamental basis upon which complex linguistic expressions
are built, they instead exhibit an overweaning Western
propensity to explain various linguistic phenomena through
the application of logic. In his critique of Husserl and
particularly his analysis of Husserl's distinction between
expressive and indicative signs, Derrida argues that
Husserl's project was actually an attempt to redefine logic
in terms of an expressive sign, that is, a sign that has
meaning (Speech 17-26). Husserl contrasted expressive
signs to indicative signs which are signs devoid of any
intent and function only within an arbitrary system of
sense. Based on the operation of these expressive signs,
Husserl understood logic, as Norris explains it, as a
"structure built up from acts of consciousness which grasp
the necessity of their own production" (45). Structures of
both logic and language as they interlock along the shared
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axis of meaning dominate both Husserl's thought as well as
Chomsky's Cartesian linguistics. In this way knowledge,
both a general self-present knowledge as well as a more
specific kind of knowledge in the form of a performative
level skill of how to supplement gaps in texts, is based on
a system of language, logic and meaning. However, attempts
to clarify how these rules of supplementation connect deep
structures to the performance level not only strain the
limitations of logical explanation but eventually undermine
the entire theory of deep structure.
Recent studies in musicology which have examined the
systematic generation of musical performance in the face of
large textual gaps again demonstrate an inversion of music
theory with linguistic theory. Treitler makes a clear
distinction between two different kinds of musical
knowledge based on a musician's ability to perform at high
speed by virtue of his assimilation of "melodic principles
and patterns according to type and liturgical movement"
("Homer" 357). Treitler defines two forms of musical know
ledge which allow for quick musical production, and these
terms are unusually resonant of Husserl's distinction
between two different signs. The first kind of musical
knowledge is formula knowledge. Based primarily on Lord's
explanation (in The Singer of Tales) of how large sections
of Homeric text were able to be recalled and embellished
during performance, the striking characteristic of this
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kind of musical knowledge is that eventually it is
assimilated by the text. In contrast, the second kind of
musical knowledge proposed by Treitler is formulaic know
ledge, a more generalized knowledge of how any melody could
move in a particular context. This kind of performative
ability remains embellishment, that is, it is differ
entiated from formula knowledge because it is different
with each performance. Also, this kind of knowledge is
intranscribable and therefore is never textually
assimilated.
This is tantamount to proposing a created deep
structure from which surface performance can be generated.
Instead of a logically encoded deep structure only
partially and incompletely revealed by performance as in
linguistics, musical knowledge is to a certain degree based
on a renewable and constantly shifting deep structure which
is being continually redefined on the basis of surface
performance. In linguistics, performance incompletely
reveals an unchanging deep structure, one indelibly
connected with other structures of logic, meaning and
understanding. In music, surface performance incompletely
reveals a deep structure which is then affected by this
performance because musical deep structure is ultimately
discontiguous with logic, meaning and understanding. In
linguistic acts, voice as performance is always incomplete
and can only partially reveal deep structures. Language
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texts insofar as they are presumed to be mere extensions of
this voice are also always lacking and deficient. Voice as
performance in music, although it is also always incom
plete, is so in a way that is vital to the continual trans
formation of the deep structures; models of the structures
of music differ radically between different cultures,
styles and periods. Music texts as they are understood as
extensions of this dynamic are themselves not incomplete so
much as they are open— actually they fling themselves
open— to performance for continual rejuvenation. While
language and the logic of language represent those acts of
consciousness which grasp the necessity of their own
production, music represents those acts of consciousness
which continually redefine the necessity through which
consciousness itself is produced.
Of course, fewer linguistic texts have asserted their
independence from speech and linguistic rules which govern
speech so much as poetic texts. The first step in this
movement was begun by assaulting definitions of what
constituted a text. Beginning in the 16th century, largely
in response to theories on the limitations of the arts
which arose from an obsession with categorization and
classification that marked logic and linguistics, one first
step was to redefine the poetic text through elaborate
aesthetic theories which related poetry to painting. Ut
pictura poesis is a tactic that at once not only provided
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the basis for a discussion of language freed from the
strictures of logic and understanding, but it also provided
a basis for defining a substantially different kind of
textuality that could be at work in poetry. The shift to a
discussion of music in poetry in the 18th century was not
based solely on an emerging awareness of the importance of
music and musicians nor was it simply a critique on the
fallacies of the theory of ut pictura poesis. The access
offered by music, seen particularly in discussions of music
and language in Romantic poetry, was based on something
more than simply offering additional parallels between the
two arts or presenting a counter-argument to the pictoral
use of language. Rather discussions of music within
Romantic poetry were meditations on the profound
insufficiency of ut pictura poesis: the analogy of poetry
to pictoral art was not in principle incorrect so much as
it was, in puzzling and extremely provocative ways, incom
plete. This recognition resulted not only in broadening
interdisciplinary discussion within poetry but, more impor
tantly, it resulted in poetic meditations on the analogy-
making properties of language which might tend to obscure
or veil more substantial connections between the arts.
This investigation suggests that the insufficiency of
many discussions on the inter-relationships between the
arts is not based on the lack of analogies or parallels
between the arts. On the contrary, for many poets the
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surfeit of analogy was ultimately a perceptual stumbling-
block that had to be overcome.
Poetry is the music of language, expressing the
music of the mind. The musical in sound is the
sustained and continuous; the musical in thought
and feeling is the sustained and continuous also.
. . . The language of prose is not the language
of music, or of passion: and it is to supply
this inherent defect in the mechanism of language
. . . that poetry was invented.
It is fascinating how little Hazlitt's use of music as
a metaphor clarifies any of the relationships between music
and poetry and the mind. That they are all somehow
connected to each other is important as is the splendid
collapse of this metaphor into itself. When, in the
Defence, Shelley describes the poet as a nightingale who
sings and his auditors as entranced by the melody of an
unseen musician, it is fruitful to point out how little
help these remarks are in discussing the relationship
between music and language. Instead, poets are much more
revealing when they do not take the comparison of music and
language directly as their subject but instead examine them
at a third remove, both subordinate to and reliant upon
something else. This common bond is the bond of
textuality, and particularly as this concerns a text not
bound by a sense of insufficiency or an "inherent defect"
which chains texts as they are defined according to the
150
logic of metaphor. This turning to music in poetry was a
method of making manifest a substantially different kind of
text, a mirrored or inverted text inscribed within the
original text. Discussions of music and language within
Romantic poetry are best understood as continuations of a
vast textual experiment which had absorbed not only poets
but also artists, musicians and philosophers in the Western
tradition for a millennium.
The final bridge connecting music and language is
provided by the discussion within Romantic poetry of the
differences and similarities between the texts which
musical and linguistic writing produce. Romantic poetry
which discusses various kinds of textuality provides a
great deal of insight into the relationship of music and
literature, and Romantic poetry can be understood as inter
disciplinary criticism. Particularly with regard to the
suppleness of signs, Romantic poets offer fascinating
observations on how music redefines what all texts are and
how they operate. Both music and linguistic signs work on
the principle of differentiation, but while linguistic
signs progressively limited the text, musical signs
expanded the text. Linguistic texts evolved into uni
directional sign sequences as music texts evolved into
multi-directional sign constellations. To a great extent
the project of critical theory of literature since struc
turalism has been to illustrate how the apparent linearity
151
of the linguistic text is simply a mirage. These efforts
have resulted in a revolutionary re-evaluation of the text
which corresponds in many ways to how musical textuality
was perceived and described in Romantic poetry. Many of
these poetic meditations on textuality focus on the hand of
the transcriber. The circularity and open-ended textuality
of the Guidonian Hand is the preliminary and most blatent
manifestation of how all texts operate at a particular
cognitive level. The goal of this study is to illustrate
that the appearance of music in literature signals the
operation of a specific kind of textuality, especially with
regard to three devices: the manipulation of signs, the
function of ellision and silences, and notions of
textuality as they are based on different species of
writing. Romantic poetry, then, can be understood as an
exploration of the territory charted by these new texts, be
they written texts, painted texts, music texts or imagined
texts.
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CHAPTER II
UNFORGOTTEN LYRES:
MUSIC AND LANGUAGE IN SHELLEY'S POETRY
During the last twenty years, literary critics have
adopted Romantic poetry as a vehicle to examine the
workings of a special kind of language. In Beyond
Formalism, Geoffrey Hartman traces the progress of poetry
in the 19th century as a gradual undermining of formal
language, beginning with experiments in blank verse by
Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth in the 1790s through the
use of epigram, inscription and fragment in later romantic
poetry. In the name of spontaneity and passion, Hartman
envisions a revolution in language which he describes in
terms of the freeing of the lyric from classical boundaries
of formal language.^ However, a re-reading of Shelley's
poetry from the perspective of examining the relationship
between self-conscious poetics and music expands Hartman's
theory. In addition, this approach also demonstrates that
studying the relationship between literature and music
within poetry transforms a fundamental interdisciplinary
question: no longer are relationships defined by depen
dence. The appearance of music in Shelley's poetry does
correspond with some familiar devices, such as the use of
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metaphor and symbol. However, music in Shelley's poetry
also reveals another, less frequently discussed function:
music is a highly consistent model which enables poetic
language to move beyond certain constraints, particularly
with regard to absolute clarity and logical coherence in
the relationship between intention, meaning and
understanding.
Traditional methods of relating poetry and music posit
that poetry "borrows" compositional techniques from music.
In particular, scholars have suggested that there was a
movement in Romantic poetry away from logical discourse
toward sonority and rhythm at the expense of coherence.
This kind of evaluation of the relationship between music
and poetry has its beginnings in notions of organic form as
a principle of poetic organization which was less formal
istic and gave more consideration to other compositional
devices, including the importance of sound. The limi
tations that this kind of approach would eventually impose
on interdisciplinary criticism are especially evident in
the definitions of the lyric given in the Princeton
Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics: "A poet does not
compose in order to make of language delightful and
exciting music; he composes a delightful and exciting music
in language _in order to make what he has to say peculiarly
efficacious in our minds” (Preminger 462). According to
this model, poetry employs specialized techniques, such as
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rhythm and sonority, named as musical device; at the same
time, poetry itself is defined as a specialized technique
included in the more general skill of languaging.
Ultimately, it is the boundaries of language which
delineate the space within which both poetic and musical
elements are manipulated in order to convey the intention
or meaning of the poet.
The process of understanding or interpreting poetry
becomes, under these circumstances, a process of
uncovering, or of opening one by one the series of Russian
folk dolls each of which contains a diminutive replica of
itself, until the meaning embedded at the center of the
work is reached. It is in this spirit that T. S. Eliot
described the relationship between the arts in his essay
"The Music of Poetry":
The music of a word is, so to speak, at a point
of intersection: it arises from its relation
first to the words immediately preceding and
following it, and indefinitely to the rest of
its context; and from another relation, that
of its immediate meaning in that context to all
the other meanings which it has had in other
contexts, to its greater or less wealth of
association (25).
Eliot's "music" occurs when the poem, providing the
"immediate context," intersects with another larger
context, a "greater or less wealth of association." There
is a distinct hierarchy at work here, one based on the
155
assumption that all language, poetic language included, is
primarily a vehicle for transmitting meaning. Eliot’s
"music of the word" can only be recognized as such within
the network of the poem, just as poetry can only be
fashioned out of a meaningful network of language. Other
experiments could only result in opacity, or as Eliot
expresses it, "The music of poetry is not something which
exists apart from the meaning. Otherwise, we could have
poetry of great musical beauty which made no sense" (21).
"Making sense" is for Eliot, as for most pre-structuralist
criticism, an elemental requirement, one that is just as
remote from a music disconnected from sense as it is far
beyond the reach of a poetics disconnected from meaning.
However, Eliot's definition of the "music of the word"
bears an uncanny resemblance to linguistic descriptions
that account for the moment of division of the signifier
from its signified. Eliot's music, rephrased in structural
terminology, is the sound of the slippage between the sign
and what it signifies as it occurs on the one hand within
the static moment of the poem and on the other hand in the
evolutionary development of language. In his Course in
General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure emphasized the
increasing duality that was developing in the study of
linguistics at the beginning of the 20th century and
distinguished between two axes of language study, one of
simultaneity and another of succession. The first axis was
156
concerned with the co-existent relationship between a
concept or idea and its sound-image, the signified and its
signifier. The second axis, that which represented evolu
tionary linguistics, examined language in its successive
stages of development, that is the changes that had
occurred through time in the relationship between the
sound-image and the concept attached to it. Synchrony and
diachrony define the fundamental structural principles by
which language operates, and it is only through their
simultaneous opposition and intersection that, according to
Saussure, differences in sound-images can be recognized and
connections with concepts or ideas can be established:
I prefer to speak of synchronic and diachronic
linguistics. Everything that relates to the
static side of our science is synchronic; every
thing that has to do with evolution is diachronic.
Similarly, synchrony and diachrony designate
respectively a language-state and an evolu
tionary phase (81).
Eliot's "music of the word" and Saussure's model of
structural linguistics bear more than a superficial resem
blance. The insistance by both on the strong connection
between language and meaning anticipates that most radical
of poetic or linguistic states that has so concerned
contemporary criticism: that moment in which the self-
evident meaning of language is denied. Eliot, perhaps more
than Saussure, speaks at the edge of an abyss which
15 7
threatens the stability of the priviledged relationship
between language, especially literary language, and the
mind. Eliot recognized that the problematics between music
and language were rooted in their textuality, and by
positing that music is somehow enclosed within linguistic
structures, Eliot denys the importance of the lie he has
uncovered— that his ideal implicit in self-evident meaning
of the poem is severely undermined by its music. This
music is actually the intersection between the immediacy of
contextual meaning as opposed to the openness of the text
as its meaning is defined by other contexts. Eliot's
"greater or less wealth of association" may have originally
been brought to the text by the reader, but his definition
of this textual activity as music was a harbinger of a
structuralist methodology which claimed that this wealth is
actually revealed by the act of writing. It is in this act
that the memory of music as an ancient mirror or reflected
fragment of linguistic writing is revived. Returning to
Shelley's poetry, music becomes an appendage to the poetic
text, one which reveals forgotten or hidden functions of
the language of commerce, an appendage that through its
inscriptional mimicry revealed the potential of language.
To posit that music is simply one of many species of
writing begins to revive an under-developed relationship
between music and literature, and this achieves, at least
theoretically, an equal and autonomous status between the
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two. Moreover, an insistence on the autonomous nature of
different species of writing allows for oppositions and
contradictions within and between various kinds of texts to
remain unresolved, a condition that Jacques Derrida defines
as textual free play. The traditional use of hierarchies
to explain the relationship between music and poetry not
only privileges speech in the form of self-evident meaning
over writing— and by extension to interdisciplinary
studies, to poetry over music— but traditional approaches
sometimes ignore a more interesting and problematic rela
tionship between language and other forms of communication
which many Romantic poets undertook to examine within their
poetry. Maintaining the separateness of music and poetry
by refusing to interpret either as an investiture of sound
with meaning allows a re-examination of how romantic poetry
challenged the authority of hierarchies and the adequacy of
logical models:
No, Music, thou art not the "food of Love"
Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet self,
Till it becomes all Music murmurs of.
. 44
- To Music
In the article "Music and Musical Themes in Shelley's
Poetry," Jean L. De Palacio suggests that music is most
importantly connected with the ideas of Love and Woman:
"In Love, the detestable distinction between sexes is done
159
away with; in Music, the discrepancy between bass and
treble sounds is turned to symphony" (358). De Palacio
closes the essay with the statement that Love and Music are
both emanations from some unseen power best described in
"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and that Woman is the
vehicle which mediates between it and Man (359). Aside
from De Palacio1s puzzling remark that the distinction
between the sexes is somehow "detestable" to Shelley, De
Palacio's oversimplification of Shelleyan symbolism not
only tends to obscure Shelley's particular method of mani
pulating symbols but, more importantly, it ignores the
relationships established between language and music as
well as those established between language and poetry.
The most striking and perplexing element in this short
poem on music is the extremity of its cannibalism. Love
feeds not only on its own kind but on its own self, and in
doing so "becomes all that Music murmurs of." "To murmur"
is a favorite Shelleyan verb. It does not mean "to speak"
but is rather contrasted with "to roar," both of which are
methods of sounding that do not require specific meaning.
The latter often indicates a soul disturbed while the
former reveals a becalmed spirit moved in a particular way:
When winds that move not its calm surface sweep
The azure sea, I love the land no more;
The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep
Tempt my unquiet mind. But when the roar
Of ocean's grey abyss resounds, and foam
160
Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst,
I turn from the drear aspect to the home
Of earth and its deep woods, where, interspersed,
When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody.
Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea,
Whose prey, the wandering fish, an evil lot
Has chosen.— But I my languid limbs will fling
Beneath the plane, where the brook's murmuring
Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not.
- From Moschus
This selection is quoted at length not only because it
effectively defines what Shelley meant by "murmuring," but
this scene also contains most of the important elements of
Shelley's music-making. First, the "languid limbs" of the
poet are laid adjacent to a line or division, in this case
to a plane, a distinctively mathematical construct
comprised of multiple intersecting straight lines.
Secondly, the "sweet melody" of the forest is the first
refuge offered the poet in his movement away from the
overwhelming sound of the storm at sea to the relative
quiet of an interior place. Hence, the murmuring brook and
the forest's melody effectively balance the barbarity of
the musical self-eating-self in the first short poem "To
Music." Instead, a certain kind of tranquility is inter
polated by music and mathematics.
De Palacio also suggests that Music and Love are often
equated with each other in Shelley's poetry (358).
However, in order to accept this as a general conclusion
about all musics in Shelley's poetry, certain qualities of
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"To Music" must be ignored. Grammatically, the poem is
comprised of two statements, a negation appended by a
conditional, a "No— -Not true" supplemented by an "Un-less."
Both "un-" and "-less" as prefix and suffix are linguistic
supplements. One is a negation and the other a reduction,
and both are joined to form one word which has no middle in
terms of a meaning or concept with which they can be joined
together. This "unless" actually forms a microcosm of the
larger poem in which it is embedded^— a double negative
synthesized into a positive in the same way that Love feeds
upon itself, negates itself, in an affirmation of itself as
Music. When, and only when, Love is able to eat itself,
does it become not identical with Music but rather
becomes what Music murmurs of.
But what is it Music murmurs? According to the poem,
it could murmur the unspoken assertion "Yes, I am the food
of Love" to which the poem replies in the first line. This
is an assertion that can only be revealed if the poem is
eaten and re-formulated by venturing outside of the poem in
the same way that Love consumes and transcends itself
within the poem to know itself as Music. These are not
relationships of dependency or borrowing; rather, the rela
tionships between Love and Music, and between Music and
Poetry are better represented as cycles of mutation which
weave back and forth across the line of demarcation that
separates the inside from the outside of the poem— or
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Eliot's "immediate" from an "infinte" context— or the plane
across which the languid limbs of the poet are laid. At
this intersection, "To Music” is not simply a prepositional
phrase, "(This is a Poem Dedicated) To Music," but it is
also an infinitive, "(How) To (Make) Music." The title
announces in a most elliptical manner the crossroads
between stasis and process, between state-of-being and the
procedure by which a sense of music is created in language.
These three lines begin to reveal the essential
elements of the relationship between music and poetry, and
of both to language, that are consistently addressed in
Shelley's poetry. One is the use of verbs such as "to
feed" rather than "to sound" or "to hear." The result is
that "to music" in Shelley's poetry is ironically more
often connected with life-sustaining physical activites,
such as eating and drinking and breathing, than it is with
purely aesthetic or intellectual ones, the same distinction
was made by Boethius' between a player, the one so-named
for the physical activity associated with a particular
instrument, and a musician, the philosopher-thinker.
Secondly, there is a grammatical straining of the line, a
penchant for language so contorted with ellipsis, condi
tionals and subordination that the reader, instead of acti
vating that fabled "suspension of disbelief," must instead
overcome an avalanche of language which actually induces a
sense of disbelief in the poem's own credibility with
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regard to meaning. This, of course, is intrinsic to much
of Shelley's poetry, but it proves to be an extremely
fruitful kind of poetry in which to discuss what music is
and how it works. The most striking achievement of this
style is that Shelley enjoins the reader to avoid one of
the most common blunders of all poetic interpretation, but
one especially endemic to discussions of music and poetry:
Shelley makes it very difficult to read too much into the
use of music as a symbol or metaphor for some other
extremely non-musical idea. Just at the moment De Palacio
seems to succeed in equating Music with Love and Woman,
other Musics disallow this conclusion:
Silver key of the fountain of tears,
Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild;
Softest grave of a thousand fears,
Where their mother. Care, like a drowsy child,
Is laid asleep in flowers.
- To Music
This is a poem of oppositions, first established then
dissolved. In the opening stanza, a frenzy is induced by a
spirit which is drinking tears. It is not immediately
clear if these are its own tears, but this activity is
nevertheless reminiscent of the self-eating-self of the
earlier poem on music. Contrasted to this frenzy is a calm
brought about by the abolition of fear, an experience
already closely associated in the selection from Moschus
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with the murmuring of music. The Woman of this poem is
Care, who synthesizes the opposing identities of mother and
child. The funeral described here contains all the
ambiguity of Wordworth's Lucy poems, not only in its
mixture of grief and loss with the joy of having loved
epitomized by the burial of a child, but also because the
poem provides a way of examining a set of speculations
without ever resolving them into one statement that would
terminate the dialectic established between them within the
poem. There is nothing within the poem itself that
definitely suggests that music is the subject. As in the
first poem on music, the presence of music is made implicit
without ever bringing it into the poem, in the first poem
by couching it as a reply to an implicit but unstated
statement that Music has murmured, and in this poem by
relying on the title. However, there are hints that
indicate the unnamed subject. Keys, silver ones, not only
unlock what is closed, but keys can solve and explain. A
key is also the lever of a musical instrument as well as
the tone of a musical piece. Grave is a low or deep
musical pitch as well as a musical direction for a slow or
solemn tempo. Finally, the very absence of music so
strongly implied yet never confirmed within the poem
creates another tension, and this is perhaps the most
important of the relationships established between poetry
and music: Shelley consistently emphasizes the absence of
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music and its partial or incomplete substitution by poetry
which, very importantly, responds to yet can never
encompass it.
The degree to which this absent music permeates every
level of Shelley's poetry is clearly demonstrated in
Alastor. Despite De Palacio's comment on the lack of music
in the poem, Alastor opens with an invocation that will
"favor my solemn song" in which the narrator compares
himself in his readiness to create with a "long-forgotten
lyre":
I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain
May modulate with murmurs of the air,
And motions of the forests and the sea,
And voice of living beings, and woven hymns
Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.
- lines 45-49
The reference to the Aeolean harp is an obvious one, but
the word play between strain (or tune) with the murmuring
modulation (or moving between keys) of the air (or ayre/
aire as the main melody of a harmonized composition) are
actually more important in investing the lines with musical
reference. By now the Shelleyan oppositions between which
the Lyre would modulate become more obvious: the forest
(and murmuring) on one hand and the sea (or seeing) on the
other are a repetition of the oppositions established in
the Moschus fragment. The voice is contrasted with a woven
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hymn, and both of these are established as being separate
from the deep heart of man. The texture of this woven
modulation becomes an important element in the development
of Shelley's musicology.
The story that this Lyre would relate is the story of
yet another lyre, the forgotten Poet:
He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude.
• • • •
And Silence, too enamored of that voice,
Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.
- lines 60, 65-66
The temporal order is important, for singing follows life
and death, as the Lyre will show. The element of silence
and stillness is also important and will be discussed
later; but here it is most important to note that mute (or
silent) music actually waits to be unlocked, and the
(silver?) key to this cell is held by the unforgotten Lyre
who will tell the forgotten Poet's story.
In his recent article "Shelley's Alastor: The Poet
Who Refuses to Write Language," Frederick Kirchhoff
discusses the relationship between the invocation and the
body of the poem, suggesting that the discontinuity between
them illustrates how the Narrator remains sceptical and
even condemnatory of the Poet about whom he sings.
Kirchhoff's psychoanalytic examination is largely concerned
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with how the "I" of the Narrator never achieves a longed-
for union with that "Great Parent," so that the Poet about
whom he writes is actually an alter-ego for the Narrator's
own failed poetry. One of Kirchhoff's most telling criti
cisms is his analysis of the disjuncture between the invo
cation and the story. In contrast with more traditional
poetic invocations, such as those in Milton and Wordsworth,
Shelley's invocation suddenly "breaks off" according to
Kirchhoff, revealing a gap between the invocation and the
narrative:
There is— literally— a gap between the invo
cation and the narrative. The narrator tells
us of the kind of poem he would like to create,
and then he offers us a narrative. But nothing
tells us explicitly that the story of the Poet
is the "strain" described in lines 45-49, that
it will speak with an authority the poet of the
invocation believes he himself lacks (116).
Kirchhoff's reading of "strain" is the unfulfilled
longing of the Narrator, whom I shall call the Lyre, for
unification with the Great Parent, so that the Narrator
will be able to "explicity...speak with an authority."
However, what Kirchhoff interprets as a failure is
actually the Lyre's triumph, for Alastor is a poem that,
above all else, seeks to convey meaning without resorting
to either the use of the speaking voice or the attendant
authority which that voice demands. In his critique of
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Saussure, Jacques Derrida questions the authority of voice
which constitutes structural linguistics, proposing instead
that the structural principles by which spoken language is
organized in fact evidence a pre-voiced inscription which
he calls arche-writing:
According to Saussure, the passivity of speech
is first its relationship with language. The
relationship between passivity and difference
cannot be distinguished from the relationship
between the fundamental unconsciousness of
language (as rootedness within language) and
the spacing (pause, blank, punctuation,
interval in general, etc.) which constitutes
the origin of signification (Grammatology 68).
The break or gap that Kirchhoff discovers between the
invocation and the narrative is perhaps better understood
as the moment wherein the original text, the story of the
forgotten Poet, was displaced in its telling by the Lyre.
There is no perfect circle of closure in this story, and
the Lyre has acknowledged this fact by emphasizing the gap
which not only allows him to write the story of the Poet
but also permits all who follow to re-write the Lyre's own
story. The importance of this kind of regenerative
activity is affirmed toward the end of Alastor when the
Lyre claims that although the Poet has died, he:
. . . when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
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Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain.
- lines 703-706
Both "to music" and "to poetry" are acts of creating a
strained text, one fraught with pauses, openings and
contradictions which demolish the illusion of the authori
tative speaking voice of pre-Romantic poetry. The tragedy
of the Poet is not only that he did not write language, but
that he so insisted on voicing. In order to succeed where
the Poet failed, the Lyre must avoid just that closure
which Kirchhoff, among others, demands not only from poetry
but language in general. The denial of authority in the
invocation and the intentional gap between it and the
narrative are both devices that challenge the traditional
formulas of classical poetry. Both provide the space
within which the poem can be continually re-written.
Shelley's Alastor, like "To Music," is the setting in
motion of a continually expanding spiral wherein poets eat
poets by rewriting their texts.
This activity is quite similar to the process of
creative production outlined by Harold Bloom in The Anxiety
of Influence, a process inspired primarily by poetic
tactics which Bloom attributes to Shelley. But instead of
the various methods of father-slaying which Bloom
describes, the act of perpetual textual re-creation might
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be better illustrated by an important musical text, the
Guidonian Hand. The Hand is literally an inward-spiraling
text which violates the illusory boundaries or artificial
limitations of the traditional text created by linguistic
writing. Or, as Shelley himself described this activity in
the Preface to Prometheus Unbound, "A poet is the combined
product of such internal powers as modify the nature of
others; and of such external influences as excite and
sustain these powers; he is; not one, but both" (emphasis is
mine). The remainder of this study will illustrate how
closely Shelley aligned music with a particular kind of
textual creation through which poetry could undermine the
authority of language.
In his youth, the Poet of Alastor was nurtured by a
"bright, silver dream" (line 67) which led him on a journey
that eventually resulted in the two great and parallel
episodes of the poem. The first was a vision in the vale
of Cashmire:
He dreamed a veiled maid.
Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought; its music long.
Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held
His inmost sense suspended in its web
Of many-colored woof and shifting hues.
- lines 151-57
In "Shelley Disfigured," Paul de Man's deconstructive
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reading of Prometheus Unbound/ the implicit eroticism of
the poem has already been closely examined. de Man is
concerned with the "knot" of impenetrability wherein "know
ledge, oblivion and desire hang suspended, into an articu
lated sequence of events that demands interpretation"
(Allegories 53). But the pattern of veils in Alastor
mimics another sequence already uncovered in association
with music. The Poet has dreamt of a valed, veiled maid
who is able to voice the voice of his own soul, a soul-
voicing-soul variation on the self-eating-self of music
combined with a variation on the double negative, of the
maid doubly veiled or doubly hidden. Her voice has a music
which suspends the sense of the Poet in its web, and the
theme of the vision's voice is knowledge, truth and virtue
(line 158). The music of this passage, described in the
predominately visual terms of "many-colored woof and
shifting hues," has already been cited as the most striking
example in the poem of Shelley's synesthesia, a blending
together of visual and auditory stimulus (O'Malley 51).
However, privileging Shelley's synesthesia tends to blur
the pattern of differences that Shelley has established,
not only in Alastor but in all of his poetry, between two
fundamentally different kinds of music.
Shelley's imagery often makes use of pairs. Some of
these, like the "un-" and "-less" discussed earlier,
function as double negatives that cancel each other out.
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The Arab maiden who looks on from the outside while the
Poet sleeps (lines 129-39) is half of another pair, and her
importance is that she is a prefiguration of the maid on
the inside of the Poet's dream. Together these two maidens
continue the pattern of paired opposites which mirror and
reflect the qualities of each other. However, this dream
maid, too, is comprised of a double: she is doubly veiled
(valed-veiled), and, in addition, she undergoes two very
different states in the dream. The first is a state of
voice and calm, and the second is a fit of music and
frenzy. Earl Wasserman interprets these doubles as an
indication of Shelley's profound skepticism. "Whatever is
advanced in the poem is also withdrawn or gravely
qualified, statement is met by counterstatement, and much
of the art of the poem lies in the appearance of similar
image patterns that reflect ironically on each other" (34).
The relationship between opposites is skeptical not only
because it illustrates that what is false can be mistaken
for what is true, but also how easily this misunderstanding
can occur. However, the next lines in Alastor introduce a
music that is not ironic, arbitrary or synesthetic in its
musical origins or associations. The maid suffers a frenzy
in which her voice is lost:
Soon the solemn mood
Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
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A permeating fire: wild numbers then
She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands
Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp
Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
The beating of her heart was heard to fill
The pauses of her music, and her breath
Tumultuously accorded with those fits
Of intermitted song.
- lines 161-72
As her voice is muted, the maid's "frame" provides the
structure for the event which follows: wild numbers and
hands sweeping a strange harp tell a tale that is
ineffable, but the Lyre has kindly left tell-tale refer
ences to another order of knowledge. Music, mathematics
and language, all the semeiographs of musica, are mani
fested as the maid slips from inspiration into creation,
from voicing into signing, from speaking into textual
creation. Only at this moment is the full contrast made
apparent between the Arab maiden who remained on the
outside looking in upon the Poet's dream and the doubly-
veiled maid who exists inside the Poet's dreamwork. The
Poet has dreamt of writing, and for one brief moment, his
eyes too are veiled as he and his vision are eaten by the
night.
Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
Involved and swallowed up the vision;
- lines 188-89
174
This vision does not simply fade— the Poet is shocked
from his trance, startled into consciousness. Kirchhoff
has pointed out the importance of this moment, but equates
this with a fear of language which is:
. . . a version of the fear of passing from an
archaic psychic state in which the world is
undifferentiated from the self to a mature state
in which the self is able to recognize and cope
with the alien nature of its field of self
objects, with the fact that lovers and sports
cars tend to have wills— or at least mechanical
problems— of their own (120).
I am not quite certain that the maturity which Kirchhoff
associates with recognizing an "alien nature" of the "field
of self-objects" is much improvement over the immature
Poet's "undifferentiated" state, especially since the
former seems to lead to a confusion of lovers and sports
cars, while the Poet, according to Kirchhoff, merely needed
to deal with his "fatal eroticization of his vision of the
veiled maid" (114; emphasis is mine). The very real fear
that Kirchhoff attributes to a fear of growing up is
actually the fear of death that writing represents. Its
most simple implication is that the act of inscription
admits the possibility of the speaker's non-presence. As
long as the Poet can maintain his world of vision and
voice, of presence and self-evident meaning, he can deny
the reality and inevitability of his own death.
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Accordingly, Alastor is the story of a Poet to whom death
was repeatedly revealed at a moment which was the crisis of
writing. And repeatedly, this Poet who was a poet in voice
only denied the reality of death implied by writing, and he
embarked instead on a series of diversions or journeys
which permited him to indefinitely avoid the ultimate truth
of his eventual non-existence.
This may have been the crisis of the forgotten Poet,
but the Lyre faces another situation entirely. In order
for the invocation to supplement the text of the narrative,
it is absolutely essential that the text somehow deny the
authority that the logos of reading will want to bestow on
it:
From the moment that nonpresence comes to
be felt within speech itself— and there is at
least a foreboding of it the very threshold of
articulation and diacriticity— writing is some
how fissured in its value. On the one hand, as
we have seen, it is the effort of symbolically
reappropriating presence. On the other, it
consecrates the dispossession that had already
dislocated the spoken word. In both senses,
one may say that in one way or another, it had
already begun to undermine and shape "living"
speech, exposing it to the death within the sign.
But the supplementary sign does not expose to
death by affecting a self-presence that is
already possible (Grammatology 166; emphasis
is mine).
Much of the rest of Alastor is conspicuous in its lack
of overt reference to music. The adventures which befall
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the Poet are spectacularly visual, but almost entirely void
of either music or sound. At one point the hair (or locks)
of the tormented Poet, who seeks in vain his vanished
vision, sings dirges (lines 248-50) At another point,
aboard a wandering boat following the course of a river, a
"breeze murmuring in the musical woods" (line 403) beckons
to the Poet, but the seduction of his own solitude prevents
him from stopping. Finally, abandoning the boat, the Poet
joined by a Spirit who, "speech assuming" is "clothed in no
bright robes of shadowy silver or enshrining light." (lines
486, 479-81) This communion of speech is followed by a
scene described in terms of "hollow harmony dark and
profound" (lines 497-98). Interpretations of Alastor have
attempted to account for the Spirit of Solitude by iden
tifying it with the Poet, the Narrator, the Maid or even to
argue that the spirit is an indeterminate part of all
three. However, the only point in the entire poem where a
spirit, not a maid or a vision, is encountered is at the
still fountain. The Spirit of Solitude with no silvery
robes is the dead spirit of speech, the antithesis of a
textuality which Shelley continually describes in musical
terms.
There is, however, a strangeness to the Poet's
journey, although some critics have dismissed it as barren
of further significant action. "Shelley's description of
the Poet's subsequent wanderings entails no further signi
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ficant action; it merely clarifies the implications of his
former behavior" (Kirchoff 121). This journey is, in fact,
extremely important in terms of the Poet’s increasing
inability to ignore either writing or death. After his
initial vision, the Poet leaves the mountains. Driven by a
strong impulse, he reaches the sea where he finds an
abandoned boat. He boards it, uses his cloak as a sail and
drifts out onto the water. The ocean bears him along
through a storm, and he passes between mountain cliffs to
an opening into which the rushing sea disappears, carrying
him along with it. In a note to his edition of Shelley's
poetry, Harold Bloom comments that this section of the poem
45
is an echo of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan". It is far more
than an echo— it is a reversal— for the poet is fantas
tically drifting upstream, against the sea-ward current,
climbing up waterfalls back to the very source of the River
Alph, the alpha-beta of the ancient Greeks as the source of
Western writing, itself an inversion or reflection of the
Phoenecian Aleph:
Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,
With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,
Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose.
- lines 387-89
After this spiral-like journey, the Poet leaves the
river, following a forest path until he reaches a well, a
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"liquid mirror," (line 462) where:
His eyes beheld
Their own wan light through the reflected lines
Of his thin hair, distinct in the depth
Of that still fountain.
- lines 469-72
The Poet's refusal to write has resulted in the thin lines
of his sterility, the only reminder of his youthful, thick
and singing locks or the poetry he could somehow only voice
but never inscribe. The Poet can now only "be-hold" his
thin lines, the pale reflection of the poetry that might
have been:
When on the threshold of the green recess
The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death
Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,
Did he resign his high and holy soul
To images of the majestic past,
That paused within his passive being now,
Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe
Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place
His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
Of that obscurest chasm;—
- lines 625-37;
(emphasis is mine)
The Poet is dying, but at this tranquil place he
re-signs his soul, and in doing so he rediscovers a faint
version of the youthful dream of writing that he has
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repeatedly ignored in his searches. The Poet's
re-signation evokes in a condensed version all of the
elements of his encounter with the maid as she made music
in his initial vision. The "dim latticed chamber" is the
"dell, where odorous plants entwine/ Beneath the hollow
rocks a natural bower" (lines 146-47). Here he "reclined
his languid head, his limbs did rest/ Diffused and
motionless" while earlier "he stretched/ His languid limbs"
(lines 149-50). In both instances, the Poet lay on the
edge of a brink, on the dividing line between his present
condition and the possibility of creating something more.
This infathomable chasm, which was briefly glimpsed in the
fragment from Moschus, will appear again in Prometheus
Unbound. However, the most important sign which indelibly
connects the dying Poet with his earlier version of the
maid is the sign of the hand. Now, "his pale lean hand
upon the rugged trunk/ Of the old pine" rests at the base
of a tree, while earlier the maid's hands with "branching
veins," swept "from some strange harp/ Strange symphony"
(lines 166-67). This pine tree appeared a few lines before
the Poet struggled into the crevice which will be his
coffin:
A pine,
Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy
Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast
Yielding one only response, at each pause,
In most familiar cadence, with the howl
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The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams
Mingling its solemn song.
- lines 561-67
The pine is the Aeolian harp, Coleridge's symbol for the
passive creativity of the mind. However, instead of
allowing Fate to produce the melody, the forgotten Poet,
finally recognizing his own mortality, would try to play
this harp himself, just as he dreamt it being played by the
maid with the hands of branching veins in his initial
vision of writing.
Thus, the tragedy of the Poet is that he so abandoned
writing, a textual enterprise that Shelley strongly asso
ciated with music, in favor of visions and voice. He is
the initiator of his own torment because he abandoned the
silvery, reflecting dream of his youth. "The frail pauses
of this simple strain" are the Lyre's intentional gaps and
not-so-simple strainings of language. Shelley's music is
not the voice of authority, but the undoing of high verse,
painting and sculpture by a different kind of poetry.
However, neither poetry nor music alone contains the speci
ficity of meaning that Shelley relegates to the hollowness
of voice or high verse, and the coldness of painting or
sculpture. However much it is like music, poetry is not
identical with it. Instead, their relationship, which
remains consistent throughout Shelley's poetry, is always
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"silver"— silver keys and the Poet's abandoned "bright,
silver dream" contrasted with the unmusical Spirit of
Solitude "clothed in no bright robes of shadowy silver."
Silver, like gold, is a precious metal of exchange,
valuable coinage which could imply a close relationship
between music and poetic language. The adjective "silvery"
indicates both a fineness of tone as well as an eloquence
of speech. But the multiple intersections of poetry and
music are best revealed by the use of silver in the
production of mirrors. The vitality of the nexus between
poetic language and music is the well into which the Poet
peers and finally recognizes his own ghost. The well is
that "liquid mirror" of writing, the inverted reflection
which poetry and music together circumscribe.
M. H. Abrams, in The Mirror and the Lamp, has already
traced the use of the mirror as a conceptual model in
literature. In particular, Abrams shows that in the
Platonism which dominated late 18th century aesthetics, a
popular concept of art described it as a looking-glass for
the nature of the human mind. The mirror, however, proved
to be a troublesome metaphor, and Abrams argues that much
of the history of modern criticism is the seeking of alter
nate conceptual models that would avoid the difficulties
associated with the mirror. Abrams suggests that one of
the less problematic alternatives to the mirror was the
Aeolian harp:
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The history of modern criticism, as we shall
see, may in some part be told as the search
for alternative parallels— a heterocosm or
'second nature,' the overflow of a fountain,
the music of a wind-harp, a growing plant—
which would avoid some of the troublesome
implications of the mirror, and better
comprehend those aspects and relations of an
aesthetic object which this archetype leaves
marginal or omits (35).
Later, Abrams cites a passage from Shelley's Defence
as an example of how the standard evocation of the mirror
demonstrates that tendency of Platonic aesthetics to
"cancel differences" and view all art as a superior repre
sentation of ideas (127). What Abrams glosses and yet what
is so crucial about Shelley's mirrors is that they are
double reflections. Poetry is not simply a mirror of the
world, but a mirror of yet another mirror "which obscures
and distorts." Shelley's distinction is between stories
and poetry, and time which strips the first but augments
the second:
Time, which destroys the beauty and the use of
the story of particular facts, stripped of the
poetry which should invest them, augments that
of poetry, and for ever develops new and
wonderful applications of the eternal truth
which it contains. Hence epitomes have been
called the moths of history; they eat out the
poetry of it (Shawcross 128).
In mirroring, poetry does not remove the distortion, but
transforms that distortion into something beautiful. These
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new and transformed inversions of distortions are
continually generated and inserted into old texts through
dislocation and reflection, activities repeatedly
associated with music in Shelley's poetry.
The dynamics of double reflection are most evident in
the relationship between the various prefaces in Alastor to
their various texts. The problematic relationship between
the Narrator's invocation and the narrative is compounded
(or reflected, or multiplied in wild numbers) by the two
quotes inserted between the Preface and the invocation.
The first quote is taken from Wordsworth and adumbrates
Alastor as a re-writing of The Excursion (Wasserman 19-21).
The second is a quotation from St. Augustine. Both are
demonstrations of how "speech is assumed" by literally
taking on the voice of another. Wasserman reads both of
these quotations as explications that the Poet of Alastor
has envisioned a dream that is not limited to the finite
reality of this world. According to Wasserman, the Poet's
failure is his inability to grasp the "subjective goal of
his dreams. . . the innermost mystery of all" (19).
However, taken in the context of Shelley's Preface as well
as with the consistent pattern developing between music and
language in the poem, the innermost mystery which eludes
the Poet is the understanding of musica as a unified and
coherent system. It is this system which provides the
framework or ground for inscription wherein the writing of
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the poem could take place. Wasserman's observation
certainly illuminates the Wordsworth quote, because the
Poet in Alastor does bear a striking resemblance to the
Solitary of Wordsworth's poem. However, Augustine's Latin
quote produces a more troublesome text, especially when it
is placed as a bridge between Wordsworth and the
invocation:
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam
quid amarem, amans amare.
I was not yet loving, yet I was loving to love,
I was seeking some one/thing I might love,
loving to love.
The variations on amo describe an act so reflexive
that, as Wasserman observes, love "has no completing object
but itself, as though "to love" were an intransitive verb"
(19). However, this process repeats the pattern of the
self-eating-self in the first short poem to music, and
using this similarity to extend Wasserman's observation,
the tragedy of the Poet of Alastor is in his failure in
the search for a double looking-for who could prevent the
act of desiring to desire from being trapped by its own
circularity, someone or something that would transform that
act from a self-destructive one to a re-constructive one.
This is specifically the process of transforming deadly
self-cannibalism into the fruitful murmer of music. More
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intriguing is the ambiguity of the Augustine text: perhaps
the personal lives of both Augustine and Shelley, but
surely the story of the Poet in Alastor support the alter
native reading:
I was not yet loving, yet I was loving bitterly,
I was seeking some(one/thing) I might love,
because I was loving bitterly.
Because Shelley rarely grounds the reader in a compre
hensible world but prefers to describe the ways by which
the mind transforms the world into a virtually incompre
hensible experience, meanings are not obscured so much as
they are multiplied. Hence, the pair of quotes are played
off against each other as two different examples of "speech
assuming." The first is didactic and dictatorial— it is a
narrative. The second is ambiguous and therefore amplified
by time— it is a poem. It eats the best morsels out of
history to become music. Moreover, Shelley consistently
uses music to signal this reconstructive activity so that
the most important role of music in his poetry is not based
on metaphor. Instead, the relationship between music and
poetry is based on the pattern of their skewedness; not
that they are similar, but that they can consistently
reflect each other’s distortions.
However, not all of Shelley's musics fulfill this
role; just as there is a false poetry and a false love that
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can deceive the unwary, music can also be deceptive:
Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.
- Mutability, lines 5-8
How unlike the vision of the maid in Alastor whose
burning frame sustained a much different kind of music. In
his reading of this poem in Harmonious Madness, Erland
Anderson characterizes this as Shelley at his most dark.
Shelley's Aeolian harp, unlike Coleridge's, is condemned to
inconstancy and can never find reprieve through inspiration
from an intellectual breeze (179). This is surely true for
the kind of music which has "no second motion," that is,
motion in the form of second reflection. But for Shelley,
another kind of music and poetry insure a second motion
simply by guaranteeing their own transformation within the
text:
It is the samel— For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Naught may endure but Mutability.
- Mutability, lines 13-16
Despite that havoc which change can wreak, change
itself, that "still" path, remains free. The key to this
187
stillness is its ambiguity; it could be read either as
"abiding" or "mute," and this inherent double-meaning is
emphasized becaused "still" has been placed between the
verb and subject of the sentence, making it possible to
read it as either an adjective or an adverb. The genius of
Shelley's poetry is his weaving together of all levels of
meaning in order to emphasize that enduring and silent
quality, the mute-ability, of the still, second reflection
of music's first sounding. It is in this spirit that
Intellectual Beauty is described in that hymn as "memory of
music fled" (line 10) or as "music by the night-wind sent,
through strings of some still instrument" (lines 33-34).
The essentially unvoiced, quiet or still qualities of a
particular kind of music is that with which Shelley invests
his most powerful verse.
She left me, and I stayed alone
Thinking over every tone
Which, though silent to the ear,
The enchanted heart could hear,
Like notes which die when born, but still
Haunt the echoes of the hill.
- Lines Written in the Bay
of Lerici, lines 9-14
Consequently, although music is not usually the
subject of Shelley's poetry, he uses music as a referent to
lend support and development to his most important poetic
theme— transformation. Prometheus Unbound provides an
188
excellent example of how the complexity of the secondary
role of music supports the main theme in the poem by virtue
of music’s attributes as a special kind of text defined by
the associations between musica and writing. Prometheus
Unbound is, literally, a story of binding and unbinding, of
holding or be-holding contrasted with not holding and
being. In his "Speculation on Morals," Shelley used the
words "bound” and "obliged" to describe any repressive
religious philosophy (Ingpen 7: 74). Prometheus' story is
not the process by which he is set free but rather the
process by which he sets himself free from his own slavery
and false sense of obligation. The first step he takes
towards freedom is through remembering, an activity that
Shelley associates quite closely with reading and
textuality rather than with voicing, and with unheard
rather than heard music.
Act I of Prometheus Unbound is comprised of a series
of dialogues between voices, phantasms and echoes that
establish the relationships between different kinds of
speaking and different levels of hearing. This exchange
takes up most of Act I, and it has much the same dynamic as
the multiple layers of prefaces, quotations and invocations
that precede both Alastor and "Epipsychidion," a rhetorical
device that disintegrates rather than establishes a line of
demarcation between the inside and the outside of the text.
Prometheus Unbound, except for the long prose introduction,
189
might at first appear to be lacking this device, but the
dramatic confrontation in Act I is between Prometheus and
these spirits, echoes and voices. Prometheus has forgotten
his curse, and in doing so he has become a characterization
of the text of Alastor— Prometheus is literally a poem
disenfranchised from its own preface. He bases his pleas
to the various voices and later to the Earth on his privi
leged status, and he demands they refresh his memory
because he was the creator of these words:
All else who live and suffer take from thee
Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds,
And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine.
But mine own words, I pray, deny me not.
- I, lines 187-90
That Prometheus is chained to a rock on the edge of a
precipice, the edge of an abyss seen before in Alastor,
further emphasizes the line or division upon which a main
character is placed and whose gap the character must
attempt to span. Still in chains, Prometheus demands a
right of ownership to his own words, although he himself
has forgotten them. The Earth refuses Prometheus, claiming
that they are preserved as a "treasured spell."
We meditate
In secret joy and hope those dreadful words,
But dare not speak them.
- I, lines 184-86
190
Voicing is thus established as a threat, the power by
which Jupiter can inflict the pain and suffering of
mortality on immortal beings such as the Earth, a power
kept safe by a "spell," a letter, a text. The importance
of textuality is emphasized later when Prometheus finally
hears his curse repeated by the Phantasm of Jupiter, but
only after he reads it in the expression on the face of the
Phantasm, "written as on a scroll" (I, line 261). Before
this scene, the Earth, knowing that Prometheus will ulti
mately gain access to his curse, distinguishes between two
worlds, twin ways of perceiving which, though similar,
actually define their differences by reflecting the imper
fections of the other:
For know there are two worlds of life and death:
One that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live
Till death unite them and they part no more;
- I, lines 195-99
The distinction here is not one between life and
death, but between that world of life and death which is
associated with "beholding" and another world lying beneath
the grave. The first world is connected with the senses,
while the second relies on "piercing" the senses moving
beyond simple being and holding, or "be-holding." Hence,
two different musics permeate Prometheus Unbound. During
191
the final act, lone and Panthea describe the new world that
Prometheus has created in his final defeat of Jupiter:
lone. Even whilst we speak
New notes arise. What is that awful sound?
Panthea. "Tis the deep music of the rolling world
Kindling within the strings of the waved air
Aeolian modulation.
lone. Listen too,
How every pause is filled with under-notes,
Clear, silver, icy, keen, awakening tones,
Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,
As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air
And gaze upon themselves within the sea.
- IV, lines 184-93
What Panthea describes is Boethius' music of the spheres, a
musica mundana heard only by the gods. Ione's "under-
notes" are the silent pauses between this music, the musica
that makes all musics possible, that is, the framework or
ground of inscription. These "under-notes" contain all the
elements of Shelley's silvery, reflective and silent hyper-
sensual music of textuality.
lone and Panthea are sisters who not only operate
within the play as privileged voices of Prometheus, but who
themselves are described with the attributes of music.
Early in the second act, Panthea is sent to escort Asia
back to Prometheus, and Asia announces Panthea's arrival
using description common to Shelley's music:
192
The point of one white star is quivering still
Deep in the orange light of widening morn
Beyond the purple mountains: through a chasm
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
Reflects it: now it wanes: it gleams again
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air:
'Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloudlike snow
The roseate sunlight quivers: hear I not
The Aeolian music of her sea-green plumes
Winnowing the crimson dawn? Panthea enters.
I feel, I see
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade
in tears,
Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.
- II, lines 17-29
The use of reflection (of a star in a lake), a weave (the
burning threads of woven cloud) and a silver image (a
vision seen through the silver dew of tears) all sustain
Shelley's textual music as Panthea's character is identi
fied with the passive music of the Aeolian harp.
lone is not only more strongly identified with music
than is Panthea, but she is also characteristic of a
different kind of music. Her wings are actually silver:
My wings are folded o'er mine ears:
My wings are crossed o'er mine eyes:
Yet through their silver shade appears,
And through their lulling plumes arise,
A Shape, a throng of sounds;
- I, lines 222-26
Also, the name lone is a multiple transformation from
a number of sources. The first is from Io, herself
193
transformed into an ox in Greek mythology, and the
etymology of the word for ancient Greek writing, boustro-
phedon or ox-turning, is based on the similarity between
the Greek method of writing to the continuous path of an
ox-pulled plow cutting forewards and backwards across a
field. The Phoenician symbol for ox, the V* or Aleph which
appeared earlier in Alastor, reappears now in the person of
lone as a kind of inverted writing or ox-turning on its
head that duplicates Greek method of music transcription.
Shelley's notebooks are notoriously complicated because he
turned them sideways and upside down when he wrote in them,
producing texts that intersected and criss-crossed each
other (Rogers 1-7). The rich musical associations of lone
are sustained, for Shelley had read Plato at Oxford and
would produce several translations of the Dialogues in the
following years. One of these, Ion, is the story of a
rather egotistical rhapsode. One of the main ideas in the
dialogue between Ion and Socrates is the foolishness and
naivete associated with claiming possession of a privileged
interpretive voice. This is accomplished by revealing
Ion's rather limited knowledge of both Homer and poetry in
general. Shelley, however, has transformed this myth by
turning it on its head just as he has rewritten the entire
play of Aeschylus, for the lone of Prometheus Unbound can
legitimately claim to have a privileged voice. She not
only remembers Prometheus' forgotten curse, but she also
194
realizes that when Prometheus rescinds it, and the Earth
fears that Prometheus has at last been conquered by
Jupiter, that this retraction is only momentary:
Fear not; 'tis but some passing spasm,
The Titan is unvanquished still.
- I, lines 314-15
lone as an extension of both Io and Ion is both writer
and singer who, in this capacity, rightfully claims a
privileged relationship to Prometheus. After the defeat of
Jupiter, Prometheus charges lone, as one of the Oceanids,
with another task, that of celebration. While Prometheus
and Asia weave together flowers and make "strange
combinations out of common things" (III, iii, line 32),
Prometheus commands lone:
And thou,
lone, shalt chant fragments of sea-music
- Ill, iii, lines 26-27
All the Shelleyan elements of music as a particular kind of
textual creation are present in Ione's silvery wings and
strange combinations woven into wild numbers. Ione's see-
music or music inscribed as a text of poetry best expresses
the bond between lovers who are, above all other things,
readers.
195
The power of see-music as silent music is continually
affirmed throughout Prometheus Unbound. Prometheus'
challenge to Jupiter's power is his continued silence.
This threat is revealed by Mercury when he entreats
Prometheus to voice:
There is a secret known
To thee, and to none else of living things,
Which may transfer the scepter of wide Heaven,
The fear of which perplexes the Supreme:
Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer.
- I, lines 371-76
Prometheus refuses Mercury, claiming that safety from
Jupiter's "thought-excuting ministers" resides in not
voicing:
For what submission but that fatal word,
The death-seal of mankind's captivity.
- I, lines 396-97
This is the power acknowledged by Mercury, who attempts to
convince Prometheus to reconsider. When Prometheus
refuses, in fact reaffirms his willingness to withstand
Jove's torture, the Chorus of Furies arrive, who, after
reciting a list of violent scenes they have left in order
to torture Prometheus, are warned by a Fury not to speak to
Prometheus:
196
Speak not: whisper not:
I know all that ye would tell,
But to speak might break the spell
Which must bend the Invincible,
The stern of thought;
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.
- I, lines 533-38
Prometheus still refuses to capitulate, learning
instead from Jupiter's torture that there are "two woes:/
To speak, and to behold" (lines 647-48). Prometheus'
refusal is to participate in the deception of an existence
governed by the senses and ruled by the tyranny of voice.
The ambiguity of Jupiter's "thought-executing ministers" is
that thought is destroyed by any act which forces the
execution (performance) of that thought. The secret that
Prometheus knows is how to release the mind from speech in
order to truly set it free. This power, celebrated at
length by the Spirits at the end of Act I, always appears
in Shelley's poetry as a kind of paradoxical activity best
described as silent music:
Panthea. Only a sense
Remains of them, like the omnipotence
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute,
Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul,
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.
- I, lines 801-06
This path of music fled is the one followed by Panthea and
197
Asia which begins in the first scene of Act II and
continues until they are united with Prometheus. As the
voices of the Echoes recede (line 174), a "music, wild and
sweet," another "strain" of sinking notes is heard, and
Panthea and Asia link (intertwine) their hands to reunite
with Prometheus.
The relationship between voiced and unvoiced power,
which is the central theme and the primary difference
between Prometheus bound and unbound, is enlarged in the
entire second act. In the fourth scene, before a soliloquy
in which she recapitulates a brief history of the universe
(II, iv, lines 32-109), Asia catalogs to Demogorgon the
gifts that Prometheus brought to man who was suffering
under the tyranny of Jupiter's reign.
He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;
- II, iv, lines 72-73
Other gifts, including science, music and sculpture follow,
and then Asia recounts why Prometheus is bound in his
destined torture. Through a series of questions and
answers, in which Demogorgon admits "a voice is wanting"
(lines 115-16)— not that a voice is needed, but rather that
voice is not enough— , Asia responds that "of such
truths/Each to itself must be the oracle" (lines 122-23).
198
Prometheus' torture is enduring not simply because he stole
powerful secrets from Jupiter, but primarily because Man
himself looks upon these works as his own creation without
realizing that the real power of the universe rests in non
voice. Wasserman has already examined at length how
Shelley appropriated Aeschylus1 myth and repeated segments
of it in contradictory contexts. "Shelley has not so much
written a counter-myth as allowed Aeschylus' version of the
myth to destroy itself, in accordance with his customary
hypothesis that error and ugliness, if not willfully
sustained, are ultimately self-defeating" (Wasserman 284).
The old version of the myth is not destroyed as much as it,
like the story of the Poet in Alastor, is re-written, and
Shelley's method of re-inscription involves emphasizes that
writing is beyond the destructive reach of voice. Souls
commune in a universe without speech by Love, where souls
speak without a sound by using looks and glances. This
state of grace is mediated at virtually every level by a
certain kind of music, a visual see-music of the poetic
text.
At beginning of Act III, Jupiter declares an evil
celebration which he equates both with music and with
voice:
Drinki be the nectar circling through your veins
The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods,
Till exultation burst in one wide voice
199
Like music from Elysian winds.
- Ill, if lines 30-34
This music strongly contrasts with the music which
immediately follows Jove's defeat when Ocean describes her
own changes as:
the light
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odors,
And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,
That sweetest music, such as spirits love
* • • •
The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit
That sits i' the morning star.
- Ill, ii, lines 31-34, 38-39
The difference between the two musics relies on the
distinction between voices like music and voices which are
music. The true and false music are very similar, and the
wary can be mislead by a powerful or crafty deceit. But
the first voice is a mimic, a mirage, one which hides its
destructiveness, like the classical poetry to which Alastor
replies, behind a mask. The second voice denys its own
authority as voice either by its silence and/or its
musicality, its simultaneous textuality and ambiguity.
Both are the very essence of the sea/see music lone will
chant at the celebration of the unbinding of Prometheus,
the poet now freed to write.
Like Alastor, "Epipsychidion" opens with a vision;
200
however, unlike either the forgotten Poet of Alastor or
Prometheus, the poet in "Epipsychidion" already knows how
to "pierce the senses," and this vision is robed in such
exceeding glory that it can not be seen and sounds so
awesome that they can not be heard.
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not. In solitudes
Her voice came to me through the whispering woods,
• • • •
And from the breezes whether low or loud,
And from the rain of every passing cloud,
And from the singing of the summer-birds,
And from all sounds, all silence.
- lines 199-201, 206-209
Her vision has appeared to others, "in the words of antique
verse and high romance" (lines 209-210), so that the story
of this poet will recount a search for this vision that
will take him back to a time before past creations toward
some ancient expression of textuality.
Shelley's poetry can be understood as a vast medi
tation on why poets do not or cannot write. "Antique
verse" is didactic poetry, one with a voice which intends
to teach. Obviously, the quality of the vision of the poet
in "Epipsychidion" implies that he has moved beyond this,
so that the problem faced by this poet is not of learning
how to "pierce the senses" but rather how to return to or
re-discover writing.
201
And in that silence, and in my despair,
I questioned every tongueless wind that flew
Over my tower of mourning, if it knew
Whither 1twas fled, this soul out of my soul.
- lines 235-38
In such a state, the real problem is self-deception.
Hence, a false vision of Emilia, the soul of the poet's
soul, is accompanied by a voice of classical poetry and a
poisonous music:
There— One, whose voice was venomed melody
Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers;
The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,
Her touch was as electric poison— flame
Out of her looks into my vitals came,
And from her living cheeks and bosom flew
A killing air.
- lines 256-62
But later, the real Emilia is accompanied by a much
different kind of music:
And music from her respiration spread
Like light— all other sounds were penetrated
By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,
So that the savage winds hung mute around.
- lines 329-332
Both musics are associated with those activities which
normally surround Shelley's music: penetration and respir-
202
ation. But truthless music is associated with a narcotic
effect that ravages the senses, while true music is that
which is still and mute. The false Emily sits motionless
by a well, and her effect seeps into the poet's vitals in a
physically degenerating experience tied to the "ruins of
unseasonable time" (line 266). In contrast, the real Emily
moves splendidly through the forest, radiating a magni-
ficance that paves her way with flowers. The music of the
false Emily vitiates, the true music regenerates; one is
motionless, the other still. The fineness of distinction
here is identical with the differentiation between vacancy
and silence at the end of "Mont Blanc." And the ability to
distinguish the false from the true, categories that pere-
nially transform themselves into false copies of each
other, is a skill that reveals the heart of Shelley's
poetics.
This same pattern is found in the- distinction between
deafness and audioacuity, the first as the inability to
hear either music or poetry and the second as the skill of
hearing unuttered words and inaudible melody. Early in
"Epipsychidion," Emily is held captive in a convent by
"rugged hearts . . . deaf to all sweet melody" (line 78).
In his "Letter to Maria Gisborne," before he lists the
names of England's great poets who were rejected or ignored
by their countrymen, Shelley characterizes London as:
203
. . . that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
- lines 193-95
The simplicity of the bond between deafness and malevolence
is contrasted in "Epipsychidion" with the complexity estab
lished between voicelessness and a hyper-sensitive hearing:
And we will talk, until thought's melody
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonizing silence without a sound.
- lines 560-64
"Looks, which dart with thrilling tone" are Ione's
see-music, the textual musicality of poetry. The impor
tance of music in Shelley's poetry is that it induces
continual perceptual reversals, a method not readily acces
sible to traditional criticism interested primarily in
metaphor or symbol. Music is neither of these, but rather
it acts as an adjunct to poetic reflection (Hobbes' notae)
that calls into question the categories of understanding
which communicative language (Hobbes' signa) strives to
impose on any text. Music is paradoxically both sound and
silence just as poetry is paradoxically both meaning and
absence of meaning. The persistence of the very arbitrar
iness of poetry and music, like Prometheus' stubborn
204
silence, undermine the very perceptual categories that are
utilized in trying to understand them. Being able to hear
this slippage, as Eliot did in his essay "The Music of
Poetry," is a first step away from deafness and deception.
However, for Shelley, it is only a point of semi-revelation
that cannot be equated with genuine insight because it is
still bound to the realm of literalness. This type of
poetic music insists on the actuality of sound, and this
insistence does not allow texts to be re-written, re
sounded or re-echoed:
As music and splendor
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute:—
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.
- When the Lamp is
Shattered, lines 9-16
Sweet tones are not remembered when the lute is broken
(lines 5-6), when the player, the lute or the lyre, is
shattered like the lamp. Heard music, like voice, will
always rely on two things: the presence of both the
performer and the perceiver. But unheard music resonates
independently of either the speaker or receiver within the
eternal framework of the text:
205
Thy light alone— like mist o'er mountains driven
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
- Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,
lines 32-36
The ambiguity of the line makes it impossible to decipher
whether the "still instrument" is an abiding or soundless
one, or whether the strings are stilled before or after the
night-wind has passed through them. The still strings are
the lines of the poem, the textuality that waits to be set
into silent resonation.
Tracing the role of music in Shelley's poetry is a
process of following the clues left in the "Defence" in
which Shelley suggests that progressive grammatical
restraint on language documents the destruction of a
chaotic, cyclic poetry whose essence was closer to music
and which could be found in the choruses of Aeschylus, the
Bible and in Dante's Paradiso. Overt reference to music in
Shelley is almost always deceptive and certainly less
important than the presence of music around the text, a
conceptualization of musical connections in language that
expand and amplify poetry as text. For example, Wasserman
traces the importance of the title of "Epipsychidion" to
its etymological source in Greek funeral odes, victory and
nuptial songs, and he claims that by doing this, Shelley
206
was overtly referring the poem back to an origin in
Classical dramatic chant. The eipthalamion, nuptial song,
is then tied to the Song of Songs so that "Epipsychidion"
theoretically follows in a literary tradition as poems
about the union with spiritual perfection (Wasserman 419).
"Epipsychidion," like Shelley's other poetry, is not simply
filled with this kind of literary musical tradition, but
music provides, to a great degree, the entire conceptual
framework within which the poem is manifested. A trans
lation from Dante in the form of a canzone opens the poem
and also provides the model for the last stanza. Music,
like the silence with which it is so often associated, is
disguised in poetry. The continual shift of meaning in
Shelley's musical references and the seeming lack of
autonomy in Shelley's definitions of music are not
indications that music is unimportant as much as they
indicate how completely music intermeshes with the poetic
text.
207
GRACENOTES:
MUSIC AND LANGUAGE IN LAMARTINE'S POETRY
As is often the case in literary criticism, the self
avowed intentions of an artist are sometimes less of a help
than a hindrance in analyzing his or her work. Lamartine's
explications of his poetry provide a case in point.
Because his interest in experimenting with the relationship
between music and poetry is forthrightly expressed in the
commentary on the composition of "Les Prdludes," one might
be led to believe that his poetry would be fertile ground
for an exploration of interdisciplinary relationships:
La poesie n'etait plus pour moi qu'un delasse-
ment litteraire: ce n'etait plus le dechire-
ment sonore de mon coeur. J'ecrivais encore
de temps en temps, mais comme poete, non plus
comme homme. J'dcrivis Les Preludes dans
cette disposition d'esprit. C'est une sonate
de podsie. J'etais devenu plus habile artiste;
je jouais avec mon instrument. Dans ce jeu
j'intercalai cependant une eldgie reelle,
inspirde par 1'amour pour la compagne que Dieu
m'avait d o n n e e . ^ 2
In declaring himself a more capable artist by his
movement away from sentimental poetry (le echirement sonore
de mon coeur) and describing this experiment of his new-
208
found expertise as a "sonata of poetry," Lamartine appears
to be exploring the interrelationships between poetry and
music. However, as Calvin Brown has already remarked,
Lamartine's use of the word sonata is so vague when
compared to musical sonata form that it is virtually
meaningless. Furthermore, Brown views Lamartine's appar
ently undisciplined musical vocabulary as an example how
much literary use of musical terminology is not the
fruitful enterprise it might at first appear to be.
Instead, many poets have employed musical terminology
simply because it mysteriously appealed to them and not
because their work has borne any resemblance to either
musical form or technique (Music 163-64). Brown's warning
continues to apply not only to writers and poets, but to
several decades of interdisciplinary criticism aimed at
establishing structural analogues between literary and
musical models which can be less than fruitful and not very
insightful about the relationship between music and liter
ature. What Brown advocates is a careful and demanding ear
for false metaphor, and the remainder of his chapter on
sonata form in literature is aimed at establishing the
basic criteria for an interdisciplinary criticism which
attempts to define and analyze the legitimate literary use
of this musical form. Because Lamartine's poem does not
meet his rigorous requirements, Brown dismisses Les
Preludes from further serious consideration in his inter-
209
disciplinary discussion.
However, there is a certain blindness at work in
Brown's categories evidenced by his reticence to probe into
Lamartine's use of the word sonate despite the fact that
Les Preludes does not fit into the pattern of different
movements of a musical sonata. Much evidence supports the
thesis that Les Preludes is not as devoid of musicality as
Brown might have us believe. First of all, until just
before publication, the poem bore the name of Les Chants.
Only much later and after the entire composition was
finished did Lamartine alter the title from the generic
name for a group of melodic or poetic lyrics to the more
specific musical term of a prelude (786). Hence, the
evolution of the prelude as a musical genre as Lamartine
perceived of it becomes an important consideration in
discussing musicality in the poem.
i
The Latin praeludium was an instrumental introduction
to the singing of a church hymn, and the term developed
into a designation for the short, improvisatory flourishes
of lutenists checking their tuning or testing their instru
ments before a performance. Independent preludes began to
appear in the 15th and 16th centuries in both organ tabla-
tures and French lute collections. The improvisatory
heritage of the prelude is most evident in Denis Gaultier's
lute collection entitled Les rhetorique des dieux. Later,
baroque preludes belonged to a class of composition which
210
included toccatas and fantasias, and all were pieces
composed in an improvisatory style for keyboards or
stringed instruments. But in France, a unique kind of
prelude appeared in harpsichord compositions. Preludes in
the French style were unmeasured pieces composed of a
series of unbarred semibreves which were intended for
elaboration by the performer. The particular nature of the
French prelude was the spontaneous elaboration of a minimal
musical line reminiscent of medieval musica ficta. In
addition, although few preludes were composed in the
classical period, romantic composers generally revived
musical forms that had fallen into disuse, and the prelude
became a widely developed musical genre in the 19th
century. And finally, although they were not formally
written down, many keyboard players prefaced their perfor
mances with short preludes intended as musical introduction
for the listeners. Hence, the prelude of the late 18th and
early 19th century had a strong association not only with
spontaneity but also with an unwritten but tacitly under
stood introductory section of a musical performance.
Hence, by the 19th century, there was no strict defi
nition for the musical genre of the prelude except that it
was unpredictable, although generally self-contained.
Formal considerations were further undermined by the rather
free interpretation of the prelude by Chopin, Scriabin and
Debussy so that a prelude in the late 19th century was not
211
bound to any particular format. Therefore, it is a little
unfair to criticize Lamartine's Les Preludes on the basis
of its lack of clear sonata structure when the musical
genre that provided the name for the poem is a study in the
evolution, experimentation and dissolution of musical form.
Another influential factor in defining the role of a
prelude is provided by the 18th century reformation of the
Italian operatic aria, especially in the works of Gluck.
The musical prelude to the opera became a dramatic and
dynamic synthesis of the musical themes to follow. But
more importantly for the discussion of the prelude in
Lamartine's work, Gluck clearly stated that as a prelude to
any meaningful music, the composer had to be inspired by
great poetry. In a letter clarifying the relationship
between his opera Iphiqenie en Aulide to Racine's play,
Gluck declared:
This is the aim which I seek to attain: always
as simple and natural as possible, my music
merely strives to achieve the fullest expres
sion and to reinforce the poetic declamation
(Gluck 30).
Later in the same letter, Gluck expresses the belief
in a kind of music which transcends the "absurd"
distinctions between national forms of music. The evolu
tionary sequence to which Gluck gives voice is that poets,
by virtue of a privileged relationship with their national
212
languages, provide the foundation for a universal musical
language by their manipulation of their own national
languages. This is not a language based on emotional
appeal but rather, according to Gluck, a distillation of
the essential elements of various forms of expression into
their most pure form.
Furthermore, the proposal by Gluck that music offered,
if not an ideal, then at least an alternative form of
communication and expression was already prevalent in music
criticism of France in the 18th century. In his Essai sur
11origine des langues, Rousseau proposed the unified origin
of both language and music in song. Despite this common
origin, language and music were separated primarily by
social and economic development, and in Chapter 5 of the
Essai, Rousseau places the use of the alphabet and with it
modern writing at the third and final stage of man's social
development. Specifically, modern writing as Rousseau
perceived it in his Essai was the tool of a trade-oriented,
civilized (police) society (57). It is just this assertion
of writing as a mere supplement to spoken language which
Derrida challenges in Of Grammatology (299ff). However, in
assuming ecriture only extends parole, Rousseau was very
specific in the Essai in defining ecriture as a skill
independent of speaking which is developed according to the
needs of a civilization:
213
L'art d'ecrire ne tient point a celui de
parler. II tient a des besoins d’une autre
nature qui naissent plustSt ou plustard selon
des circonstances tout a fait independantes
de la duree des peuples. ... On ignore
durant combien de siecles l'art des hyero-
gliphes fut peut Itre la seul ecriture des
Egyptiens (61).
Because Derrida fails to address forms of writing
other than those associated with articulated speech, his
analysis of writing in general, and particularly of musical
writing, and his definition of writing as a "dangerous
supplement" in Rousseau's work, is incomplete. According
to Rousseau, not all forms of transcription were as
completely dominated by the spoken word as is linguistic
writing. One demonstration of the differences between
kinds of parole was described in Lettre sur la musique
/
frangoise when Rousseau compared French and Italian
operatic recitatives:
Voila la source de cette prodigieuse variete
que les grands mattres d'ltalie savent repandre
dans leurs opdras, sans jamais sortir de la
nature: varietd qui previent la monotonie, la
languer et 1'ennui, et que les musiciens
frangois ne peuvent imiter, parce que leurs
mouvements sont donnes par le sens des paroles,
et qu'ils sont forces de s'y tenir, s'ils ne
veulent tomber dans des contre-sens ridicules
(fScrits 305-06) .
French opera, dominated as it was by articulated
speech, demanded the kind of music which, like any writing
214
subservient to the clarity of voice, is merely a mirror, an
automated, methodological extension of articulated speech
which produces a kind of writing without invention or
spirit. Its only function was to support the clarity of
voice. In contrast, Italian opera, dominated according to
Rousseau by melodic considerations, produced a different
kind of music, one more sensitive to the recording of
rhythm and melodic grace. This other music and its accom
panying systematic transcription accorded only a secondary
importance to the clarity of voice. Furthermore, Rousseau
points out that one skill French composers had yet to
acquire from their Italian counterparts was the discerning
use of pauses, literally, the placing of gaps within their
texts. This "feigned negligence," as Rousseau called it,
marked the beginnings of a transparent musical writing
which Rousseau proposed at length in his Dissertation
sur la musique moderne. This kind of musical writing
was aimed at the best possible recording of music, and
Rousseau described it in the Lettre as "11 arte che tutto fa
nulla si scuopre" (The art which does all remains
invisible) (Ecrits 299).
Hence, the musical writing which records French
operatic recitative is a dangerous supplement to music in
the same way that modern linguistic writing is a dangerous
supplement to voice. The danger here lies not in the
writing per se, but rather in the relationship between
215
writing and voice. Once any system of transcription
becomes subservient to clarity and meaning, that is, to the
police needs of commerce and civilization, systematic
representation which supports this repression is, according
to Rousseau, dangerous supplement indeed. However,
returning to a more primitive form of writing, for example
to hieroglyphics, is not the answer. Instead, in his
Dissertation, Rousseau proposed a new system of musical
writing based on ciphers which would approach a trans
parency that he equated with a release from the tyranny of
linguistic expression. Rather than being tied to the sense
demanded by parole, this new writing would give priority to
the eye. In his famous letter to Burney, one of Rousseau's
suggestions was that composers return to the boustrophedon
of the early Greeks to facilitate quick reading and to
further remove the musical writing from its association
with linguistic transcription (Ecrits 377). And, despite
the number of problems with his system which were pointed
out to him by Rameau among others, Rousseau continued to
defend his new system of musical writing in his Confessions
on the basis that one of its most positive attributes was
that it was designed for the inscription of instrumental
rather than vocal music (331).
Essentially, what Rousseau advocated was a form of
writing which avoided the demands placed on linguistic
writing by parole. New writing for music notation made
216
possible more pure recording of instrumental music because
it released the conceptualization of music from the
restrictive bonds of writing as a mere supplement to
speech. Or as Jean-Robert Armogathe described this process
in his study on writing and music in the works of Rousseau:
L'ecriture explose dans la nullification de la
chafne des signes. Dans une telle perspective,
l'ecriture n'est ce qui fixe et altere la
langue, mais bien plut8t ce qui lui permettrait
d'avoir, au m8me instant, plusieurs sens possible
et de les presenter conjointement a l'oeil (12).
It is these kinds of approaches which surrounded the
question of music, language and writing at the beginning of
the 19th century in France. Thus, Lamartine could well
have been responding in Les Prdludes to something more than
a failed experiment in formal musico-literary rela
tionships. Les Preludes may well have been an experiment
with poetic writing in the same way Rousseau proposed
freeing musical writing from the constraints of linguistic
concerns. Finally, although Brown failed to discover any
meaningful relationship between the poem and a musical
sonata form, Franz Liszt did. Even though there remains an
active debate as to how much Liszt is indebted to
Lamartine's poem as a source for his musical work, the
large plan of Liszt's Les Preludes is a modified sonata-
allegro (Main 133-49; Cuyler 175-78). Furthermore, much of
217
the confusion surrounding the identification of the work as
a sonata is that new sections of Liszt's sonata, which are
marked off by changes in tempo or expressive markings, do
not coincide with key changes or the introduction of a new
thematic element (Cuyler 178). Because it lacks these
traditional guidelines, the sonata form has actually been
disguised in Liszt's work— a topic for the influence of
Lamartine's literary experiment on musical form that
47
exceeds the limitations of this study.
Perhaps a more profitable approach to Lamartine's Les
Preludes is offered by following the spoor of Lamartine's
phrase, "Je jouais avec mon instrument. Dans ce jeu
j'intercalai cependant une dleqie reelle." By maturing
beyond the level of sentimental poetry, Lamartine has
learned to "play" and furthermore to interpolate this play
with another poetic device he describes as "sincere elegy."
The poem Les Preludes takes place at the nexus of these two
strains. On the one hand, there is a sensitivity to poetry
as amusement, recreation or diversion which Lamartine
associates with a musical instrument. Instrument, like the
words sonate, accords and concerts, is frequently found in
Lamartine's poetry and is used, according to Fernand
Letessier, to emphasize the purely accoustical elements of
language (790). On the other hand, Lamartine stresses that
an accomplished poet is able to interweave these moments of
play with moments of authenticity so that the poem as a
218
whole operates as a combination of two parallel, yet
distinct, qualities of language. Or as he added to the
1849 "Preface des Meditations":
Je suis le premier qui ait fait descendre la
poesie du Parnasse, et qui ait donne a ce qu'on
nommait la Muse, au lieu d'une lyre a sept
cordes de convention, les fibres m£mes du coeur
de l'homme, touchees et emues par les innombrables
frissons de l'Sme et de la nature. . . (Les
langues) sont des instruments & vingt-quatre
cordes pour rendre les myriades de notes que
la passion, la pensee, la riverie, l1amour, la
priere, la nature et Dieu font entendre dans
1'cfoie humaine (788).
The double nature of Lamartine's art, which he described as
the twin-peaked Parnassus, is the reverberation between
play and sincerity that is inherent in language, a vibra
tion which only the mature poet is able to set into motion.
Identifying a language of sound or play working inde
pendently but congruently with a language of meaning or
sincerity not only clarifies Lamartine's use of the musical
term sonata but, more importantly, it reveals how Lamartine
conceived of poetic activity. Two species of languages are
at work in great poetry, each one separated from yet able
to reinforce the other.' Moreover, Lamartine's commentary
on poetic language bears a strong resemblance to Calvin
Brown's own definition of sonata form:
A movement in sonata form, then, will begin
219
with the statement of the principal subject.
. . . It is followed by a second subject
designed as a contrast and written in a dif
ferent key. . . . Once these two themes have
been stated, the essential basis of the entire
movement is established: one might paraphrase
Coleridge by saying that sonata form is devoted
to the reconciliation of opposite or discordant
themes (Music 162).
If Brown, rather than demanding two separate but comple
mentary poetic themes as his criteria for defining sonata
form in poetry, had recognized the dual languages of elegy
and play working within the poem, he might have conceded
that Lamartine's apparently undisciplined use of the word
"sonate" to describe Les Preludes was quite apt. Of parti
cular interest for this study is that Lamartine was not
referring to a specific poem or work with his use of the
musical term but rather to the nature of all poetic
language:
Silence, esprit de feu! mon Sme epouvantee
Suit le fremissement de ta corde irritee,
Et court en frissonnant sur tes pas belliqueux,
Comme un char emporte par deux coursiers fougueux;
Mais mon oeil attriste de ces sombres images
Se detourne en pleurant vers de plus doux rivages;
N'as-tu point sur ta lyre un chant consolateur?
N'as-tu pas entendu la flfite du pasteur.
- Les Preludes
lines 275-82
These lines announce the third and final transition of
Les Preludes where the poem shifts away from a grisly
220
description of warfare in an epic mode to a pastoral medi
tation on country life. This last section initially
comprised the entire poem; apparently Lamartine originally
conceived of Les Preludes as an approbation of country life
over the life of the cities on the order of those found in
Horace's Satires and Virgil's Bucolics and Georgic. There
fore, this transition with its distinctive use of musical
reference marks a dual bridge between the third and fourth
sections of the poem. While it provided Lamartine with a
method of moving the poem forward through successive scenes
of warfare and carnage to a resolution in the quiet and
tranquility of pastoral life, it also functioned as a
transition backward in the production of the poem, allowing
Lamartine to preface what he had previously written with
something new. In order to join these two sections
together, in fact, in order to join together the four
distinct sections of Les Preludes, Lamartine devised a
series of transitions which all have certain character
istics in common. It is as if the entire poem were written
in reverse. The four narrative sections initially composed
were later joined by transitions with the final addition of
the title. It is as if Lamartine repeatedly felt the need
to preface what he has just written with something new.
Furthermore, the role of music in these transitions tells
much about Lamartine's definitions of language and poetry,
their relationship with each other and with music. Music
221
is made up not only of the "irritating chords of martial
steps" but also of the "consolatory chants of more peaceful
shores." Rather than acting as a symbol or metaphor for
one unchanging idea, music in Lamartine's poetry absorbs
much of the irritation produced by the disjuncture between
the two different languages of elegy and play, and hence
music is continually associated with a transformational
state that allows the poet to move between the two.
Therefore, the transitions of the poem are extremely
revealing moments, moreso than each separate section of the
poem, because they illustrate how Lamartine grappled with
the problem of unity in the face of quite divergent poetic
themes. In an extremely negative review of Marius-Francois
Guyard's edition of Lamartine's Oeuvres poetiques complete
which appeared in 1964, an anonymous critic posed the
question as to what all of this patchwork in Les Preludes
could possibly be a prelude to. Vague reflections on life,
death, love, war, peace and bliss, it is suggested, can
only leave the reader complacent ("Steps Down" 888-89).
However, faced with innumerable opposing forces (and the
oppositions within the poem are rampant, e.g., war/peace,
misery of solitude/ecstasy of love, creative impotence/
inspiration, death and senseless slaughter/birth and
regeneration), the poet's meditations on whether these
oppositions can be resolved actually emphasize the
important role that the transitions play in the entire
222
work. Guy Michaud has remarked that this dualism in
Lamartine was but another expression of a fundamental
romantic oscillation between revolt and evasion (1: 26).
However, as evidenced particularly in Les Prdludes, these
oppositions had their roots in quite another source for
Lamartine, and that problem was how to modulate between the
different tongues of language to become a more mature and
sensitive poet.
Perhaps the first step in comprehending the dual
nature of language which permeates Les Prdludes is to
examine under what conditions this theme of the double
arises in Lamartine's other writing:
Je redoute 1'action politique qui absorberait
ma vie poetique. Mais si malgre cela le pays
m'envoie, j1irai a mon coeur defendant, mais
j1irai avec confiance et courage et sentant
que je fais bien dans toute l'etendue du mot
(Correspondance 4: 12).
In one very fundamental sense, Lamartine's entire life was
a continual shifting back and forth between poetry and
politics, and his personal experiences left him standing at
some mid-point between the use of language as an art form
versus language as a rhetorical and political tool. After
early fame as a poet with the publication of the first
Meditations, Lamartine went on to become an extremely
influential political figure, a success which led to his
223
briefly holding the seat of president of the French
republic. Despite his claim of being the first exponent of
a new French poetics, Lamartine also questioned the
expressive capabilities of French:
Le francais, depuis La Bruyere, devint propre
a &tre au besoin l'algebre des pensees. C'est
un merite nul pour 1'eloquence et pour la poesie,
mais capital pour la philosophie et pour la
science (Cours 2: 133).
With such statements, Lamartine challenges the impor
tance of the parameters of language Descartes established
by turning the Cartesian claim for the privileged role of
French over Latin on its head. By suggesting that the
French language, in its function as an algebra of reasoning
or as an extension of the mind's cognitive ability, has
little or no value in a project of eloquence and poetry,
Lamartine is making room for another level of peception
served by a different kind of language. Just as Leibniz
had suggested a century and a half before, everyday
language is incomplete. But rather than exploring this
incompleteness by a systematic examination of different
levels of perception, Lamartine instead proposes that it is
the Cartesian definitions of language which are incomplete.
Instead, poetry is able to emphasize those moments when the
appearance of language as a unified and coherent whole
breaks down. Privileged access to our processes of
224
perception, the Cartesian project, actually encumbers the
poet with a useless diversion from the real task of
addressing another more important kind of language:
Dieu fit pour les esprits deux langages divers:
En sons articul^s l'un vole dans les airs;
Ce langage borne s'apprend parmi les hommes,
II suffit aux besoins de l'exil ou nous sommes,
Et suivant des mortels les destins inconstants,
Change avec les climats ou passe avec les temps.
L'autre, eternel, sublime, universel, immense,
Est le langage inne de toute intelligence;
Ce n'est point un son mort dans les airs repandu,
C'est un verbe vivant dans le coeur entendu;
On l'entend, on I'explique, on le parle avec l'Sme;
Ce langage senti touche, illumine, enflamme;
De ce que l'ame eprouve interpretes brdlants,
II n'a que des soupirs, des ardeurs, des elans;
C'est la langue du ciel que parle la prifere,
Et que le tendre amour comprend seul sur la terre.
- Dieu, lines 19-34
All articulated languages are only shadows of an ideal
communication which Lamartine insists is not apprehended so
much as it actively reaches out and illuminates or touches
those who perceive it. The priests or lovers privileged to
this silent speech of the heart use it without relying on
ordinary language. However, the poet, while he may be an
initiate to this language, is bound by his project of
writing to the rules of ordinary language. In addition to
the obvious resemblance between Lamartine's and Augustine's
silent discourse, Lamartine has extended the definition of
Augustine's silent language of the soul to encompass an
225
infinite ellision that takes place between understanding
spirits. The central concern in Lamartine's poetry is not
this silent language so much as the relationship between
the ideal, silent language of the priest or lover with the
everyday language of commerce and human affairs. And so it
is extremely interesting that Lamartine's distinction
between two languages, one of human affairs which changes
through time and another eternal, sublime, universal and
immense language of the intelligence, bears a striking
resemblance to the distinction made by Saussure less than a
century later between parole and langue. Carl Dahlhaus,
voicing a traditional approach towards analyzing the role
of music in Romantic poetry, points out that in 18th
century aesthetics, language was perceived as being accom
panied by an instrumental music which gave it a pleasing
sound. By the early 19th century, music had been elevated
to a metaphysical level so that it became a symbol of an
eternal language that was superior to any spoken language
(15). However, the assumption that music was synonymous
with a silent, religious language has confused inter
disciplinary discussion in Romantic literature and parti
cularly in the case of Lamartine. In Lamartine's work,
this language above all other languages was not musical so
much as it was silent. Rather than embodying an ideal of
communication, music was rather the bridge or the
transition which connected two quite different languages to
226
each other.
Lamartine's definition of a silent poetic language
closely related to God constitutes proof for the claim that
Lamartine was primarily a religious poet and that his
theory of different languages is simply a smaller part of
Lamartine's attempt to establish a dialogue with God. And
yet the poet, privileged to different languages, is forced
by the production of his poetry to straddle the boundary
between these two languages. This dilemna, glimpsed first
in "Dieu," is found again in "Le Poete mourant" where
Lamartine seeks yet never finds those words which can break
the barrier between silent and spoken language. Instead,
the poet is condemned to a transitory existence along the
margins of two worlds which Lamartine equates with the life
of a bird of passage:
Le pofete est semblable aux oiseaux de passage
Qui ne batissent point leurs nids sur le rivage,
Qui ne se posent pas sur les rameaux des bois;
Nonchalamment berces sur le courant de l'onde,
Ils passent en chantant loin des bords; et le monde
Ne connaft rien d'eux, que leur voix.
- lines 31-36
In an examination of the theme of dispossession which
he believes is the great unifying element of Lamartine's
poetry, J. C. Ireson comments on the "border territories"
between dream and real perception which allow Lamartine to
227
fashion a heroine, both sexual and spiritual, who can
rescue him from the solitude of his disinheritance (Ireson
38-40). The term "border territories," a concept in which
Ireson only has minimal interest and does not fully
explore, is an accurate description of the margins on which
the poet writes. These border territories define not only
the relationship of the poet's languages, but ultimately
the nature of the transitions, making them the focal point
not only of Les Preludes but of all the Meditations.
Returning to an examination of the transitions in Les
Preludes, the one characteristic found in common is a
musical frissonnement which draws the poem along like a
double-harnessed chariot (line 279). In the transitions,
this quivering is first felt in response to a sound—
sometimes only a voice, but more often a chord or a song.
This sympathetic quivering results in a collapse of the
aural message into a visual one, and this new vision then
introduces a new section of the poem. In the third
transition cited earlier (lines 275-82), the poet rever
berates with the martial chords of warfare while a new and
more peaceful vision begins to form before his eyes. This
vision, in turn, allows a new music to pierce his
consciousness. The movement is from music through vision
to a new music and an emphasis on the visual qualities of
this new music, that is, of music as a particular kind of
transcription or writing. This pattern is established in
228
the first transition of the poem:
J'entends, j'entends de loin comme une voix
qui gronde;
Un souffle impetueux fait frissonner les airs,
Comme l'on voit frissonner l'onde,
Quand l'aigle, au vol pesant, rase le sein
des mers.
- lines 98-101
This transition separates the amorous elegy which
opens the poem from the second section of the poem where
the poet confronts his own melancholy and assesses it in
terms of his artistic productivity. First a voice is
heard, the breath of which generates a quivering that makes
the air shudder. Sound leads to the image of a giant bird
skimming the sea, a metaphor already noted in "Le Poete
mourant" as one which summarizes the poet's predicament of
being an isolated singer traversing a boundary line or
division between two worlds. The circumstances which have
placed him on this boundary line in Les Preludes are
initiated by recognition of the power of language:
Non, non, brise a jamais cette corde amollie!
Mon coeur ne r^pond plus a ta voix affaiblie.
L1 amour n'a pas de sons qui puissent 1'exprimer:
Pour reveler sa langue, il faut, il faut aimer.
- lines 86-89
Letessier comments that although these lines cast
229
doubt on the sincerity of the preceding dedication of love,
Lamartine had somehow to move toward a more general and
philosophical discussion of his poetic struggle. However,
by questioning the boundaries of the speech (lanque) of
love through the recognition that we cannot use this speech
unless we are already in love, Lamartine suggests that we
learn to speak different languages based on our emotional
states. Although he has learned to converse in this love
dialect, he desires to break away from its restriction— a
corde amollie is a soft, pleasing bond, but a binding one
nevertheless. To do this, he calls upon the genie of
poetry which will allow him to transpose himself into
another kind of language:
Un seul soupir du coeur que le coeur nous renvoie,
Un oeil demi-voili par des larmes de joie,
Un regard, un silence, un accent de sa voix,
Un mot toujours le mime et repete cent fois,
0 lyre! en disent plus que ta vaine harmonie.
L1 amour est A 1'amour, le reste est au genie
Si tu veux que mon coeur risonne sous ta main,
Tire un plus mile accord de tes fibres d'airain.
- lines 90-97
Lamartine first evokes the state induced by love,
cataloguing the powers of this speech as looks, tears,
silences, accents and one self-same word (love itself)
repeated over and over. This powerful but debilitating
speech is contrasted with the lyre's harmonies whose powers
230
pale by comparison. However, one possibility for escape
offered the poet caught by this ruinous speech is the
setting into motions of the lyre's strings. Lamartine
asserts that if his heart is to survive, it must be open to
other harmonies made accessible under the hand of the lyre.
It is only after this plea that other more virile
sounds result in a quivering that places the poet on the
boundary between sea and sky (line 101). The hand which
appears at this transition is the hand of the poet, the
transcriber, the one who breaks the bonds of love's speech
through a process that forces him to learn other tongues
(langues) of language by writing them down. The poet
acquires this skill by recognizing that he straddles the
nexus of hearing and vision. This state is fully realized
in neither speech nor music, but only at the moment of
their fusion in the textuality of the kind of poetic
experiment in which Lamartine was engaged.
The same pattern of moving from auricular through
visual messages and back again also marks the second
transition between the section of philosophic lament on
man's destiny and the description of war:
Toi qui rendais la force a mon ame affligee,
Esprit consolateur, que ta voix est changee!
• • • •
Non: de ce triste aspect que ta voix me ddlivre!
Oublions, oublions: c'est le secret de vivre.
Viens; chante, et du passe detournant mes regards,
Prdcipite mon ame au milieu des hasards!
231
*
De quels sons belliqueux mon oreille est frappee!
C'est le cri du clairon, c'est la voix du coursier;
La corde de sang trempde
Retentit comme l'epee
Sur l'orbe du bouclier.
- lines 138-39, 150-58
As two similar acts of transcription, the hand
striking different chords on the lyre in the first
transition parallels the re-sounding of the sword on the
shield in this second transition. This image not only
evokes the particular quality of battle music with the cry
of clarions, but it also works as an image of writing if
the sword, dipped into the ink of battlefield blood, is
imagined transcribing the stories of the heroes onto the
face of the shield.
Perhaps the most intriguing characteristic of this
emphasis on the process of music and writing in the
transitions of the poem is that it marks the reversed or
inverted process of the poem's generation. As remarked
earlier, the forward movement of the reader's progress
through the various sections of the poem by way of the
transitions is an inversion of Lamartine's process of
composition. And this is why the transitions of Les
Preludes are so fascinating: they reveal a great deal not
only about the total concept of a poem which has been
frequently criticized for its fragmentary nature, but it is
232
at these junctures between the sections that Lamartine's
most interesting comments about poetry, language and music
and their relationships with each other are made.
The most frequently cited reason for the existence of
the transitions is that Lamartine used them as a hedge.
Because he was faced with such widely divergent poetic
themes in a poem which he had composed over a period of
several years, it is generally considered that he decided
that this series of vignettes could be connected to each
other by the transitions (793). Read in this manner,
diversions, in the form of music, interrupt each section.
This musical distraction then results in some new vision or
hallucination which deposits the reader into a new section.
In the hands of generous readers and critics, this tech
nique has been interpreted as poetic experimentation.
However, recent criticism which has been fairly unforgiving
of Lamartine and has found in his work a certain lack of
discipline and restraint, a dissolution of purpose and an
absence of coherent intent.
However, an exploration of what at first appear to be
the weakest moments in Les Preludes begins to reveal
another explanation for the poem's fragmentary nature. The
frissonnement experienced at the mid-point between aural
and visual sensibility, instead of acting as ineffective
glue to the narrative sections, is actually the center of
the ever-expanding poem. Like a stone dropped into a pond
233
which produces a series of concentric circles radiating out
from the middle, the transitions between sound and vision
comprise ever—widening circles which surround isolated
events. Read in this manner, the transitions, rather than
supplementing the text, actually bring the text as the
union of random events into being. The function of this
transition is to amplify the indeterminacy on border
territories that make up the bulk of experience which each
of us calls life:
Mais toujours repasser par une m£me route,
Voir ses jours epuises s'ecouler goutte a goutte;
Mais suivre pas a pas dans 1'immense troupeau
Ces generations, inutile fardeau,
Qui meurent pour mourir, qui vdcurent pour vivre,
Et dont chaque printemps la terre se delivre.
- lines 118-23
What we may first perceive of in life are distinct
moments of love or grief, war or peace. But these are
mirages, interludes which involve such strong emotions that
they mask that which precedes or follows them. Lamartine's
state of grace is the pursuit of that which comes before or
interpolates these events. The powerlessnesss of mortality
is the taking at face value of each interlude. Lamartine's
salvation is not to puzzle out each individual event, but
rather to look along the margins, tracing backward through
the various texts of experience, and weave them together.
234
What he has ventured in Les Preludes is the pursuit not of
experience, but rather of the transitory nature of life
which occurs between each of these meaningful but blinding
moments.
Hence, the significance of the title: Les Preludes is
literally a praeludere, a sincere playing beforehand of
that unwritten but implicit introduction which precedes
every performance or, in the case of the poem, every
narrative. Lamartine's concern with antecedence has been
attributed to his self-acknowledged doubts about his own
creative abilities because he frequently complained in his
letters about temporary failures of inspiration (788).
This confession, along with the prevalence of invocations
to music in his poetry, has resulted in a misleading gloss
of the opening lines of the poem. If the invocation is
read as the first of many preludes, its resemblance to the
transitions which follow becomes immediately obvious. In
the invocation, the poet's eyes have been veiled in
darkness, and his quiet spirit awaits inspiration:
0 lyre! 3 mon genie!
Musique interieure, ineffable harmonie,
Harpes, que j'entendais rdsonner dans les airs,
Comme un £cho lointain des celestes concerts.
- lines 9-12
Ernest Zyromski has claimed that Lamartine is renewing
235
the classical invocation to a lyre or harp, but he concedes
that the orchestra which provides Lamartine his inspiration
is, enigmatically, an invisible one. Letessier concurs,
but explains this by proposing that this invisible music
embodies the poet's personal vision (787). Insofar as the
invocation resembles the other transitions, its most
important characteristic is that this music is so far
removed from ordinary perception that Lamartine describes
it as an echo heard across a long distance. In this way he
creates the same hazy distances and indistinct horizons
along which the poet on great wings creates his art:
II descend 1 il descend! la harpe ob^issant
A fremi mollement sous son vol cadence,
Et de la corde fremissante
Le souffle harmonieux dans mon Hme a passe.
- lines 17-20
The most important element of music in Lamartine's
poetry, the one which will be found in all of his poetry in
some form, is introduced in this invocation: the chords of
a harp, the strings of the lyre, the vibrating lines of
poetry are the music which defines the transition between
everyday spoken language and divine, silent communion.
Whatever it is that has produced this music is never
explicitly named except as a capricious spirit, itself
demanding a prelude:
236
Pendant qu'il en est temps, pendant qu'il
vibre encore,
Venez, venez bercer ce coeur qui vous implore.
Et toi, qui donnes l'Sme a mon luth inspire,
Esprit capricieux, viens, prelude a ton grdi
- lines 13-16
A capricious spirit is an inconstant or ever-changing
one, a spirit caught in infinite transition. Reading this
capriciousness as evidence of Lamartine's lack of faith in
his own creative abilities imposes a far too literal inter
pretation on the line. Instead, this kaleidoscopic spirit
is the spirit of change, the spirit of a state of perpetual
transformation which is able to move between the different
worlds of language along the border territories which
simultaneously separate, yet connect, them. This spirit
operates through music by setting the poet's lute into
quivering motion and allowing a different tongue of
language to be expressed.
This cosmology is a complex yet consistent one in
Lamartine's verse. A spirit of caprice as a spirit of
transformation or change visits the poet who has been made
approachable by his recognition that language has a multi
plicity of tongues. At this nexus, repeatedly marked in
the poems by a boundary line such as the waterline between
sea and sky or the edge of a forest, the poet is over
whelmed by a quivering which enables him to break the bonds
by which he has been imprisoned. Hence, in "L'Esprit de
237
Dieu," the poet who finds himself on this margin is the one
who is privileged with the discovery of new frontiers by
the very destruction of outmoded limitations.
Le feu divin qui nous consume
Ressemble a ces feux indiscrets
Qu'un pasteur imprudent allume
Au bord des profondes for§ts:
- lines 1-4
However, the double nature of walking on the edge is that
which is promised by this regeneration comes only with the
threat of complete destruction:
Tout a coup la flamme engourdie
S'enfle, deborde, et l'incendie
Embrase un immense horizon.
0 mon cime! de quels rivages
Viendra ce souffle inattendu?
- lines 8-12
Nevertheless, the poet who will risk, even prepare for
these moments will be possessed by an all-consuming, divine
flame and will hear a musical corde that will free him like
Prometheus from other more restrictive and binding cordes
which have prevented him from writing:
Sera-ce un enfant des orages?
Un soupir a peine entendu?
Viendra-t-il, comme un doux zdphyre,
238
Mollement caresser ma lyre,
Ainsi qu'il caresse une fleur;
Ou sous ses ailes fremissantes
Briser ses cordes gemissantes
Du cri percant de la douleur?
- lines 13-20
These quivering wings release the supplicant from more
than lament. Enjambment works congruently with the larger
transitions in Les Preludes and can be understood as a kind
of miniscule transition that dissolves the divisions of the
poetic line established in classical poetry. The quivering
is the trembling of the poetic line, its simulataneous
destruction and transformation beyond traditional
constraints. Enjambment as a demonstration on a smaller
scale of new poetic possibilities illustrates how the
themes of risk and writing, music and a new poetry all
coincide:
Le sein genereux qui t'implore
Brave la souffranee ou la mort.
Aux coeurs altdres d'harmonie
Qu'importe le prix du genie?
Si c'est la mort, il faut mourir...
On dit que la bouche d'Orph^e,
Par les flots de l'Ebre dtouff^e,
Rendit un immortel soupir.
- lines 23-30
Orpheus' singing lips which continue singing even
after his decapitation promise that a heart transformed by
239
harmony may accept the risk of death knowing that some sort
of immortality has been assured by the transformation that
enabled that heart to sing. The question here, as in the
other poems, is the nature of that transformation. The
changes that have taken place allow the poet, at the risk
of death, to create a particular kind of poetry that will
not die.
As with the multiple narratives in Les Preludes,
"L1 Esprit de Dieu" is made up of a narrative surrounded by
a preface and conclusion. The encapsulated narrative is a
re-telling of the story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel.
This parable alone is rich in interpretive possibilities,
and traditional readings of it focus on man's resistance to
divine grace. Lamartinean criticism has incorporated these
readings with Lamartine's confessions of difficulty in
conquering his own inspirations and concluded that in this
poem, Lamartine is struggling against his own self-doubts
(359). But the Jacob story appears in other of Lamartine's
correspondence, and these references suggest that something
more is at work in the poem than a recounting of a poet's
personal struggle with either salvation or inspiration. In
commenting on the production of Raphael, Lamartine made the
following observations:
Je puis dire qu'a mon insu (dans ces lettres)
je luttais en desespere, et comme Jacob avec
l'ange, contre la pauvrete, la rigidite, et la
240
resistance de la langue dont j'etais force de
me servir, faute de savoir celle de ciel (745f).
It is not so much himself or divine inspiration
against which the poet struggles as against the
restrictions of language. Read in this manner, the
struggle of the two titans in "L'Esprit de Dieu" is neither
between mortality and salvation nor between a poet and his
own muse, so much as it is between language and an
essentially non-lingual element of poetry that Lamartine
repeatedly associates with divine music. The two are so
similar that at times in the struggle their separate
identities are blurred:
Dans un formidable silence
Ils se mesurent un moment;
Soudain l'un sur 1'autre s'elance,
Saisi d'un m£me emportement:
Leurs bras menagants se replient,
Leurs fronts luttent, leurs membres crient,
Leurs flanes pressent leurs flanes presses;
Comme un ch^ne qu'on deracine,
Leur tronc se balance et s'incline
Sur leurs genoux entrelaces.
- lines 51-60
In a formidable silence which is the text or the creation
of a text, a divine music wrestles with a mortal language
which would dominate it. This is not a battle to be won by
either side, but one perpetually fought by the poet attuned
to the two tongues of poetic language:
241
Enfin, depuis les heures sombres
Ou le soir lutte avec les ombres,
Tant3t vaincu, tantSt vainqueur,
Contre ce rival qu'il ignore
II combattit jusqu’a l'aurore...
Et c'etait 1'esprit du Seigneur.
- lines 75-80
These lines explicitly describe divine revelation.
But a secondary interpretation that incorporates other
references to music and language within Lamartine’s poetry
reads Jacob as the persona of a language, unaware of its
own higher capabilities, which continually and repeatedly,
day after day and from dawn to dawn, struggles with a
silent music of which it is ignorant and yet which
challenges it to be more than it would be. The poet who
witnesses this struggle is neither Jacob nor the Angel, but
the teller of their tale who is able to preface and close
the poem with the sure knowledge of where ordinary language
meets its own transcendent other:
Attendons le souffle supreme
Dans un repos silencieux;
Nous ne sommes rien de nous-meme
Qu'on instrument melodieux;
Quand le doigt d'en haut se retire,
Restons muets comme la lyre
Qui recueille ses saints transports
Jusqu'& ce que la main puissante
Touche la corde frdmissante
Ou dorment les divins accords.
- lines 81-90
242
All of the elements of see-music are present:
silence, the strong hand of the transcriber and Lamartine’s
frissonement through which the struggle between the two
languages is set into motion. Instead of examining the
deceptions of ordinary perception, Lamartine questions the
divisions by which we attempt to classify and categorize
the world. Just as music is the briseur between silence
and sound, poetry is the briseur between sound and sense.
However, this duality does not correspond to a play of
oppositions, of right against wrong or good against evil,
which is usually associated with classical definitions of
art. Instead, Lamartine is concerned with the genesis of
poetry through a particular use of language that he has
defined as musical. The relationship between ordinary
language and this silent and musical one is the concern of
much of his poetry. Rather than opting for a battle
enjoined and resolved, Lamartine continually explores the
surfaces along which their arms intertwine, their legs
interlace and their sweating flanks press and are pressed
into a unified poetic whole of two struggling titans.
”L'Isolement" maintains the situation of the poet
working on border territories by situating the narrator of
the poem at the juncture of a number of horizons:
Souvent sur la montagne, a 1'ombre du vieux chine
Au coucher du soleil, tristement je m'assieds;
243
Je promene au hasard mes regards sur la plaine,
Dont le tableau changeant se deroule a mes pieds.
- lines 1-4
Although he claims to be in the mountains (sur la
montagne), the original line read "Au sommet du rocher"
(375), and the poet in the final version still remains in
the foothills of the mountains, close enough to look out on
the nearby plain. On this geographic margin, the poet
sits at dusk, the time of day separating day from night and
a time which he remarks transforms the landscape into a
continually changing and shifting tableau. This vagueness
and indeterminacy dominate the entire poem, but the
peculiar nature of isolation on border territories is the
poet's realization that he belongs in no specific place,
and that finally is neither alive nor dead, but caught at
some mid-point between the two.
It is just this problem of indeterminent division for
which Lamartine shows so much concern that has, ironically,
been the cause of much anti-Romantic criticism. The lack
of clear-cut boundaries, specifically in terms of right
versus wrong or good versus evil, has fostered attacks on
the state of Romantic morality. The lack of a clear
distinction between good and evil was the basis for Irving
Babbit's argument that the romantics elevated their own
personal nature as the only control left in a world devoid
244
of a sense of division between right and wrong:
Goethe defines the devil as the spirit that
always says nor and Carlyle celebrates his
passage from darkness to light as an escape
from the Everlasting Nay to the Everlasting
Yea. We rarely pause to consider what a
reversal of traditional wisdom is implied
in such conceptions. In the past, the spirit
that says no has been associated rather with
the divine. Socrates tells us (in the Apology,
31d) that the counsels of his "voice" were
always negative, never positive (147-48).
Babbitt's thesis is that romanticism has reversed the
voice of self-control, replacing a tendency to restrict and
question one's own behavior and decisions with the tendency
to endorse them without due reflection. Lamartine's
poetry, however, reveals that the romantic mind was not so
much concerned with endorsing an everlasting yea so much as
with pondering how the self's voice could change so
considerably, even reverse itself, since the first
recordings of ancient thought. This reversal alone is
healthy cause to begin to doubt any voice at all, no matter
whether it whispers "Yes" or "No" in the hearer's ear. And
with the erasure of an autocratic voice speaking in a
language of exact meanings, the poet becomes privileged to
other sounds, other languages.
This is the quintessential character of transition in
Lamartine's poetry, and it is always at these junctures
that other sounds, other languages, in the form of music
245
make their presence felt the most. The poem "L'Isolement"
is comprised of three sections: the first (lines 1-16)
describes a landscape which is in reality a composite of
many buildings and locations from Lamartine’s life (465).
The second section (lines 17-36) is a reflection in the
form of an inner dialogue on the poet's place, or non-place
as it were, in this world. The final section (lines 37-52)
is an attempt to work beyond the boundaries of this world
(au-dela des bornes de sa sphere) . However, the presence o::
music at the transitions between the sections calls these
arbitrary boundaries into question.
Music appears twice, and twice only, in "L1Isolement"
— in the transitions between the sections. In its first
appearance, music is associated with ecstacy and transport,
except that it is precisely the inability of the poet to
respond to this music which characterizes his isolation:
Cependant, s'elangant de la fl^che gothique,
Un son religieux se repand dans les airs,
Le voyageur s'arr^te, et la cloche rustique
Aux derniers bruits du jour m§le de saints concerts.
Mais a ces doux tableaux mon lime indifferente
N'eprouve devant eux ni charme ni transports,
Je contemple la terre, ainsi qu'une ombre errante:
Le soleil des vivants n'echauffe plus les morts.
- lines 13-20
If the saintly harmonies of music could release him from
his situation, the poet would be freed from the border
246
territories on which he continually finds himself. But
this is not the function of music in any of Lamartine's
other verse— in fact it is music, more than any other art
which induces that transitory state. Instead music empha
sizes the state of continual change which is existence;
this perpetual passage of time, however, is something
mortal men prefer to ignore.
The second appearance of music occurs in the second
transition of the poem:
Quand je pourrais le suivre en sa vaste carriere,
Mes yeux verraient partout le vide et les deserts;
Je ne desire rien de tout ce qu'il eclaire,
Je ne demande rien a 1'immense univers.
Mais peut-§tre au-dela des bornes de sa sphere,
Lieux ou le vrai soleil eclaire d'autres cieux.
Si je pouvais laisser ma depouille a la terre,
Ce que j'ai tant r§ve paraitrait a mes yeux?
- lines 33-40
The poet strains his eyes to follow the course of the
sun across a void, a wasteland devoid of desire. He longs
to break the bonds of the sphere described by the sun, a
line literally read as the desire by the poet for a release
from mortality to heavenly bliss. But there is a certain
ambiguity at work in this line, and it could be read as an
expression of the poet's desire to eliminate all
boundaries, not simply the boundary separating this world
from eternity. As would be expected, music as the emblem
247
of transition again appears, for the "vrai soleil" is a
reference to the Verus Sol of the hymn chanted at Laudes in
the Breviaire romain (468).
Finally, music, occurring as it consistently does at
the transitions of the poems and emphasizing those moments
when the poem crosses its own self-defined border
territories, ultimately questions the indeterminant
division between the inside and the outside of the poem.
Rousseau's proposal for a new kind of music writing that
approached the transparency of communication consistently
violated by linguistic writing suggested that poetry too
could be freed from restrictive obligations to a system of
writing committed to clarity and unambiguity. Music is
therefore not a symbol of transcendent communication so
much as it is a transparent other to linguistic writing,
one which Lamartine repeatedly confronted, discussed and
analyzed in his poetry.
248
MAGIC MIRROR:
MUSIC AND LANGUAGE IN BRENTANO'S POETRY
Early in 1801, after receiving the most recent edition
of the small literary journal Kalathiskos from his future
wife Sophie Mereau, Clemens Brentano found printed in it a
short story entitled "Per Sanger" which he had written and
sent to her. Not only had the story been published without
his knowledge or permission, it also did not bear his name.
These circumstances combined with the impression that
Mereau left with the publishers that it was her work
elicited a predictable response from Brentano. In a letter
to his sister in March of that year, Brentano complained
about Mereau's deception but strongly recommended that she
read the story not only because it was the best work he had
ever done, but because it would assure his fame in the
annals of German literature:
Es ist das Beste, was ich schrieb. Ich fiihle
etwas in mir, wenn ich es zu Stande bringe, bin
ich zu Stand gebracht und sterbe (Vordtriede 95).
The process which Brentano associated with the
production of his finest work is that its genesis
249
paradoxically both fulfills and annihilates him. The
romantic cliche of the poet's demise at the moment of
creative culmination is not as important as the contra
diction revealed by this process. The writing down of this
particular story has given it a life which has resulted in
Brentano's own death. The themes of writing, risk and
death, prevalent in much romantic poetry, are reaffirmed in
Brentano's work and this, coupled with the extremely
important theme of contradiction or paradox, will dominate
Brentano's verse. Because this study is primarily
concerned with poetry, no lengthy analyses of Brentano's
prose works will be attempted. However, for a number of
reasons, the incomplete story "Per Sanger1 1 is an extremely
rich introduction to a character who will make numerous
appearances in Brentano's work.
The story is a collection of over-heard conversations,
encounters hurriedly written down, and excerpts from
letters of narrators whose lives have criss-crossed and
whose relationships to each other are only revealed in the
fragmented unraveling of their individual tales. The
narrator, a young woman by the name of Theresa, admits that
initially she had only wanted to tell the story of her
younger sister Antonie, a narrative described as the
solution to the puzzle (Auflosunq eines Ratsels) of
Antonie's disappearance. But this story has become so
entangled in other stories, notably the story of a man who
250
is presently with her, that she can no longer separate
them. Moreover, her sister's memory is so fragile, so
delicate, that she finds only in the recounting of
Antonie's life from the multiple memories of various
narrators that a mosaic is created which approaches the
fineness and delicacy of her sister's nature:
Es giebt leise, unendlich zarte Lieder, die
wir nicht hSren, wenn sie von der Lippe
kommen, die gleichsam erst vom Echo ergriffen
nochmals ausgesprochen werden miissen, wie das
Gold mit andern Metallen versetzt werden mufl
und viele Dinge nur in Symbole gekleidet uns
bekannte Begriffe werden. Wir kennen solche
Menschen nie als nach ihrem Tode.^8
There are songs so infinitely soft that they are
inaudible until after they have passed from the lips of the
singer and become echoes. The parallel between these songs
and the story of Antonie's life with Brentano's own
narrative is immediate and obvious. Some songs and stories
require absence or death as a pre-condition for their own
existence. The relationship between the song and its echo
describes the relationship between Theresa and her story as
well as that between Brentano and his own narrative. Like
the echo, memory enables the teller to relate his or her
tale, as Theresa explains later in the introduction of
"Der Sanger":
251
Sie [such people as Antonie] entschliipfen jeder
Betrachtung, denn das Leben ist zu dicht, als
sie es durchschimmern konnten, und nur die
Erinerung ist ein Gewand, um sie dem Blicke
zu fesseln (2: 485).
The character of the singer will often merge with that of
the story-teller in Brentano*s poetry, and the singer will
play a significant role as the character who is able to
hear music through its echo just as he or she is able to
discern the true nature of a character through the veil of
memory. But before examining this character, it is
fruitful first to review some basic principles of memory
and understanding as they were developing in Germany at the
beginning of the 19th century.
With the publication in 1808 of Friedrich Ast's
Grundlinien der Grammatik, Hermeneutik und Kritik, the
shortcomings of both historical and linguistic methods of
textual interpretation were brought to the forefront of
philosophical discussion. In an attempt to move beyond the
simple analysis of the linguistic content of any text— and
he made no distinction between scientific, artistic or
general texts— Ast proposed a method of interpretation that
could encompass a broader viewpoint which included the
individual genius of the author as well as a sensibility
for the age in which the text was produced. Grasping what
Ast called the Geist of a work was a process entirely
dependent upon language, for it is only in language,
252
according to Ast, that both the spirit of a work and the
spirit of the age in which it was produced could be
apprehended. The act of interpreting the Geist of a work
was tantamount to building a bridge between the sense of
history established by many texts and the individuality of
a particular artist. Of fundamental importance for Ast was
the notion that hermeneutic exegesis of a text is neither
the linguistic rationalization of meaning nor an act of
subjective intuitive caprice on the part of the
interpreter. Understanding (Verstehen) is rather the
synthesis of both of these abilities into a unified process
by which meaning is conferred on a complex network of
49
textual signs (Gadamer/Boehm 111-30).
Two elements of Ast's criticism are useful in
comparing music and language in Brentano's poetry. The
first is the role of Nachbildung in the process of under
standing. Any activity aimed at explication must
necessarily re-create or duplicate the thought process of
the original writer, or as Ast expressed it, "So ist das
Verstehen und Erklaren eines Werkes ein wahrhaftes Repro-
duzieren oder Nachbilden des schon Gebildeten" (Gadamer
120). This process begins at a concealed (verhullte)
moment in which the disparate parts of a text begin to
develop, expand and interweave. The end of this process is
the disclosure of wholeness through a harmonious internal
conception (In-Eins-Bildung) of how all the separate pieces
253
relate to each other within the whole. The result of this
kind of interpretation is an on-going awareness of the
fluid relationship between singular parts, such as words or
sentences and by extension characters and events, and their
unity in any text (Gadamer 120ff). The similarity between
Nachbildung and echoes or Nachklang becomes a focal point
for comparing language and music in Brentano*s poetry.
Secondly, the title of Ast's Grundlinien indicates a
tri-partite division of interpretation which Ast develops
at length in his study. Three hermeneutics define the
different levels on which critical activity may take place.
The hermeneutic of the letter (Hermeneutik des Buchstabens)
is the factual or grammatical level on which a text
operates. The application of this hermeneutic requires a
thorough knowledge of etymologies and the ambiguities of
individual languages. The hermeneutic of meaning
(Hermeneutik des Sinnes) is the study of the time and place
at which a work was written and is directly related to
uncovering the content of the work according to the
author's own intention. These two levels of interpretation
comprised most linguistic and historical approaches to
textual exegesis current at the beginning of the 19th
century, but it is the third hermeneutic, the hermeneutic
of the spirit in the sense of intellect or imagination
(Hermeneutik des Geistes), which was Ast's new contribution
to interpretive theory. Whereas many post-Hegelian
254
humanists and philosophers concerned with the implications
of different interpretational stances would accept that
historicity injects an element of continual change into
each text's place in relationship to other texts, Ast
believed that this third level of interpretation based on
the study of the Geist of a work would reveal an unchanging
truth, one that is inalterable and clearly stated in the
work. It should be stressed here that for Ast this truth
is only made accessible by the unified and harmonious
synthesis of all three levels of hermeneutic interpretation
through the process of Verstehen.
In terms of analyzing the relationship between
language and music as systems of transcription, it is
interesting to note that the first texts which had
presented such difficult interpretational problems were
musical texts in the Middle Ages. Hence, it is not so
surprising to discover that textual problems initially
discovered in the medieval study of musica and which later
resulted in the tri-partite division of it into its instru
mental or functional aspect (instrumentalis), its perfor
mative or contextual aspect (humana), and its transcen
dental nature (mundana) would eventually be exhibited in
theories dealing with other kinds of texts. Interpreting
any written document, Ast seems to be repeating, is
extremely problematic, a discovery that seems to have been
delayed in the study of language texts. It is only with
255
the shift in emphasis away from grammar and meaning, a
level which never really provided a hindrance in musical
studies, and towards probing the impliciations of the
textuality of language that the problematics associated
initially with medieval music texts are considered four
centuries later in literary ones. There is a pattern in
both disciplines which indicates that a critical interest
in writing— and writing is here defined according to its
most strict definition as any inscription that creates a
document— generates serious questions about the rela
tionship (or even existence) of meaning and any systematic
attempt to both record and decipher that meaning.
Even if the interest shown by philosophical herme-
neuticists could be understood as a variation on the
pattern of semeiographics first exhibited in medieval
studies of musica, this did not prevent the supremacy of
linguistic texts from remaining intact. Ast emphasized
that the form any written text took was provided by speech
as the most direct expression of Geist (Gadamer 114).
Wilhelm Dilthey would later emphasize the importance of
this idea in his examination of Schleiermacher by asserting
that the linguistic text was recognized as the most inter
esting or valid vehicle for understanding the human mind
because "only in speech does the inner life of man find its
fullest and most exhaustive, most objectively compre
hensible expression. That is why the art of understanding
256
centers on the exegesis or interpretation of those residues
of human reality perserved in written form" (Dilthey 233).
Despite a shift in emphasis to the textual nature of a work
and a redefinition of what actually constitutes a text,
philosophical hermeneutics tends to promote the importance
of spoken language above all other communicative
activities.
In spite of the precedence given to spoken language as
the initiator of all texts, Schleiermacher did not
completely discount the importance of non-linguistic mental
activity in the process of Verstehen. Instead he described
the relationship between Verstehen and Nachbildung as a
two-part process set into motion by the text, but one not
completely dependent on words for its success. The gram
matical, historical and transcendental parts of the whole
which define understanding are only revealed through the
process of its reconstruction— hence the paradoxical herme
neutic maxim that the entirety of a work can only be
revealed when its individual parts are understood, but that
these parts can only disclosed with a re-experiencing of
the whole. If interpretation takes place within a herme
neutic circle that actually re-enacts the genesis of a
work, then textual exegesis potentially has the importance
of the original creative act. Moreover, the process of not
knowing the whole without knowing the parts (and vice
versa) emphasizes the dynamic exchange that takes place
257
between wholes and parts once one has stepped into the
hermeneutic circle.
This process of being thrust into a series of events
whose connection with each other is not immediately obvious
but whose overall unity is never questioned is a narrative
and poetic technique Brentano frequently employed, one
which can already be seen at work in "Der Sanger." The
connections between the separate vignettes are only
revealed with the telling of each tale, and Theresa
summarizes the hermeneutic problem faced by all readers
when she admits in her introduction that her soul is too
full and that all of her various stories have flowed into
each other so that she can no longer separate one from the
50
other. The narrative emphasizes the hermeneutic leap
implicitly necessary in the telling or understanding of any
tale. This process is neither linear nor straight-forward,
but rather one in which both teller and reader must work
backwards and forwards within the tale as it enlarges,
momentarily ignoring some events in order to make
connections between others. This kind of activity
describes not only Brentano's vision of art as it is
presented in "Der Sanger" and many of his poems, but it
represents a coherent working-out of hermeneutic processes
by a group of Romantic writers who lived in Jena and Berlin
at the beginning of the 19th century. For this reason,
Friedrich Schlegel, one of the foremost figures of this
258
group, could write in the Athenaum that although many
Classical texts have only survived as fragments, Romantic
51
texts are fragmentary at the moment of their genesis , or
further:
Die romantische Poesie ist eine progressive
Universalpoesie. . . . Nur sie kann gleich dem
Epos ein Spiegel der ganzen umgebenden Welt,
ein Bild des Zeitalters werden. . . . Andre
Dichtarten sind fertig, und konnen nun voll-
standig zergliedert werden. Die romantische
Dichtart ist noch im Werden; ja das ist ihr
eigentliches Wesen, dafi sie ewig nur werden,
nie vollendet sein kann (Fragment 116, 2: 182-83).
The importance of the fragment for German romantic
writers was that it immediately exposed and emphasized that
any text has the potential for being simply part of a
larger text. By exalting the fragmentary nature of all
texts, including those whose pose— or to use Brentano's own
expression Gewand, whose veil or mask— is one of
completion, Romantic poets immediately challenged not only
the classical traditions of Western literature, but also
they challenged the very limitations of logic as a method
of understanding. The hermeneutic process of simul
taneously working outward from the part and inward from the
whole could easily apply not only to an individual text,
but to the larger text of each reader's experience. This
process is emphasized not only by the fragment, but by any
written document when the speaker, along with all the
259
intonational and other contextual clues which the speaker
brings with him, is absent. Schleiermacher foresaw the
difficulties implicit in the hermeneutic approach and
attempted to forestall extremely radical applications of it
by asserting that not every string of words that may appear
to be related constitutes a unified thought because the
mind sometimes associates unlike concepts:
Nicht jede zusammenhangende Rede in gleichem
Sinn ein ganzes ist, sondern oft nur eine freie
Aneinanderreihung von Einzelheiten, und dann
ist ein Verstehen des Einzelnen aus dem Ganzen
gar nicht aufgegeben (Gadamer 153)
The method of determining whether or not a string of
remarks or a text constitutes a unified whole is to read
and reread with a particular consciousness (mit bestimmtem
Bewufltsein) searching for the clue of unification:
Da mussen wir ofter vom Ende zum Anfang zuriick-
kehren und das Auffassen erganzend von neuem
beginnen (Gadamer 154).
It is questionable how successful Schleiermacher was
in curbing the growth of a radical hermeneutics because the
close exchange between logic and intuition demanded by the
hermeneutic project was repeatedly emphasized by German
Romantic writers. Ultimately the division separating
subjectivity and objectivity came under such close scrutiny
260
that the original definition of a text was supplemented by
Schlegel to include virtually any kind of memorabilia:
Ein Dialog ist eine Kette, oder ein Kranz von
Fragmenten. Ein Briefwechsel ist ein Dialog in
vergroflertem Mafistabe, und Memorabilien sind
ein System von Fragmenten. Es gibt noch keins
was in Stoff und Form fragmentarisch, zugleich
ganz subjektiv und individuell, und ganz objektiv
und wie ein notwendiger Teil im System aller
Wissenschaften ware (Fragment 77, 2: 176).
Whereas Ast's definition of a text as a mere residue of
speech had been expanded by Schleiermacher to include
virtually any activity which employed language, Schlegel
liberally interpreted a text to include not only dialog but
also letters and other "memorabilia." In this sense, a
fragment is virtually anything which memory can clothe or
hide in order to transform it into a text which can
engender thought and reflection. Here, along with
attacking the distinction between objectivity and subjec
tivity, Schlegel has also made a distinction between
"chains" of fragments established by dialog or letters, and
a "system" of fragments established by memorabilia, any of
memory's artifacts. The power of memory is its ability to
define ever larger networks. Within this larger network,
strands of dialog only comprise a smaller part.
The related questions surrounding objectivity and
subjectivity as well as the definition of a text as a
261
residue of speech receive a particularly interesting exam
ination in the Brentano poem "Phantasie filr Flote,
Klarinette, Waldhorn und Fagott." Although Brentano gave
voices to musical instruments in other works (see the
"Symphonie' * section of Gustav Wasa), the philosophical
implications of musical instruments which are able to speak
is underscored in this poem by repeated uses of hermeneutic
terminology:
Waldhorn
Das Vorhangs leises Beben
Erschreckt mich nicht,
Und kann ich nicht erstreben
Das eigne Licht,
So wandl1 ich schon und stille,
Ein Kind, dahin:
Mich griiSt durch fromme Hiille
Ein heilger Sinn.
- lines 23-30
The hunter's or French horn often appears in
Brentano's poetry and prose as a symbol of the desire to
strive beyond the confines of a personal vision in order to
52
discover new intellectual horizons. Certainly the horn
of "Phantasie" casts the ability to wander, especially to
wander silently, in a positive light. But there is a
danger in relying too much on symbolism in establishing
musico-literary relationships. First of all, there is
nothing particularly "musical" about this or any other use
262
of symbolism. Secondly, although establishing a system of
musical symbols might indeed contribute to interpretation,
this kind of activity tends to promote the matching of
symbols to one and only one correspondent idea. In this
manner John Fetzer reads the many different instrumental
solos in "Phantasie" in much the same way, as acts of
"self-cognition ... on the path of individual isolation
to social integration" {Fetzer Orpheus 94). This approach
toward the relationship of music and literature really
cannot account for how or why these symbols work, and it
certainly cannot address the symbolic potential of music as
compared to language, a level which Brentano felt was
extremely important in view of his comparison of symbols in
language with echoes in music in the introductory lines of
"Der Sanger." More importantly, some musico-literary
studies which attempt to establish a system of musical
symbolism in an author's work tend to ignore that which
does not have any obvious or immediate musical reference.
Such is the case in the poem "Phantasie” and Brentano's use
of explicit hermeneutic terminology such as Hiille and Sinn.
In clarifying the relationship between the different
kinds of hermeneutics, Ast described writing or the letter
as the shell or Hiille of the spirit and its messenger or
interpreter as its Sinn. Schleiermacher attempted to fore
stall the difficulties presented by the tendency of the
hermeneutic circle to expand perpetually by placing respon
263
sibility for control of the circle's boundaries on the
shoulders of a a competent reader. This ideal reader was,
of course, intended to be exasperated by the hall of
mirrors which constitutes the Romantic movement in German
poetry. What Brentano accomplishes in "Phantasie1 1 is to
allow the poetic construct of the speaking voices of
several musical instruments to meditate on their individual
and mutual hermeneutic fates. The result is a poem which
illustrates the relationship of music and poetic language,
and the role which writing plays in both. The repeated
juxtaposition of shell and germ acts as a device for
comparing music with poetry. By questioning the boundaries
of music and language as well as examining those areas such
as the echoes and symbols created by inscription where they
overlap, Brentano eventually begins to re-define the
boundaries between the inside and the outside of the poem.
Before analyzing the poem in depth, it is helpful to
summarize briefly the implications of the fantasia in
musicological terms. The fantasia, like the prelude with
which is was associated in Rousseau's Dictionnaire, was an
instrumental display of technical and creative virtuosity,
usually on a keyboard or stringed instrument. Also, for a
number of reasons including its origin in vocal performance
and the freedom from the confines of a set programme that
it maintained, the fantasia is closely associated with very
subjective and emotional performance. J. S. Bach used the
264
designation "fantasia" as a title for the improvisatory
preludes he set before a fugue. However, C. P. E. Bach, in
his Versuch iiber die wahre Art das Klavier zu spielen
(1753-62), was quite specific in defining the fantasia as
the "true musical creativeness in which the keyboardist
more than any other executant can practice the declamatory
style, and move audaciously from one emotion to another"
(Denis 1: 660-61). Modern musicologists, perhaps following
the distinctions made by the two Bachs, have defined two
types of fantasias. The first group, which also includes
preambles and preludes, are musical works whose specific
purpose is to introduce the works which follow. An example
of this kind of fantasia would be the fantasy improvisation
used by Beethoven to precede the hymn in his Choral
fantasia. The musical themes in these fantasias are to a
large degree supplied and dictated by the music of the
larger piece which follows. The second group of fantasias,
which also includes the toccata, is a type of musical piece
which is composed primarily to display the skill,
creativity and expressive range of the musician through an
53
independent work. Fantasias, even more than preludes,
have evaded definition by strict form, an example of anti
form that is hard to appreciate in the context of the
experimentation that has gone on in 20th century music, but
one whose implications were still quite strong in the early
19th century. One of the reasons that it is so difficult
265
to describe fantasias is that they vary greatly depending
on the composer, the society and time in which they were
written. In many ways fantasias, more than any other
musical genre, represent the Zeitgeist of a culture.
Despite this variability, fantasias do share a few
common characteristics. Although the rhythm can be quite
complex, with augumented and diminished measures seemingly
added at random, the melody is usually unchanged throughout
the piece. In general, fantasias are often meditations on
one melodic idea interpreted in its various and diverse
aspects. Although they are rhythmically discontinuous,
fantasias are frequently divided into clearly marked
sections. Their peculiar quality, according to C. P. E.
Bach, is that they are able "to declare through the medium
of pure instrumental music, to approach the boundary
between word and note without having recourse to words"
(Sadie 16: 389).
In keeping with the general description of a fantasia,
Brentano's "Phantasie" is divided into ten clearly marked
sections wherein twice, each of the four instruments is
given a solo which is then followed by a section marked
Alle sung in unison. In addition, the rhythm of the poem
is quite irregular, a quality which Brentano punctuates by
his use of rhyme:
266
Stille Blumen,
In der Liebe Heiligtumen
Nicht entsprossen,
Welken nieder.
Siifie Lieder,
Ohne Echo hingeflossen,
Kehren nimmer wieder.
Klarinette
Doch zeiget der Spiegel im Quelle
So freundlich und helle
Das eigne Gebild,
Wies fliichtig in rastloser Schnelle
Sich eilend geselle
Und Welle an Welle
Dem Leben entquillt.
- lines 1-14
It is quite tempting, especially after C. P. E. Bach's
definition of the fantasia, to attempt to establish a
declarative voice for each of the instruments. But this
approach, like the exploration of musical symbolism, would
confuse any discussion of the relationship between music
and language as they are expressed in the poetry. More
over, one important characteristic of Brentano's verse is
that he often emphasizes those ways in which poetry is
obviously not music, and in one sense Brentano's under
taking is an inversion of Bach's statement about the goal
of a musical fantasia: how can the poet approach the
boundary line between word and note without having recourse
to music. The introductory lines of the poem hint that
music can not gain access to the privileged state of
267
remembering without some kind of assistance. According to
the flute, songs without echoes, like flowers which cannot
sprout— that is flowers literally lacking seeds or Hiille—
simply disappear. The clarinet directs us to look into the
mirror of the spring or source where, in wave upon wave, a
reflection of that particular form is signed (zeiget der
Spiegel im Quelle das eigne Gebild). Read in terms of the
parallel histories of musical and linguistic writing, yet
another poet directs us back to the source of the River
Alph, the alpha-beta of writing which originally provided
the inverted or reflected signs for musical writing. The
riddle here is uncovering where one kind of writing ends
and the other begins in a pool where continuous wave upon
wave produces inversions and reflections of the signs we
have used to document the development of the mind. And, as
in "Der Sanger," seemingly disconnected pieces of a puzzle
are presented so that the telling of the tale uncovers or
creates the gaps wherein the work reaches its completion
through some agent outside of itself. The importance of
echo, seed and reflection reinforce the overall theme in
the poem of the fertility intrinsic to incompletion.
What Brentano has established in the poem is a multi
layered examination of hermeneutic activity in which the
relationship between music and language and of both to
writing play an important role. First he poses a herme
neutic question that is almost absurd: If a flute or
268
clarinet or any instrument could speak, what would it say?
The answer apparently is that it would pose a riddle by
suggesting that nothing including flowers, music and even
the poem itself exists unless it can manufacture the seeds
of its own reproduction, its own echo or its own
reflection. Then Brentano further explores how these
Nachbildungen can be recovered. Again, the instruments of
this fantasia, in an inversion of the musical prototype,
avoid the declarative statements usually associated with a
musical fantasia by insisting on telling us where things
are not:
Fagott
Was wir suchen, ach, das wohnet
Unerkannt
Uns im Herzen, unbelohnet;
Und die Hand
Haschet stets nach ausserm Schimmer.
Was wir nicht umfassen,
Das miissen wir lassen;
Denn wir fassens sicher nimmer.
lines 47-54
That which is most sought after is, inevitably, impos
sible to grasp; instead, what lies within our reach is
superficial glimmer. The appearance of the hand at this
point in the poem is remarkable for a number of reasons.
Although there is a certain disappointment in having to be
satisfied with the "outer appearance," it is not at all
269
clear whose hand is reaching towards this graspable, but
unsatisfactory goal. Is this the hand of the bassoon, the
player of the bassoon, or of someone or something else? At
this point, after repeated oblique references to poetry, it
is not unreasonable to expect that this hand could belong
to the poet. However, hands in other of Brentano's poems
offer clues to the identity of this hand.
At the end of the "Einleitungsterzinen" which act as a
prelude to the extremely long set of poems Romanzen von
Rosenkranz, another hand appears. These introductory
stanzas appear in other editions of Brentano's work under
various titles such as "Aus der Kindheit" (Werke 31-38) and
"Ruckblick iri die Jahre der Kindheit" (Eine Auswahl 1: 9-
19), and the origin of this verse in memory or Nachbildung
is quite clear despite the textual difficulties associated
54 .
with documenting Rosenkranz. The "Einleitungsterzmen"
present a complex story about a youth's religious doubts,
his wanderings and eventual return to the Catholic church,
although Brentano's purpose was not simply a Christian
narrative so much as he wanted to present a contemporary
epic of how consciousness comes to terms with a number of
different problems (Vordtriede 155). There is a close
association throughout the entire Romanzen between music
and a transcendent experience, but at the end of the intro
duction the youth expresses a desire which indicates music
is bound together with something more than religious
270
conversion:
Da war mein Herz im Innersten ergrimmet,
Ich fiihlte recht, was mir zum Dasein not;
Ein Himmelblau, in dem die Hoffnung schwimmet,
Ein Schmerz in meiner freien starken Hand,
Die ihn nach ihren Melodieen stimmet.
No longer is the voice at the center of the circle of
Dasein. Instead an astonishing image is created whereby
direct pain by forcing it to sing a melody of hope. These
hopes, in turn, "swim" in the sky, a reference which
recalls the Quelle or spring seen before in Alastor and
described as well by the Klarinette in "Phantasie" (lines
8-9). Finally, the three lines that tell what Dasein has
dictated as its most fundamental requirement actually form
concentric circles of reference in the poem by use of
pronouns which expand from the central image of the hand:
lines 255-59
the strong, free hand of the poet is able to control and
r
Ein Schmerz ihn
Die Hoffnung schwimmet nach ihren
t
Melodieen stimmet.
271
Brentano repeatedly establishes the same relationship
between poetry and music as that which philosophical herme
neutics described as the inner and outer operations of the
interpretation of any text. The circle of music and poetry
is not closed, but one whose outer edges and inner core
perpetually oscillate in mutual reflection. Both poetry
and music are paradoxically a part of each other, and
Brentano moves freely back and forth, describing poetry as
a kind of music and music as a kind of poetry. In a
remarkable letter to Otto Runge, asking him to provide the
marginalia for Romanzen, Brentano claims that he has
written these verses only because he is unable to paint:
Denn konnte ich zeichnen, ich wiirde es nie
gedichtet haben. Es ist nicht dieses Lied,
selbst, das ich liebe, es ist die Fata Morgana
iiber meinem versunkenen irdischen Paradiese,
das Nest eines verbrannten, aber nicht wieder
erstandenen Phonixes, in dessen Asche blasend
ich diese Gestalten gesehen habe, aber ich
konnte sie nicht zeichnen, ich muJJte sie
singen mit gebrochener Stimme (Vordtriede 156).
The "broken voice" of this poem is a pale copy of
Brentano's original vision and its substitution, albeit an
unsatisfactory one when compared to Runge's visionary
paintings, with poetry. Like the hand in Phantasie, which
must sometimes be satisfied with only reaching for the
outer glimmer of things, when one speaks in Brentano's
poetry, it is never with a voice of authority but only with
272
a variation of this broken voice. One such broken voice is
the babbling, innocent voice of childhood:
Klarinette
Und wer mit beiden
Nicht kindlich spricht,
Dem leuchtet kein Licht,
Der findet den Ein- und Ausgang nicht,
Der kann nicht kommen, nicht scheiden.
- Phantasie, lines 65-69
Brentano's own broken voice is a distinctively visual
poetics. Poetry for Brentano is music or Lied insofar as
it is written or inscribed in the full sense of the word
zeichnen. It is this transcription of both poetry and
music that forms the seed or Hulle that insures a regen
eration in memory.
By replacing the authority of voice with a visual
poetry strongly connected with painting and signing, music
and writing, Brentano further explores a theory of poetry
that Schlegel had previously expressed in Gesprach iiber die
Poesie. Schlegel had proposed a formless and unconscious
poetry that preceded verbal poetry:
Diese aber ist die erste, urspriinglliche, ohne
die es gewifi keine Poesie der Worte geben
wiirde. . . . Die Musik des unendlichen Spiel-
werks zu vernehmen, die Schonheit des Gedichts
zu verstehen, sind wir fahig, weil auch ein Teil
des Dichters, ein Funke seines schaffenden
Geistes in uns lebt und tief unter der Asche
273
der selbstgemachten Unvernunft mit heimlicher
Gewalt zu gliihen niemals aufhort (2: 285).
The Verstehen associated with this new poetry is an
activity connected less with deciphering words than it is
associated with comprehending a type of music which
Schlegel aligns with an infinite Spielwerk or network of
understanding. Also embedded in Schlegel's flamboyant
rhetoric are many of the references which will make their
way into Brentano's verse, including the babbling voices of
laughing children and an architecture of play best illus
trated by music. Despite the exaggeration of the function
of Geist, a tendency which much Romantic poetry and prose
fostered and from which Nietzschean criticism still has not
allowed it to recover, Schlegel is primarily arguing
against the pre-eminence of logical understanding and an
assumption of the closure or completeness of texts which
dominated 17th and 18th century classicism. The more
beautiful poetry which Schlegel imagined was one that
encircled the Geist of the past while simultaneously
fashioning for itself a state of continual becoming. While
this link with ancient poetry was important in romantic
poetic theory, it was not simply a return to a former kind
of writing as much as it was intended to foster a new
poetry able to push continually beyond the moment of its
genesis into the future.
274
Wie sich auch die Zeit will wenden, enden
Will sich nimmer doch die Perne,
Freude mag der Mai mir spenden, senden,
Mocht' Dir alles gerne, weil ich Freude
mir erlerne,
Wenn Du mit gefaltnen Handen
Freudig hebst der Augen Sterne.
- Wie sich auch die Zeit
will wenden, enden, lines 1-6
The problem that Brentano confronted in his verse was
how to fashion perpetual openness out of the closed struc
ture which constitutes the poem— that is, how to approch
the boundary between the poem and die Musik des unendlichen
Spielwerks from the language side of C. P. E. Bach's defi
nition. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the problem
of Theresa in "Der Sanger" as well as the hermeneuticist,
both of whom attempt to bridge the gap between them and the
original characters who comprise their texts. However,
instead of reaching backward across time into a poem, an
activity Schlegel described as reverse prophecy, Brentano
experimented here with extending out of the poem into the
future. Typically, the manipulations of textual signs
proves to be extremely important as Brentano emphasizes, at
the end of each line of "Wie sich auch die Zeit," that our
expectations of where formal line divisons should be are
arbitrary and easily manipulated. This love poem evokes
the see-music transmitted by looks and gestures which both
Shelley and Lamartine utilize, and its reappearance in
275
Brentano is also accompanied by singing:
Voglein euch mag's nicht gelingen, klingen
Darf es nur von ihrem Sange,
Wie des Maies Wonneschlingen, singen
Alles ein in neuem Zwange; aber daB ich
Dein verlange
Und Du mein, muBt Du auch singen,
Ach das ist schon ewig lange.
- lines 19-24
This poem provides another example of the self
consciously visual dimension of Brentano's poems and of
their importance as Zeichnen or signs. The poem opens with
a homage from the speaker to his beloved, but it is not
until the third stanza that it becomes clear that she is
not present. The ambiguity of the last line, "Ach das ist
schon ewig lange," leaves the question of her return
unanswered; the eternally long time that has passed could
be either their separation or the bridge of time that their
mutual singing has made for them. The ambiguity that
extends beyond the end of the poem, the question of whether
this is the end or the beginning for the lovers, is
mirrored graphically on the page. The end of every first
and third line is actually the beginning of the second and
fourth lines. What logic and rationalization teach us to
expect in terms of beginnings and endings can not and
should not always be trusted. By extension, absolute
interpretation or singularity of meaning demands a
276
completeness which is always questionable.
Unlike either Shelley or Lamartine, however, Brentano
utilizes music to distort the time frame of his poems in a
severe way. In the last line of this stanza, "Ach das ist
schon ewig lange," there is a recognition of the mutual
dependence of the two songs. The bird as a harbinger of
Spring, the change of seasons and the forward movement of
time sings a song that is dependent on the song of the
poet, the one who shapes his songs into poems which reach
out through time. Their dependence upon one another, like
the see-saw of Dasein and Sosein which moves the inter
preter back and forth in the hermeneutic circle, is an
infinite truth which holds them together in the cradle
endlessly rocking between music and language.
Brentano's poetic meditations on the relationship
between music and language bring the aesthetic problems
that concerned the Fruhromantikern into sharper focus. The
problems of closure presented by the physical limitations
of the poem, attacked to some degree by the use of fragment
and altering the standard rhythm and rhyme of the poetic
line, was actually an extension of a problem in language
itself. How does a poet use poetry and language to point
beyond poetry and language? One possibility which Brentano
repeatedly explored lay in the resources of music and how
musical perception differs from the activity of perceiving
and understanding language. The fundamental argument that
277
the German Romantic poets employed against both the Kantian
and the Fichtian models of perception was the strict
separation of the perceiver from the object perceived.
Another mode of perception outlined by Brentano in his
poetry was to link the perceiving self to the world in such
a way that the perceiver would not be able to unhinge
himself from that which he was observing. The linking of
the self to the passage of time was neither an internal
ization of an exterior world nor was it an inflation of the
ego to encompass a greater space. Rather it was a shift in
a definition of self based primarily on a disconnection of
it from the Kantian sense of time as an objective, mathe
matical construct. No clearer description of this process
was given than that by Jean Paul in a brief fragment titled
"Die Tonkunst als das hochste Echo der Welt11:
Wenn die Tone sprechen, konnen wir nicht unter-
scheiden, ob sie unsere Vergangenheit oder
unsere Zukunft aussprechen. . . . Denn kein
Ton hat Gegenwart und steht und ist; sein Stehen
ist nur ein bloSes Umrinnen im Kreise, nur das
Wogen einer Woge. ... so sind sie ja das
irdische Echo der Ewigkeit, und der Mensch hort
an ihnen kein AuiJen, sondern nur sein Innen und
ewiges Ich (32: 266).
This process can be seen at work in "Wie sich auch die
Zeit" when the tense of the commands and observations made
in the present throughout the poem are suddenly brought
into question. In the final statement of the poem, the
278
poet confesses that all of what has just presently come to
pass has been occurring for an eternity. If Brentano's
poems are read as repeated assaults on the false barrier
that has been erected between present time and the past and
future, his uses of musical reference become pivotal points
in each verse. It is in music that the dividing line, not
only between perceiver and the object perceived but also of
the dividing line between past and present time is most
indistinct. This unbroken continuum represents a powerful
idea:
Weit bin ich einhergezogen
Ober Berg und viber Tal,
Der treue Himmelsbogen
Er umgibt mich iiberall.
Unter Eichen, unter Buchen,
An dem wilden Wasserfall
MuJ3 ich nun die Herberg suchen
Bei der Lieb Frau Nachtigall.
Die im brunst'gen Abendliede
Ihre Gaste wohl bedenkt,
Bis sich Schlaf und Traum und Friede
Auf die iruide Seele senkt.
Und ich hor' dieselben Klagen
Und ich hor' dieselbe Lust
Und ich f iihl' das Herz mir schlagen
Hier wie dort in meiner Brust.
Aus dem Flufi, der mir zu Fiissen
Spielt mit freudigem Gebraus,
Mich dieselben Sterne Grvissen
Und so bin ich hier zu Haus.
Echo nimm dir recht zu Herzen
Und erlern1 die Melodie
Meiner Freuden, meiner Schmerzen:
Ameleya! Ameleyl
279
Bliihet stolz ihr Konigskerzen,
Ameleya! Ameley!
- Abendlied des Mullers
Radlauf, lines 1-24
This poem is quoted at length for a number of reasons.
First, it is typical of the verses Brentano as well as
other German romantic writers often inserted into their
prose, additions which have been widely interpreted as the
55
fusion of literature and the Volkslied. The obvious use
of four-beat, four line stanzas does evoke traditional
folksong. However, many of these folksong insertions
actually interrupt the narrative and this, combined with
their tendency toward triteness, often makes interpretation
seem superfluous. But there is a more subtle fusion of
music and language at work in these insertions which is
actually masked by the obvious use of folksong techniques.
This poem originally appeared in a fairy tale, and a
prose section inserted after the sixth stanza continued the
narrative of the main character who sits on the bank of the
Rhine and repeats the name Ameley (Brentano 1: 1091). Love
has made this repetition possible by transforming the soul
of the lover into a mirror which infinitely multiplies the
name of the absent loved one (lines 34-35). This is a
process learned from Echo (lines 21-22) after the hero
discovers a refuge from the strangeness and wildness of the
world (the Fremde) where he can transform his perception of
280
the world through song. In his study of Brentano's poetry,
Emil Staiger equates this process more with Brentano's
utilization of fantasy and magic than with music (75-76).
But this approach along with the "musicalization" of
literature through the mimicry of the Volkslied leave the
relationship between symbols and echoes fully unexplored,
delegating responsibility for further work to aestheticians
and metaphysicians.
The inserted song, like a solitary fragment or one
link of a chain, is a paragon of absolute purity, virtually
devoid of any contextual clues which might lead to its
deciphering. The first two stanzas describe an experience
of disorientation from self in an idyllic setting, a subtly
ironic treatment of romantic cliche typical of Brentano's
poetry. Stanzas four and five repeat the first two
stanzas, for the narrator hears the same sounds and sees
the same stars, but a change has taken place. It is only
after the Lied of Frau Nachtigall that the verbs horen and
fuhlen appear. Although the narrator emphasizes that all
is the same as it was before, the change that has taken
place is the discovery of a new way of listening not simply
through learning but through erlernen, through acquiring
the rudiments of a new language. It is just this ability
to hear a-new that transforms the wilderness from something
very strange into something quite familiar (jsu Haus).
Because the "Abendlied" is associated with sleep,
281
dream and peace, one could argue that the poem is about
death, and the resurrection which closes the poem is a
religious experience leading to salvation. Given
Brentano's personal history, his religious doubts and
eventual conversion, this is an acceptable interpretation.
On the other hand, the experience of music has already
appeared in Brentano's verse associated with a hermeneutic
leap of insight. In this poem, it provides the under
standing of how nothing really changes and how the
continually shifting and strange panorama that passes for
perception is simply a mirage, that is, more of a
subjective mirror of the world than any objective
assessment of the world. Instead, if it were possible to
rethink our perception of the world in the same way that
music forces us to relearn how to listen, we would under
stand that what takes place around us can never be
separated from our perception of it.
This activity represents more than a synaesthetic
collapse of visual and audible experience. Poetry and
music intersect at a nexus of subjectivity and objectivity.
Any utilization of language, a self-enclosed system of
inter-dependent rules, will always tend to rely on a sense
of completion. Music, on the other hand, better represents
the collection of fragments upon which a system of
experience has been erected, the Spielwerk of incompletion
which is concealed by words and their meanings. Poetry,
282
caught within the boundaries of language, can at the very
least approach its own limits through fragmentation and
incompletion. As seen in the poem "Abendlied," the
importance of moving language beyond its accepted
boundaries lies not in the potential chaos this process
implies— this fertile ground would be abundantly harvested
by the Symbolist poets. Instead, Brentano emphasizes the
cumulative force of the past which every present moment
embraces. Moreover, this symphysis was not a passive
undertaking, but an active one which defied the logic and
sequentiality inherent in Aristotelean metaphysics. The
function of music in this kind of poetry is that the act of
Verstehen regarding music embodies a perceptual reversal.
Music revives what we suspect but forget in our mundane
interaction with the world through language. Through music
and musical perception, however, we perceive that logical
understanding, like the movement of time and history, is
simply another, not less but certainly not more valid,
invention of the mind.
Armed with the new sensibility that music implies, it
becomes more and more obvious that Brentano used music in
his poetry to actually undermine subjectivity and over
emotionalism. A common Romantic cliche has defined music
as the art which best expresses feelings and emotions, or
as Irving Babbitt stated in his study of European Roman
ticism, "Music is exhalted by the romanticists above all
283
other arts because it is the most nostalgic. the art that
is most suggestive of the hopeless gap between the 'ideal'
and the 'real' " (94). Babbitt's criticism is aimed at a
movement he felt was concerned to the point of megalomania
with the private and personal self, but a re-examination of
Brentano's use of music reveals that musical understanding
actually reforms the individual's perspective so that it is
placed at some mid-point between the distortions of either
pure logic or pure emotionalism. Babbitt's "hopeless gap"
begins to take on a renewed vitality as Brentano invests it
as the place of the most interesting mental activity.
Es sang vor langen Jahren
Wohl auch die Nachtigall,
Das war wohl siifier Schall,
Da wir zusammen waren.
Ich sing und kann nicht weinen,
Und spinne so allein
Den Faden klar und rein,
Solang der Mond wird scheinen.
Da wir zusammen waren.
Da sang die Nachtigall,
Nun mahnet mich ihr Schall,
Dafi du von mir gefahren.
So oft der Mond mag scheinen,
Gedenk ich dein allein.
Mein Herz ist klar und rein,
Gott wolle uns vereinen.
Seit du von mir gefahren,
Singt stets die Nachtigall,
Ich denk bei ihrem Schall,
Wie wir zusammen waren.
Gott wolle uns vereinen,
Hier spinn ich so allein,
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Der Mond scheint klar und rein,
Ich sing und mochte weinenl
- Der Spinnerin Nachtlied
The Spinnrad of this poem as well as the Radlauf of
the "Abendlied” both maintain the status of the wheel as a
symbol for the ontological status of music, and the consis
tency of Brentano's musical symbolism has provided Fetzer
among others with ample interdisciplinary topics. However,
music works consistently in other ways in Brentano's
poetry, some of which contradict traditional views of the
meaning of music in European romanticism. Quite often in
Brentano's poetry, music is the only method by which one
can avoid slipping into self-centered egotism, and this
stanza tells us why: It is impossible to sing and cry at
the same time, but one can sing and spin. The potential
for weinen as a collapse into self is always present, but
this destructive desire is halted by the active acts of
singing/spinning. The reference to spinning works on many
levels, the most obvious being the reference to the
goddesses Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos (the Greek Moirai
and Roman Fates or Parcae) who prepare, spin and cut the
thread of time. The network associated with spinning and
weaving is the same Spielwerk associated with music, and
both represent the larger system outside of weinen or over
weaning self-concern. Again, the graphic presentation of
285
the poem on the page amplifies its meaning. There are
three rhyme sounds which end the lines (if the repeated
variations on weinen-allein are understood as an internal
rhyme of the same sound), and each of these three sounds is
repeated in a rhyme scheme (abba cc'c'c) that becomes the
woven fabric of the poem. The repetition and variation
that takes place on the phonetic level of the poem also
occurs with entire lines, for example, in the transfor
mation of klar und rein to describe first the spinning
thread, the heart and finally the moon. Music in the form
of singing constitutes a framework which prohibits a
complete degeneration into self-absorption, loss, lone
liness and nostalgic longing. Ultimately, the
spinner/singer is emblematic of memory, imagination and
fantasia and is not a spinner of cloth, but rather a
spinner of poems.
The myth of the Moirai is especially interesting in
relationship to "Per Spinnerin Nachtlied" because it
confirms the pattern continually associated with the
appearance of music in Romantic poetry. As Plato recounted
the myth (Republic, X, 617c), the three goddesses sit on a
band that encircles the eight Sirens each singing their
note of the cosmic harmony. As a myth that explained the
abstract concept of time, Clotho sang of the present,
Lachesis of the past and Atropos of the future. Thus, the
spinner in the Brentano poem shifts between three verb
286
tenses, making repeated references to the past, the present
and the future. Furthermore, as Plato described their
activities, Clotho assisted with her right hand the
rotation of the outer four circles, Atropos with her left
the inner four, and Lachesis alternately with both hands,
all of the circles of heavenly harmony. The spinner is
originally then not primarily a singer so much as the
player of a gigantic, cosmic lute, and the hand of this
player as the sign of the hand of the musician-cum-
transcriber once again makes its appearance in Romantic
poetry.
Spanning Babbitt's gap and re-fashioning it into a
place of confrontation between intellect and emotion is the
method by which Brentano exercises his most skilful
poetics. Moreover, it is precisely within this gap that
the infinite creative potential (Schlegel's Immer Werden)
can be expressed. Therefore, the movement of poetry nearer
and nearer to the boundary which separates it from music is
actually another way of exploring this space and consti
tutes Brentano's own experimentation with poetic fantasies.
In the poetry examined thus far, music and song actually
push perception out of a trap of self-absorption into the
creative process of reconstruction or Nachbildung, the
product of which was, for Brentano, always poetry.
}
The error of such approaches toward romanticism which
Babbitt exemplifies stems from the tendency to read this
287
process as simply a linear progression through time. This
is a mistake, pointed out earlier, that is inherent in
language. Poetry for Brentano was the bringing into play
of the dynamism between the two opposite poles of music and
language. The affinity with hermeneutics is felt again
quite strongly, for the paradox of the hermeneutic circle
is not to know the whole in order to perceive the parts,
nor is it to know the parts in order to perceive the
whole— both impossible pursuits. The problem as it is
posed in textual interpretation at every level is to accept
the co-existence as well as the uncertainty of both halves.
Finding a solution to this "problem" is less important than
exploring the possible relationships that can exist between
two terms which initially appear to be contradictory. This
is the dynamism inherent in Romantic poetry. We are given
all the clues necessary to unhinge our thinking from
logical and rational solutions. No particular answer is
expected, or even desired.
What we discover then in Brentano's use of music in
his poetry is that he juggles two terms which are not only
extreme opposites but which are also able to exchange
certain characteristics while maintaining their opposition.
For example, the ineffability of music is juxtaposed
against the clarity of voice, only to be followed with a
demonstration of the ambiguity of voice compared to the
clear truth of music:
288
Wasser fallen um zu springen;
Um zu klingen, um zu singen
Schweig ich stille, denn zu sagen
Ware wagen und entsagenl
- Friihes Liedchen,
lines 17-20
Water falls only to spring up again in the same paradoxical
but true way in which silence is a way of surmounting a
voice associated primarily with calculation and renun
ciation. The elegance of Brentano's versification is
displayed by the enjambment in the middle of the stanza
that allows the singing not only to be associated with the
ringing of the rising waterfall but also with the singing
of his silence: um zu singen schweig ich stille. Once
again, a music associated with silence, and here explicitly
the silence of written poetry, is found superior to the
57
voice that must weigh and calibrate each word.
It is this denial of the authority of voice that
relies on clear reference and meaning that reveals the
importance of the trichotomy Brentano repeatedly estab
lishes in his poetry between klingen, singen and schweigen.
In the short poem, "Sprich aus der Ferne," the voice out of
a distance is revealed to be one not of a spoken word
through a distance of space but of a sung word that rings
silently across the distance of time:
*
289
Glanzender Lieder
Klingender Lauf
Ringelt sich nieder,
Wallet hinauf.
Wenn der Mitternacht heiliges Grauen
Bang durch die dunklen Walder hinschleicht
Und die Biische gar wundersam schauen,
Alles sich finster, tiefsinnig bezeugt:
Wandelt im Dunkeln
Freundliches Spiel,
Still Lieder funkeln
Schinunerndes Ziel.
Alles ist freundlich wohlwollend verbunden,
Bietet sich trostend und trauernd die Hand,
Sind durch die Nachte die Lichter gewunden,
Alles ist ewig im Innern verwandt.
Sprich aus der Ferne,
Heimliche Welt,
Die sich so gerne
Zu mir gesellt!
- Sprich aus der Ferne,
lines 17-36
The overwhelmingly visual nature of both poetry and
song is again repeated by references to the silent
sparkling of resplendent songs. Moreover, the ringing and
singing and stillness form a continuum that is proffered by
a hand that can, despite the confusing and circuitous
winding of the lights, unify them all. The hand, in the
most obvious interpretation of the poem, could be the hand
of God which helps lost ones find their way through the
darkness. But an alternative reading proposes that this
hand is the hand of the poet, the hand which is able to
inscribe silent songs. Furthermore, three acoustic
290
elements in the poem combine to form a pattern uncovered
earlier in the discussion of the semiotics of medieval
music: klinqen or ringing is the sounding of musica
instrumentalis, singen or singing is the level of musica
humana, the singing voice of mankind, and stillen or
schweiqen is the stillness or silence of musica mundana, an
unheard and silent cosmic music. In this sense, the poem
offers itself as a guide to the alternative levels on which
a linguistic model fashioned from the perceptual categories
musica could operate.
This tripartite pattern is repeated in the "Einlei-
tungsterzinen1 1 of the Romanzen der Rosen when, upon
entering a church and hearing the choir sing his name,
Brentano undergoes a profound experience:
Der Alte machte mir des Kreuzes Zeichen,
Mit Weihewasser er mich tiichtig sprengte,
Befahl mir dann, jzu horchen und zu schweigen.
Die Seele sich in meine Ohren drangte.
Als laut im Chor sie meinen Namen sangen,
Entziicken sich mit tiefer Angst vermengte.
Die Worte mir wie Feur zur Seele klangen:
"O clemens, o pia, o dulcis virgo Maria!"
- lines 139-46
(emphasis is mine)
Words ring (klinqen) like a fire in the soul because they
are sung. But this is a song which can only be heard in
silence; hence the admonition from the elder to "horchen
291
und schweigen." What Brentano attempts is a revival of the
three levels of perception at which music operates, the
acoustic, the contextual and the ineffable. Poetry insofar
as it awakens and emphasizes this plurality is reaching
toward the boundaries without resorting to music in an
inversion of Bach's definition of the fantasia.
One assumption implicit in both the hermeneutic
process of textual interpretation and the Romantic project
according to Schlegel and Brentano is that the divinity of
the artist's interpretation allows him to become, as in
Durer's famous self-portrait, the knowable and knowing
shadow of God. One of the insights offered by Brentano's
poetry is the interdependence of all ideas. Read in this
manner, a poetic exploration of the relationship and inter
dependence between music and language is both a philo
sophical and artistic task of the highest order. This
quality, combined with the refusal of the German Romantic
poets to define perceptual categories according to paired
oppositions is demonstrated by Schlegel's proposal of a
Symphilosophie of artistic creation. Schlegel used this
term to designate a utopian culture based on an ever-
widening circle of exchange between the arts and the
sciences. A society based on such an attitude toward
knowledge would produce, according to Schlegel, the very
heights of Romantic poetry and literature (Fragment 125, 2:
185-86). The best expression of this kind of artistic
292
understanding is demonstrated in the arabesque or the Witz,
or any art form which does not rely solely on logic or
intellectualization for its appreciation:
Wenn man in der Mitteilung der Gedanken
zwischen absolutem Verstehen und absolutem
Nichtverstehen abwechselt, so darf das schon
eine philosophische Freundschaft genannt
werden. Geht es uns doch mit uns selbst
nicht besser. Und ist das Leben eines
denkenden Menschen wohl etwas andres als
eine stete innere Symphilosophie? (Bliiten-
staub Fragment 20, 2: 164).
The first step in moving out of the trap which may
occur when perception finds itself caught between two
oppositions is a Selbstbeschrankerung, a conscious
reduction of the importance of individual perception in
order to ascertain its boundaries and limitations. This
process is absolutely critical to the survival of the
artist as a creator for, as Schlegel expressed it, the
artist who can not reduce himself will in turn be reduced
by the world (Lyceum Fragment 37, 2: 151). In "Nachklange
Beethovenscher Musik," this same process can already be
seen at work:
Gott, dein Himmel fasst mich in den Haaren,
Deine Erde reisst mich in die Holle,
Herr, wo soil ich doch mein Herz bewahren,
DaS ich deine Schwelle sicher stelle?
Also fleh ich durch die Nacht, da fliessen
Meine Klagen hin wie Feuerbronnen,
Die mit gluhenden Meeren mich umschliessen,
293
Doch inmitten hab ich Grund gewonnen,
Rage hoch gleich ratselvollen Riesen,
Memnons Bild.
- lines 25-34
Brentano establishes a correlation between clear
perception and the creative act of winning ground somewhere
between two extremes which threaten to tear him apart.
This ground-winning process does not occur by annhilating
the two opposite poles, but rather it takes place through
the conscious creation of a third possibility. The tremors
which eventually led to Hegel's reply to Kantian aesthetics
are felt here, but the process which allows Brentano to win
ground in the middle is the "Nachklange," the recall of the
music in the mind of the poet, a hermeneutic Nachbildung.
But this activity, by its very nature, ignores distinctions
between time frames. In this particular poem, just as
there can be no distinction between the performance of
Beethoven's music and the ringing after of it in the poet's
mind, there is no clear distinction between Beethoven's
music and its evocation in poetry.
Einsamkeit, du stummer Bronnen,
Heilige Mutter tiefer Quellen,
Zauberspiegel innrer Sonnen,
Die in Tonen uberschwellen:
- lines 1-4
294
Again, a deep spring or well magically mirrors the
innermost being of this poet, a process which overflows
from the fountain as tones. The source of this spring is
named here as solitude (Einsamkeit), but the pattern of
music as a reflection of some inner Dasein is a familiar
one. Brentano wrote these fragments within an hour after
having heard Beethoven *s Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht
bei Vittoria, and although he expressed his desire in a
letter to the composer that he would like to edit and
expand them into something more complete (Vordtriede 35),
58
the lines have remained in their fragmentary form.
By the last section, the fountain which overflowed in
musical tones has been transformed into a poet who is able
to know and poeticize this singularity:
Selig, wer ohne Sinne
Schwebt, wie ein Geist auf dem Wasser,
Nicht wie ein Schiff die Flaggen
Wechselnd der Zeit und Segel
Blahend, wie heute der Wind weht.
Nein, ohne Sinne, dem Gott gleich,
Selbst sich nur wissend und dichtend,
Schafft er die Welt, die er selbst ist.
- lines 38-45
Several important clues about the relationship between
music and language, and of both to writing, are contained
in this stanza. The first clue is offered by the image
seen before in Alastor of the drifting ship as a vehicle
295
for the poet who could not write. Instead, Brentano
proposes that the one unencumbered with Sinne, a difficult
word at best to translate but here probably meant as a
thoughtful or judicious disposition, can glide like a
spirit above the water, and an echo of Lamartine's
migratory bird can be clearly heard. However, while
classical poets would lament the winds of Fate that sweep
the powerless soul along, such as Goethe's lament in
"Gesanq der Geister iiber den Wassern,1 1 Brentano transforms
this passive description of Geist into a quite active and
creative force.
Secondly, if the poet struggles to transform himself
into one who, without Sinne, is like a god, then it is only
fair to ask what kind of god this is. In the first stanza
of the poem as the musical tones overflow the fountain,
another description of the effect of Einsamkeit is given:
Und nun klingen all die hellen
Sternenspharen meiner Seele,
Deren Takt ein Gott mir zahle.
- lines 10-12
The evocation of cosmic music is obvious, but when these
lines are compared with "Der Spinnerin Nachtlied," the
connection between music and the hand of the writer as the
player of the cosmic lute can be made. The god who counts
out the rhythm of these spheres is the god Memnon, the
296
Colossus of Apollo at Rhodes which straddled the harbor and
with whom the lute was closely associated.
Finally, Schlegel argues strongly that Nachklange is
concerned primarily with the writing down of language in
the form of poetry as a kind of activity made possible only
by a certain kind of insight offered by music. In the last
section of the Brief, the important roles of Witz,
Arabesque and Fantasie are clarified. They are, for
romantic poetry, the most valuable verbal equivalent of the
Spielwerk that is inherent in music. After presenting his
famous definition of "romantic" as the presentation of
sentimental themes in a fantastic way, Schlegel then states
that painting had moved away from the important element of
fantasy after it abandoned the techniques practiced by the
Venetian masters. In contrast, music remained true to an
imaginative nature, a term Schlegel designated as
"sentimental." The emphasis on the sentimental nature of
music and all good romantic art is not one which places
highest regard on unbridled emotion; rather, Schlegel was
most interested in exploring those avenues of perception
and understanding which did not rely on logic or intellec-
tualization. Hence, he reserved his highest praise for any
art that, like music, fundamentally incorporated Ratsel and
Fantasie:
Nein, es ist der heilige Hauch, der uns in den
297
Tonen der Musik beriihrt. Er lafit sich nicht
gewaltsam fassen und mechanische greifen, aber
er laflt sich freundlich locken von sterblicher
Schonheit und in sie verhiillen? und auch die
Zauberworte der Poesie konnen von seiner Kraft
durchdrungen und beseelt werden (2: 334).
That quality of music which poetry can attain is the
emphasis on its own transience. Hidden in it, beyond the
mechanical grasp of logic and intellect, is the nature of
what is truly sentimental and romantic. What is most
important in this endeavor is not the confusion or chaos
instigated by an incomplete puzzle— such as the detective
story which is successful only because information is
withheld from the reader. Rather, as in "Per Sanger, ” all
the clues to the puzzle are provided, although not in any
logical or sequential order. These musical poems or
narratives must often be read more than once before they
are comprehended. And the moment of comprehension, if it
occurs, is that transitory moment of ravishment, a
combination of surprise and wonderment and understanding
which Schlegel and the German romantic movement in general
associated most strongly with music.
The final piece of the puzzle of the relationship
between music and poetry in "Nachklange Beethovenscher
Musik" is slipped into place with a parallel rereading of
both Schlegel and Brentano. In his definition of the
sentimental as its relates to both music and poetry in the
298
Brief, Schlegel uses description and terminology that find
their way virtually verbatim into Brentano's poem:
Was ist denn nun dieses
Sentimentale? Das was uns
anspricht, wo das Gef}hl
herrscht, und zwar nicht
ein sinnliches, sondern das Nein, ohne Sinne
geistige. Die Quelle und dem Gott gleich
Seele aller dieser Regungen ist
die Liebe, und der Geist der Liebe
muG in der romantischen Poesie
iiberall unsichtbar sichtbar Wer ohne Sinne schwebt
schweben wie ein Geist auf dem
(2: 333-34). Wasser
The correspondence between music and the poetic use of
language never lies within the boundary of meaning but
rather only in the process revealed by those two different
arts pulling consciousness and perception apart like the
spirit in "Nachklange" grasped from above by the hair and
from below by the ankles. For Brentano, "musicalization"
of poetry is not simply an emphasis on rhythm, meter and
sound. Rather, musicalization is the richness and
potential that is uncovered by taking language closer and
closer to music, approaching ever nearer to the boundary
that separates them and, most importantly, re-defining this
boundary not as something that divides them but rather as
an interface along which the two arts can interact in such
a way that forces the perceiver to deal with contradiction
and paradox. In "Nachklange Beethovenscher Musik,1 1 a
299
certain tension is created by searching for a subject of
the poem: is the poem addressing itself to the after
tremors of music in the mind of the poet or the after
tremors of the poem in the mind of the reader? These kinds
of questions are left unresolved in the character of the
singer. In the last stanza, Brentano praises the spirit
sweeping across the water who knows and poeticizes himself,
and Brentano closes the poem with an ode to the singer:
Aber geteilt ist alles.
Keinem ward alles, denn jedes
Hat einen Herrn, nur der Herr nicht;
Einsam ist er und dient nicht.
So auch der Sanger.
- lines 48-52
The singer, for Brentano, is not a figure who synthe
sizes the two arts of poetry and music so much as this
figure, like Memnon, spans a division. The vitality of
this figure is its power to redefine the nature of a
boundary. The one who stands at an interface may see
differences in the world, but it is this figure who bridges
t
them as well. Read in traditional terms the line "Aber
geteilt ist allesI" might well be a lament for the
divisions that seem omnipresent, such as the division
between man and God, or according to Babbitt as all the
divisions that plague a romantic mind which continually
longs for the ideal of unity. But read in terms of a
300
Romantic aesthetics strongly influenced by philosophical
hermeneutics, this misreading becomes glaringly obvious.
Division for Brentano is a cause for celebration in the
sense that these divisions, particularly the one between
music and language, provide just that fertile interface
wherein the most creative of perceptual breakthroughs can
be born. For Brentano, the romantic quest lay not in
synthesizing multiplicity or reducing differences into a
great and unified whole. Instead, the singer in each of us
realizes that divisions and boundaries provide the greatest
and most productive moments of our existence, ones in which
we are able to explore the boundaries and limitations of
our own ways of understanding the world.
301
CONCLUSION
The changing relationship between music and language
admitedly takes place within a broader general history of
the changing place of language in relationship to our
understanding of the world. All language, and in parti
cular poetic language, has undergone a transformation which
illustrates a basic shift in ontology, from the Greek
analysis of the realm of being defined by the senses to the
post-Kantian reflexivity of a self-perceiving being created
through and by its own languaging capability. From this
point-of-view, the status of language can be perceived as
having evolved through four distinct levels: language as
unreflected experience; language as a method of reflection
upon experience; language as a method for the reflection
upon reflection, a kind of second reflection which Adorno
named as the most acute level of cognition and under
standing; and language as the condition for levels one
through three. It is this fourth all-inclusive function of
language which currently dominates discussion in the philo
sophy of language. However, one way of charting the
changing relationship of music to language is to question
the dominion of language and to perceive of these
302
categories less as ones which dictate experience through
language and more as categories through which many-
different kinds of perception are expressed.
An example of this would be to propose that music and
literature— and here literature is the category for all
language art— were never separated nor were they ever
united. Certainly there have been times in the history of
art when the two appeared to have been quite closely
aligned, as in ancient Greek theories of music and poetry,
while at other times the two seemed to be quite far apart,
as in Hollander's description of the untuning of the sky in
the 16th century. However, this sensation of the ebb and
flow in the relationship of music and language is a
projection of a particular kind of historical awareness
which a priori seeks to discover change. Under the
conditions of defining interrelationships based on the
changing status of language, it is not surprising to find
that at some moments unity will be perceived while at
others, independence is promoted. Any history of the
inter-relationships between the arts will tend to follow
just such a pattern.
This investigation has sought to redefine and explore
the relationship between music and language on the basis of
their shared characteristics as systems of transcription.
Examined from such a perspective, music's place in liter
ature has undergone as many transformations as literature's
303
own consciousness of itself. However, from a grammato-
logical perspective, musical and linguistic writing
evidence a quite unified relationship by consistently
mirroring and inverting transcriptional characteristics.
Moreover, a re-reading of Romantic poetry with an eye
towards these patterns reveals that the literary text can
be inhabited by other kinds of writing, and these char
acteristics of musical writing undermine assumptions about
how any text functions. With great regularity, the decon-
structive characteristics of the linguistic text are asso
ciated with music, and perhaps a comparative analysis of
another grammatology, particularly the grammatology of
mathematics, would reveal other grammatological rela
tionships. Additionally, tracing the process by which
musical writing penetrates and usurps the authority of
language within the poetic text reveals new similarities
and differences between the major European Romantic
movements.
By way of a general summary, the appearance of music
in literature has more often been understood as a symbol or
metaphor for some other not necessarily musical concept or
idea than it has as a signal of another sign system which
can operate within the text. The wholsesale acceptance of
this idea in European letters is evidenced by the persis
tence of musical metaphor, not only preceding the Romantic
movement, but especially after it. Symbolist poets, a
304
group frequently cited for their interest in exploring the
relationship between music and poetry, explored several
ways in which "musical" elements impinged on the poetic
text. Perhaps the best documented experiments were those
with sound patterns, particularly in the attempt to re
create through words the aural quality of melody. But a
second quality of the Symbolists' experments with music was
the attempt to stretch the concept of a metaphor: what is
musical in language came to mean the quality of indirect
reference, the avoidance of naming, and the creation of the
web of suggestion rather than the concretization of
description. All of these were certainly methods of incor
porating that non-specificity of meaning which music seemed
to embody. But the Symbolists' conceptualization of music,
although it shook deep-rooted assumptions about the nature
of language, was ultimately another metaphor: music repre
sented the concept of pure idea. Their interest in music
was aligned with exploration of other arts, particularly
graphic ones, and ultimately their experiments were synes-
thetic ones which attempted to create a word-sound-vision
complex that has its closest relative in Wagner's
description of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Ultimately, the
interest of Symbolist poets was not focused specifically on
the relationship of music and language so much as it was an
attack on the nature of perceptual categories and how these
categories promoted a closed, or at least extremely narrow,
305
understanding of the world.
In Germany, much the same kind of poetic experimen
tation took place in the last half of the 19th century.
After the publication in 1803 of Bernhardi's Sprachlehre,
the idea of a verbal music, that is, the conscious poetic
mimicry of a melodic line through the use of vowel shifts,
captured much attention in Germany as well as France.
Brentano's "Nachklange Beethovenscher Musik" as well as his
Romanzen evidence this interest. Additionally, many German
poets copied the stanzaic formula of Volkslieder, as Heine
did in his Buch der Lieder, or saw their rather immemorable
verses set to music, as did Friedrich Rvickert and Wilhelm
Muller. Only much later did the interchange between poets
and composers take on a more complex and more interesting
relationship in the poetry of Stefan George, Hugo von
Hoffmansthal and Rainer Maria Rilke. But even with these
poets, music is more often understood as a Nietzschean
symbol for a passionate and blind irrationality that has
been called the Dionysian in art than music has been
conceived as an intricate and inextricable reminder of a
special kind of textuality.
The disappearance of music in poetry as something
totally separate from symbol or metaphor, that is the
conception of music as textual expression independent and
capable of interacting on an equivalent level with
language, was never more complete in any European literary
306
tradition than it was in English arts and letters of the
late 19th century. The pre-Raphaelite poets bore a strong
resemblance to the French Symbolists in their interest in
the relationship of poetry to the other arts, particularly
to painting. However, this very short-lived movement was
quickly overshadowed by the Victorian poets whose interest
in poetic language was, above all else, based on an explor
ation of the power of language. Hence, John Stuart Mill
could propose aesthetic categories in his essay "What is
Poetry?" based on the differences between poetry and
oratory: The first category applied to all art which
expressed human feelings and emotions, while the second was
primarily dramatic and representational art. These cate
gories applied not only to poetry and prose, but to music
and painting as well. Mill cited Beethoven and Mozart as
examples of poetic musicians who spoke directly to the
human heart through their music as contrasted with Rossini,
whose dramatic operas were less authentic, therefore more
pathetic and oratorical. Although synesthesia intrigued
English poets as much as it did French and German poets in
the late 19th century, a conceptualization of music as an
independent vehicle for the exact and precise expression of
philosophical ideas is virtually absent from English
letters.
One way of understanding the traditional methods of
examining music in literature is to think of all interdis
307
ciplinary discussion as a particular kind of discourse.
This discourse includes not only relationships between the
arts as they are discussed in criticism and interpretation,
but also interdisciplinary discussion in poetry and prose.
In Fundamentals of Language, Roman Jakobson proposed that
all discourse is developed along two semantic lines: one
topic can lead to another through the similarity of the two
and their internal relationship which is dependent upon the
ability to substitute one topic for another in a metaphoric
process, or topics can be connected through their conti
guity, the external constituents of context which allow the
two topics to be combined in a metonymic process. "In
normal verbal behavior both processes are continually
operative, but careful observation will reveal that under
the influence of a cultural pattern, personality, and
verbal style, preference is given to one of the two
processes over the other" (90).
The metonymic or horizontal axis of sign combination
depends for its success on the separation of any two terms.
Therefore, returning to interdisciplinary criticism as a
specific kind of discourse, assuming that a metaphoric
relationship between music and language (or between music
and any other idea) is at work actually insures the
separation of the two terms. Moreover, this assumption
actually masks those moments in which music and language
could have another relationship because, according to
308
Jakobson, the metaphor depends for its success on the
separation of object and referent. However, along the
other discourse axis, the metonymic axis of combination,
Jakobson described how syntactically coherent sequences are
composed out of bits and pieces of signs. Based on his
findings, Jakobson discovered that patients suffering from
aphasia could be divided into two groups. Those suffering
from a similarity disorder could not make basic associative
relationships and perform such linguistic acts as naming,
or using definitions or synonyms. All of these are
activities which depend on the ability to use metaphor. In
contrast, patients suffering from a continguity disorder
could only perform the reverse operations. Substitution of
one word for another was common, but these words could not
be arranged into syntactical strings. Severe cases of this
type of aphasia eventually led to a breakdown in the
ability to combine phonemes into words.
It appears that there is an analogy between Jakobson's
aphasia patients and the current state of interdisciplinary
discourse. In this case, the patient has been suffering
from a continguity disorder whereby the whole of inter
disciplinary criticism as a kind of discourse has been
based upon the use and function of music as a metaphor.
Little attention has been paid to either investigating
associative or metonymic relationships between music and
language or to exploring how both contiguity and similarity
309
define interdisciplinary analytical processes which could
be combined into a comprehensive theory of interdisci
plinary exchange. At its final and most extreme stage,
interdisciplinary critics have found it virtually
impossible to break out of the metaphor axis and comprehend
another way of how music and language could interrelate in
a text.
Even experiments by the Symbolist poets, who were
fascinated by the prospects of stretching the verbal and
strictly metaphoric uses of music in poetry by
experimenting with connotative or syntactic combinations of
sounds, eventually fell prey to the metaphoric use of
music. When Verlaine proclaimed in Romances sans Paroles,
"De la musique encore et toujoursI" Michaud comments that
"On dirait que dans une telle poesie, le lanqage se
vaporise, se resorbe dans la melodie" (1: 120). However,
these statements are equivalent to Lamartine's comment in
the Preface to Les Preludes that he plays on the instrument
of language just as one would play on a musical instrument.
Despite the newness of the metaphor and the possibility
offered by establishing some other relationship than a
metaphoric one between music and language, to a large
degree Verlaine's and other Symbolists' discussions
maintain the metaphor of language as music and poetry as a
musical instrument.
Theoretically, then, the metonymic use of music in
310
literature does not require an explicit musical reference.
Instead music becomes a code operating within the text
which can establish another kind of textuality that works
simultaneously with language from inside the written text.
This sort of text becomes infused with rather than a
referent for music. Scher has already pointed out that
this position is paradoxical, perhaps even untenable ("What
Next?" 21). Yet Scher concedes that, strange as it may
seem, a conservative New Critic such as W. K. Wimsatt had
already pointed interdisciplinary studies in this direction
over thirty years ago:
It is necessary to expose oneself to the charge
of being paradoxical. For poetry approximates
the intuitive sensuous condition of paint and
music not by being less verbal, less character
istic of verbal expression, but actually by
being more than usually verbal, by being
hyperverbal (220).
Despite the unexpected correlation between New
Criticism and elevated flights of speculative fancy, the
cautiousness of New Critical methodology is clearly demon
strated by the danger that Wimsatt implies is involved in
exposing oneself to the charge of being paradoxical.
However, such exposure is sometimes necessary; in fact, the
unabashed step into the paradoxical maze is a basic
component of understanding how the arts work together.
Often the interworkings of the arts are so complex that any
311
examination of this relationship is a process of the critic
putting himself at risk in terms of exposing what he or she
initially assumes about art, and by extension perception
and understanding, and then allowing all of these
assumptions to be called into question.
T. W. Adorno has suggested extremely fruitful models
for comparing language and music in his Asthetische Theorie
as well as in several of his essays on both music and
aesthetics. The relationship between music and language is
one which is neither open to logical examination nor made
readily accessible by direct inquiry. The most crucial
concepts in Adorno's discussion center on the terms
Sprachcharakter, Sprachahnlichkeit and Musikahnlichkeit.
The Sprachcharakter or language nature of all art is the
simultaneous claim to and denial of meaning:
Ihre [Kunstwerke] Transzendenz ist ihr
Sprechendes oder ihre Schrift, aber eine
ohne Bedeutung oder, genauer, eine mit
gekappter oder zugehangter Bedeutung.
. . . Eine von den Paradoxien der Kunst
werke ist, dafi sie, was sie setzen, doch
nicht setzen diirfen; daran miflt sich ihre
Substantialitat (7: 122).
The transcendental nature of art embraces both what is
spoken and what is transcribed— it is essentially that
claim to meaning that precedes any possible interpretation.
The nature of this claim reaffirms art's ability to
312
overcome reduction, but only by an inverted argument. The
language nature that inhabits all art is not an assertion
that art has no meaning; on the contrary, all art can be
and often is didactic, but Adorno views a concern with this
aspect of art as an abuse or misunderstanding of art's
language nature. Instead, Adorno emphasizes that what art
may or may not mean is always less interesting than the
fact that art has the ability to be invested with meaning
at all, and it is this characteristic which Adorno terms
the Sprachcharakter of art.
In his "Fragment iiber Musik und Sprache," Adorno
differentiates between two possible methods by which the
language nature of art is expressed. The first is through
Sprachahnlichkeit or the similarity of some arts, in parti
cular music, to language that is used in a meaningful way.
Music bears a certain resemblance to this kind of language,
particularly in the orderly arrangement of articulated
sound (16; 251-52). However, as Adorno makes quite clear,
although music is similar to language, to take these super
ficial characteristics as representative of the important
workings of music and assume that music and language are
similar is to seriously err in analysis. The fundamental
difference between music and language arises from their
differing relationship with meaning. We normally employ
language, according to Adorno, in an attempt to establish
an unmediated relationship with some absolute, either a
313
concept or an idea. To a certain degree, this same attempt
is made with music; however, because no naming takes place,
any musical experience immediately calls the activity of
longing for unmediated expression into question by
concealing or blinding its object from the mind’s eye:
Musik trifft es unmittelbar, aber im gleichen
Augenblick verdunkelt es sich, so wie iiber-
starkes Licht das Auge blendet, welches das
ganz Sichtbare nicht mehr zu sehen vermag
(16: 74).
Like language, music attempts to capture and name intention
and thereby connect it with meaning. But music can never
name this intention, can never bind it with an abstract
concept. Instead, music can only focus on the perpetual
moment of wanting to name. This moment is the birth of
intention in all that is sprachahnlich, but by focusing on
this first moment, any art is able to become musikahnlich
by pointing backward toward a moment of intentionlessness.
This act of reversal is at the very heart of Adorno's
larger philosophical discussion of the negative dialectic,
but for the purpose of this study, this concept reveals
that which is fundamentally musikahnlich:
Musikalisch sein heifit, die aufblitzenden
Intentionen zu innervieren, ohne an sie sich
zu verlieren, sondern sie zu bandigen. So
bildet sich Musik als Struktur (16: 253).
314
Adorno offers Kafka's shattered parables as an example of
the ennervation which prevents intention from slipping into
naming. According to Adorno, Kafka has purified the
language of meaning and, as if language were music, turned
it on itself. In direct contrast to what is usually
considered "musical" in literature, and here Adorno cites
the musical intentions proclaimed in the poetry of
Swinburne and Rilke, Musikahnlichkeit is the reversal of
intention. Instead of flowing out of the work of art,
intentionality flows into art which is similar to music
where it, in turn, is hidden. Adorno claims that Kafka
cleared a space for this kind of activity in literature
which no poet before him had ever cleared. However, this
study would like to suggest that although no poet had even
been as thorough as Kafka, perhaps there were poets who
cleared spaces in their poetry for musikahnlich moments.
In particular, when poets placed themselves on boundary
lines or divisions, they were essentially exploring those
separations of perceptual categories between music and
language which most puzzled and entranced them.
For Shelley, "to music" was transformed into a life-
sustaining activity, particularly for the poetry-maker.
Coupled with ellipsis and a grammatical straining of the
line that marks much of his poetry, Shelley also attacked
the use of music as a metaphor by using musical reference
in many different contexts to refer to many different,
315
often contradictory, ideas. Music is rarely taken directly
as a subject, but it is consistently a referent.
Furthermore, heard or performed music is synthesized with
an implied or silent music to form an unbroken continuum
within which the writing of poetry takes place. Hence
music is always associated with the creation of a certain
kind of poetic text. Alastor is the tragic story of a
forgotten poet who, in his searches, discovers the source
of writing at the spring of the River Alph. His death
occurs in a crevice on the boundary line between the
untamed music of the Aeolean harp and the possibility of
capturing this music within the textuality of poetry. In
contrast, the chained Prometheus is freed from his prison
located in the same ravine in which the poet of Alastor
banished himself, and he becomes the poet who is able to
move back and forth across the boundary line of intention
which separates language from music.
For Lamartine, the poet is neither trapped nor chained
on a boundary line so much as he is privileged in under
standing both of the languages which are at work in
poetry— the language of play and sound which he names music
and a language of meaning and meditation which is
associated with ordinary language. Sometimes these two
titans are in accord as in "Le Poete mourant,1 1 and some
times they are locked in a titanic struggle as in "L'Esprit
de Dieu." But the poet who is cognizant of both blurs the
316
false distinctions which separate these two languages, like
the migratory bird traversing the hazy horizon or the
solitary poet in "L1Isolement" whose poetry places him on
the maximum possible number of borders or borderlines at
once. Poetry is the place wherein the divisions between
music and language are not just blurred, but more
importantly the locus where making transitions between the
two is facilitated.
For Brentano, the puzzle is how to win space in
between language and music so that the poem can be written.
Writing is the planting of seeds which later sprout, but
this planting can only be achieved by winning ground some
where in the middle. The process of this ground-winning is
the use of a specific kind of memory so that Nachklang and
Nachbildung can be synthesized. Simultaneously, the poet
creates and bridges a space between two opposites, and in
the duplicity of this activity, Brentano presages Kafka.
This activity is one filled with risk, as Brentano
illustrates in "Nachklange Beethovenscher Musik" with the
image of the poet as one who is always at risk of being
torn apart by the opposing forces between music and
language, pulled upward by the hair and downward at the
ankles.
All three poets are concerned with the nature of
boundaries and divisions. This interest has quite often
been associated with the outspoken break between
317
Romanticism and Classicism, and has traditionally been
interpreted as part of the ongoing response in which
Romantic writers participated. But the traditional dicho
tomy between Classicism and Romanticism could also be
understood as a debate between language as a tool of
communication in comparison to some other kind of language,
and quite frequently this other kind of language is
described in terms of or with reference to music.
Ultimately, the discussion focuses on the relationship of
language to meaning, and the lines and boundaries and
divisions that abound between music and meaningful language
become a gap that is the perpetual deferral of meaning.
For Brentano, the poet creates a space which makes
distinctions and then spans them. For Lamartine, the poet
emphasizes the indistinct divisions along which the poet
moves and creates poetry along these horizons with ever-
increasing awe. For Shelley, the poet is a breaker of all
bonds and particularly those which restrict language, and
music is one of the methods by which he sets language free.
Despite their differences, all three poets are
concerned with what came before the poem itself. Working
backward into an exploration of its antecedents is, to a
very large degree, the Romantic poetic endeavor. In each
case, this exploration involves calling into question the
nature of the preface. According to Shelley, the rela
tionship between the poem and its prologue revealed the
318
limitations of poetry, and one way in which these
limitations were surmounted was through a kind of writing
that was often associated with music. For Lamartine, the
poem itself was nothing less than an exploration of the
prelude which always and forever preceded the poem, a
preliminary activity consistently associated with music.
For Brentano, the poem was an exercise of memory extension,
not only backward into that moment of inspiration which
gave the poem substance, but forward through time as well,
and it is music which best illustrates the power of the
generative activity of memory.
In a watershed essay titled "Literature and Music"
which attempted to clearly present the parameters of this
facet of interdisciplinary study in the 1960s, Bertrand H.
Bronson remarked that the promise held out by the seemingly
rich similarity of music and literature is far less than
what might have been expected or hoped:
But to assume that the verbal arts can adopt
and exploit the formal patterns and technical
devices of music, even in their simplest
states, with the same or similar effects, is
to be beguiled by the specious logic of a
shared terminology (Thorpe 129).
Bronson was correct in pointing out the limitations of
formulating interdisciplinary discussion in simplistic
terms. However, an exploration of the relationship between
319
language and music in Romantic poetry does not indicate
beguilement so much as it uncovers the poetic celebration
that non-specious logic simply does not exist.
320
NOTES
1
In addition to these two initial works, Porphyrius
makes a few remarks on the art of music notation in the
Commentaries of Ptolemy. In the following century,
Bacchius' e is iA r n rH r e x /v e x m o y s t k h z , Alypius ' f t s A r a r H
noYSTKH, the single most often used source for studies of
notation in the ancient world, and the AN£1HYJ^QY Z Y rrpA ttflA
Tre PI nOYSl KHZ (trans. Bellermann) appeared. But by the
time Boethius' De Institutione Musica was written in the
6th century A.D., much of what was known about ancient
Greek music notation had been altered to conform to a more
contemporary view of music philosophy (See Wolf 1: 11-12).
This brief list only concerns ancient Greek notation; for a
complete list of Greek texts on music see the article
"Music" in The Oxford Classical Dictionary.
2
Riemann 9-10. Riemann remarks that although it is
ultimately impossible to prove which scale preceded the
other, he tends to support the theory that instrumental
notation must have been developed before vocal notation
because instrumental notation is simpler. Riemann unfor
tunately provides few dates, but his assumption of the full
development of the Ionian alphabet, a date placed by Wolf
at around 500 B.C., leads to the conclusion that vocal
notation must have come at or after this time (See Wolf 1:
22 ) .
3
Rudolf Westphal, Harmonik und Melopoie der Griechen
(Leipzig: 1863): 269; cited in Wolf 1: 15.
4
Albert Thierfelder, "System der altgriechischen
Instrumentalnotenschrift." Philologus 56: 492; cited in
Wolf 1: 15.
5
Riemann 12. Riemann cites A. I. H. Vincent's "Des
notations scientifique a l'ecole d'Alexandrie" in Revue
archeologique, (Janvier, 1846) and Friedrich Bellermann's
Die Tonleitern und Musiknoten der Griechen (1847).
321
6
The circularity of Wolf's argument against Bellermann
is founded primarily on his preference for a scale that
would encompass the complete system of Greek music. See
discussion later in this section.
7
For a summary and discussion of Westphal's work see
Barbour, especially 8-9 for an explanation of the mathe
matical' ratios implied by quarter- and half-turns of Greek
musical signs.
8
This figure is adapted from Riemann 15. Because
Riemann provides so few dates, some of the dates for steps
I, I' and II were taken from other sources, especially
Rossbach/Westphal and Barbour.
9
See Rossbach/Westphal I/II: 95-100 for a complete
discussion of Ptolemy.
10
See discussion in Barbour, although much of his
argument on the importance of the third-tone jump has
already been given in Rossbach/Westphal.
11
For other examples see The Oxford Classical
Dictionary, 711.
12
Gelb 50-51. The term Satzschrift was originally used
in an article by Carl Meinhof, "Zur Entstehung der
Schrift," Zeitschrift fur aqyptische Sprache (1911): 1-14.
13
Gelb 61-63. Gelb's argument for such an early date as
the foundation of Sumerian writing is disputed. His
reasoning is that although it is impossible to date early
Sumerian pictographic tablets, there seems to be positive
proof that they influenced the development of Egyptian
hieroglyphics which can be relatively firmly dated around
3000 B.C.
14
Dates for this event differ radically between sources.
Jensen claims this rotation occurred after 2800 B.C. (88),
Diringer claims a date of approximately 3200 B.C. (37), and
Mason claims that fragments were "on their sides" in pre-
Babylonian hieroglyphic inscriptions dating from 4500 B.C.
322
(246).
15
Gelb gives no dates; these are taken from Jensen 90-
91.
16
Jensen 88. This is authenticated by the shift to
left-to-right inscription on monuments during the Kassite
rule, 1650-1250 B.C.
17
Ullman 27-28. Ullman points out that Semitic inscrip
tion evidences both right-to-left as well as left-to-right
writing, but that the Greeks, who initially adopted right-
to-left writing, soon abandoned it in favor of left-to-
right inscription.
18
See discussion in Croce, particularly "The Activity of
Externalization. Technique and the Theory of the Arts,"
111-17.
19
Recurring terminology used by some critics to describe
the relationship between music and literature include such
expressions as a "divorce" of the arts or a "sisterhood"
that has been somehow demolished. Herein lies fertile
territory, I believe, for an examination of the basis of
interdisciplinary rhetoric.
20
In particualr see Rose Rosengard Subotnik's article
"Musicology and Criticism" in Hoioman/Palisea.
21
Aristotle's famous equation of melodies with moral
qualities appears in the Politics (8, 1339-1342). In
addition to the section of Philebus discussed in this
chapter, Plato makes numerous and sometimes contradictory
remarks about the nature of music. Among them: the affec
tive theory of music, not only in its ability to influence
emotions but also music's ability to work a permanent
change on the moral character in the Republic (398c-399d)
and the Laws (653d-673a; 795a-812e); Plato's suggestion to
reduce the number of years of formal music instruction
because of the dangers of music in the Republic (531a-c);
an account of the creation of the world using imagery from
Pythagorean music theory in Timaeus (35b-36b); a descrip
tion of the soul as a harmony of reasoning, spirit and
sensual appetite in the Republic (442-44); and the myth of
323
Theuth as the creator of music, writing and grammar, and
the denigration of writing for its ability to induce
forgetfulness in the souls of those who learn it in
Phaedrus (59d-e).
22
The entire section in Of Grammatology titled "Writing
Before the Letter" deals with Derrida's new definition of
writing; see especially "The Outside the Inside" 44-65.
23
The Dialogues of Plato 3: 531-60. Trans. B. Jowett.
All further references to Plato are to this edition cited
by dialogue section number and letter.
24
See Strunk for more complete excerpts from Boethius1
De institutione musica.
25
This chart has been adapted from a discussion in
Edmiston 179-80.
26
Edmiston 181. For a discussion of Boethius' influence
on medieval music theory see Grout 23-25. For a general
discussion of Boethius' influence on the Middle Ages see
Rand 135-80.
27
For an especially detailed account of the poetic
devices used to trivialize such concepts as the music of
the spheres see "The Sky Untuned" in Hollander 332-422.
28
For a complete discussion of Johannes de Grocheo's
Theoria see Johannes Wolf, "Die Musiklehre des Johannes de
Grocheo," Sammelbande der Internationale Musikgesellschaft
1 (1899): 65-130. For further comment also see Sadie 9:
664-65 .
29
Peirce 2: 135. All further references to Peirce unless
otherwise noted are to this volume and edition indicated by
section number.
30
For a summary of Bacon's definitions in the Summa
Grammatica see Trentman 289-90.
324
31
The analogy between the Modistic model of speculative
grammar and that of Noam Chomsky's linguistic model of deep
structures has already been observed. See Trentman 279-
301.
32
This new view of the history of musical notation will
be discussed later in this chapter; also see Treitler,
"Early History."
33
In addition to Eco see Jakobson Writing 2; 700. Both
authors specifically cite the pointing finger as a typical
Peircean index.
34
For further comment on the disparity between Greek and
Latin meter see St. Augustine's De Musica, ed. Knight, 7.
35
St. Augustine, De Musica, II, iii, 3: 20. All further
references will be to this edition cited by chapter,
section and paragraph number.
36
Musicologists do not seem to have placed much impor
tance on musica ficta as a phenomenon of particular value.
Hence, discussions tend to emphasize that it either
followed or preceded other less problematic phases in music
composition; see Parrish (198) for a discussion of the lack
of accidentals in 13th century music and Apel (106) for a
discussion of the return to a more conservative music style
that reduced the use of accidentals in the 15th century.
37
For a complete discussion of rhythmic modes in
medieval music see Hoppin 221-28.
38
Copies of Sanctius' manuscript are unavailable. For a
complete summary and discussion see Percival 239-43.
39
No printed editions of da Buti's work exist. For a
complete description of the manuscript see Percival 250-51.
40
Hobbes 1: 14-15. Hobbes' terms siqna and notae are
usually translated as "signs" and "marks." I prefer to
translate the second term as "notes" not simply because of
325
the obvious connection with musical writing but also
because philosophers who wrote on music in Latin regularly
use the expression notae musicae. See the discussion on
Leibniz later in this section.
41
See in particular Leonard B. Meyer's "Meaning in Music
and Information Theory" in Music, The Arts and Ideas: 5-21;
the work of Ray Jackendoff, especially his review of
Leonard Bernstein's "The Unanswered Question" in Language/
53 (December 1977): 883-94, as well as Fred Lerdahl and Ray
Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1983; and Harold S. Powers, "Language Models and
Musical Analysis," Ethnomusicology 24 (1980): 1-60.
42
William Hazlett, "Coleridge's Literary Life" in
Complete Works. Ed. P. P. Howe (New York: AMS Press,
Inc., 1967) 16: 136. The complete quote is as follows:
Poetry is the music of language, expressing
the music of the mind. The musical in sound
is the sustained and continuous; the musical
in thought and feeling is the sustained and
continuous also. Whenever articulation passes
naturally into intonation, this is the beginning
of poetry. There is not natural harmony in
the ordinary combinations of significant sounds:
the language of prose is not the language of
music, or of passion: and it is to
supply this inherent defect in the mechanism
of language— to make the sound an echo to the
sense, when the sense becomes a sort of echo
to itself— to mingle the tide of verse, 'the
golden cadences of poesy,' with the tide of
feeling, flowing, and murmuring as it flows—
or to take the imagination off its feet, and
spread its wings where it may indulge its own
impulses, without being stopped or perplexed
by the ordinary abruptnesses, or discordant
flats and sharps of prose— that poetry was
invented.
43
See especially the essays on "Blake and the Progress
of Poesy" (193-205) and "Wordsworth, Inscriptions, and
Romantic Nature Poetry" (206-30) in Hartman.
44
All texts of Shelley's poetry and prose unless
indicated otherwise have been taken from Ingpen/Peck cited
326
by poem title and line numbers.
45
Alastor is an interesting synthesis of Wordsworth's
The Excursion with Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." Although
Wordsworth's appearance in the poem has received much
critical attention, Coleridge's contributions have not been
recognized. Among the many resemblances between Alastor
and "Kubla Khan" are Shelley's substitution of the lyre for
Coleridge's lie which opens "Kubla Khan" and Shelley's use
of the journey as a substitute for the diversion which
prevents Coleridge from remembering the dream which would
enable him to finish writing "Kubla Khan." This is the
subject of an article in progress on a structural analysis
of the Coleridge poem as a model for Shelley's Alastor.
46
Alphonse de Lamartine, Meditations. Ed. Fernand
Letessier. All texts to Lamartine's poems and commentaries
unless indicated otherwise are to this edition cited by
poem title and line numbers.
47
The relationship between the genre of the prelude and
sonata form provide an intriguing backdrop to the on-going
dispute over how much Liszt was influenced by Lamartine's
poem. The author of the article on the "Prelude" in The
Grove Dictionary of Music asserts that Liszt's symphonic
poem is entirely unrelated to the musical genre because
Liszt's work took its name as well as its programme
entirely from Lamartine. This would seem to confirm
Liszt's indebtedness to Lamartine, although this question
is still much discussed in musical circles. One thesis of
this brief study is that altogether too much weight has
been given to Lamartine's use of the word sonata, and not
enough attention paid to his use of the term prelude— and
indeed, there does seem to be an area where the two
overlap, an attitude that appears to have been shared by
both Liszt and Lamartine.
48
Clemens Brentano, Werke (Miinchen: Carl Hanser Verlag,
1963) 2: 484. All references to Brentano's poetry and
prose unless otherwise indicated are to this edition.
49
Friedrich Ast, Selections from Grundlinien der
Grammatik, Hermeneutik und Kritik in Gadamer/Boehm dll-
130). Also see summaries of Ast's work in Richard E.
Palmer, Hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1969): 75-81, and Joachim Wach, Das Verstehen
327
(Tubingen: Mohr, 1926-33) 1: 31-62.
50
Brentano 2: 484. The original German text is:
Meine Seele ist iiberfiillt. . . . Ich wollte
Dir die Geschichte des Mannes aufschreiben, der
jetzt hier bei mir auf dem Gute lebt, aber da
ist alles mit mir selbst zusammengeflossen, und
ich kann die Geschichte des Mannes allein nicht
mehr herausfinden.
51
Schlegel, Fragment #24, 2: 169. The original German
text is:
Viele Werke der Alten sind Fragmente geworden.
Viele Werke der Neuern sind es gleich bei der
Entstehung.
52
See Fetzer Orpheus: 74. Also see this same work (66-
80) for a complete discussion of musical symbolism in
Brentano's prose works.
53
These categories were initially proposed and discussed
in Margarete Riemann 253-74.
54
See commentary in Brentano Werke 1: 1193-1200. The
poem was produced over a number of years in various
versions. It was also freely edited by many of Brentano's
publishers.
55
See especially Calvin S. Brown's Tones into Words,
Mittenzwei's Das Musikalische in der Literatur and Scher's
Verbal Music in German Literature.
56
When Staiger does consider the question of the impor
tance of musical perception in Brentano's verse, he
observes that the origin of the rift between Natur- and
Geisteswissenschaften was led by Dilthey, followed by
Husserl and the neo-Kantian philosophers and finally
Heidegger, all of whom increasingly stressed that the
perception of the passage of time was a process that could
only be explained as an internal rather than an external
phenomenon. Staiger, however, stressed that this problem
was not the concern of students of literature, but rather
328
of those who were primarily interested in laying the
metaphysical foundations for a general anthropology (die
metaphysische Grundlequnq einer alleqemeinen
Anthropologie). The reticence of interdisciplinarians to
consider these questions, I believe, is the reason inter
disciplinary criticism has been so restricted in its scope.
57
The connection between silence and song has already
been documented in relationship to the Lorelei tradition in
German literature; see article by Heinz Politzer.
According to Politzer, however, the silence of this song is
a result of a seductive and fatal temptation that
symbolizes the poet's helpless dependency upon words rather
than it is an exploration of how the poem itself operates
as silent music.
58
The tripartite division of the poem which appears even
in critical editions of Brentano's work is a synthesis of
four short poems titled "Vier Lieder von Beethoven an sich
selbst" found in the Nachlafi of Beethoven's friend and
biographer Anton Kalischer with five verses titled
"Nachklange Beethovenscher Musik" published in the Vienna
Dramaturgischer Beobachter on January 7, 1813. Because
this study is concerned with images and references
repeatedly associated with music and not with the thematic
or structural unity of the poem itself, the version printed
in the standard edition of Brentano's work has been used.
Concerning the problematic genesis of this poem see the
article by Gerhard Friesen.
329
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340

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Asset Metadata

Creator Stanger, Claudia Sue (author)

Core Title Feigned chaos: A study of the relationship between music and language in Romantic poetry

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Comparative Literature

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag comparative literature,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-737330

Unique identifier UC11344533

Identifier DP22549.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-737330 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier DP22549.pdf

Dmrecord 737330

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Stanger, Claudia Sue

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA