Introduction
Throughout history, the relationship between literary and musical arts has varied from nation to nation and period to period. in ancient Greek music and poetry was one, nowadays we consider these art forms separately. Nevertheless, the connection never disappears and how they influence each other is a general subject of this research. Concretely then what is the relation between the poems and music in music form called art songs? I would like to focus on setting music to existing poems as a form of a composition. I want to investigate what is the relationship between the spoken word and melody, how I can express the meaning of the poem by music. Finally, research about the term art song, which is used across the board.
The inspiration for this topic came from my personal experience. It was hard for me to write satisfactory lyrics, therefore I ordered a second-hand books with poetry to get an inspiration for writting lyrics. One of the book was an anthology of poems, collected by Jaroslav Seifert, called Laska v pisnich z celeho sveta. Spontaneously took two poems and composed music for it. Then I have discovered that this music form has a tradition and I want to know more about that.
Setting music to poems is a field of study that is not often discussed and taught at schools. However significant music compositional movements related to this topic shouldn't be overlooked. The main compositional areas are German lied songs, song cycles from romanticism area. These forms lift up from a blurred history of the genre moving between troubadours, minstrels’ songs and sacral music. Insecure beggining of art songs and lack of education covering setting music to the poems encourage me to research this topic. Therefore I would like to focus not only on the theoretical relations between poems and music but also on the music expressions and how does it related to my compositional voice in twenthy-first century.
I think that by analysis of existing musical compositions as well as spoken word and inner melody of language I can establish musical patterns that help transform spoken word to a melody. Another research question will be, how the expression and transformation literal meaning into music. And finally how important is the performer? I will try to validate these results in my original compositions and arrangements. As my native language is Czech, I think it necessary for me to set music to Czech poems to avoid misunderstanding in a different language. The goal of the compositions represented via performance is the pass the meaning of the poems using a singer, string quartet, rhythm section and sound design.
As we consider that setting music to the poems is an art form and compositional technique, that should be an existing name for it. Often you can find the term 'art song' as an opposed term to pop song. But what does actually mean and where it came from?
Literature review
Setting music to the existing poems requires an understanding of two art forms. It is musical arts and literary arts. It is important to mention that “For the Greeks, as in Irish culture, poetry and music were one.” (McGrath, 2018 p.6) and they didn't conceive to reflect these art forms separately. “As soon as the art of music and literature began to draw apart, the possibility of one's influencing the other arose.” (Brown, 1970, p.97) How they were/are reacting on each other is then part of musico-literature studies. It was Horace's Ars Poetica than bring the first concepts of an interrelationship between arts. It was for centuries largely latent till 1606 Joachim Burmeister Musica Poetica, that “defines and classifies the musical figures of rhetoric along literary lines …” (Brown, 1970, p.) Eighteen-century then brought larger recognition in music-literature studies. By the time influential work by Abbe du Bos Critical reflection on Poetry, Painting, and Music (1715), Hildebrand Jacob's essay Of the Sister Arts (1734). In 1752 pioneering work in aesthetic of text and music called An Essay on Musical expression by Charles Avison was published. Daniel Webb published Observations in the Correspondence between Poetry and Music in 1762 and year later John's Brown A dissertation in the union and Power, the Progressions, Separations, and Corruptions of Poetry and Music had been translated into French, German and Italian. (Brown, 1970) [That is important to mention because it was the main areas, where an art song was later in romantic epoch widen.] In 1766 appeared the most important and recognizable essay of the interrelationship of the arts by Gotthold Ephraim Leessing called Lacoon. All these pioneer works of eighteens century mostly focus on the synthesis of arts. The exception is an essay by Joshua Steele called An Essay Toward Establishing the Melody and Measure of Speech to be Expressed and Pertuated by Peculiar Symbols. His work is closely related to the topic of setting music to the poems because “he attempted to adapt musical notation to the reading of poetry, designating pitch as well as rhythm ” (Brown, 1970, p.99) In this theory continued Sidney Lanier in study The Science of English Verse (1880) published almost hundred years later. Meantime nineteenth-century musico-literature investigations were led mainly by poets and musicians themselves. Their works were mainly manifestoes and polemics. Like first modern critical treaties is considered work by Jules Combarieu called Les Rapports de la musique et de la poésie, considérés au point de vue de l'expression. (1894). Not anyone agrees that the relationship between music and literature should be accepted as a field of study. Like Curt Sachs see it more like part of dualism. The arts “unite in one consistent evolution to mirror man's diversity in space and time and the fate of his soul.” (Sachs, 1946, p.18).
Despite critical reviews, that were addressed in musico-literary studies, this field started to be wide recognition in the twentieth century. It was important to outline how was the interdisciplinarity between music and literature perceived. Narrow the focus on poems and their relations with music is now valid. Moreover, it was the nineteenth century in which songs based on poems made the breakthrough. It is imperative to mention two directions where music-poem studies evolved. The first is the analysis of existing work of composer, which more or less doesn't aspire to prove any general analysis of musico-poem studies. The second direction is trying to find general parallels between music and poems. There is no reason why these two forms cannot be written by same person. Lawrence Kramer is a good example. His book called Music and poetry, the nineteenth century and after (1985) aspires to provide theoretical backgrounds. Whereas the book Song Acts: Writing on Words and Music (2017) are the analysis of compositions. Another important issue to mention is the mystery of the term 'Arts song'. As the explanation and polemic come later in this work. It is fundamental that the term art song is used in literature to cover the topic of musico-poem studies. Like in Barbara Meister's work called Art song: the marriage of music and poetry. This book is then more focus on an analysis of composers art songs. From historical and systematic works I would pick up Ivey Donald's Song: Anatomy, imagery and styles. (1970) This book presents an excellent, detailed discussion of the relationship between poetry and music in the song. Another book published in 1950 called La melodie et le Lied by Retuter Evelyn point out the differences between the French and German song traditions and styles. An exception is then a book published recently in 2013 named Art song: linking poetry and music. The author is Carol Kimball. This book is a complete guide for everyone that want to compose, perform or teach art songs. It is only booked practical book of art song that was published.
We shouldn’t forget that two arts demand to be understand together as well as separetly. As the arts has individual research the synthesis of information is in this case inevitable. In book Music’s meaning by Phillip Tagg are chapters that application and synthesis with the topic setting music to the poems gives another dimension of research. As same as book by Mojmir Grigar called Czech Studies – literature, language and culture wasn’t originaly written as musico-literature sudy.
It is satisfactory that musico-literature studies are recognized and worthwhile branch of research. The International Association for Word and Music Studies was founded in 1997 with the aim “to promote interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry devoted to the relations between literature/verbal text and music.” (Wordmusicstudies.net, 2018) The First published book under this association called Word and music studies: Defining the field (1999). One of the articles then focus on musicalised literature and present typology by Steven Paul Scher. It is 'music and literature', 'music in literature' and 'literature in music'. (Bernhart, 1999, p.)