Perhaps the two most influential theorists in music
and language are Heinrich Schenker and Noam Chomsky. Both were looking for a
universal root to human aural communication. Their process was to distil the
articulated, aural surfaces of music and language to find a root upon which
each aural iteration was constructed. I believe that this root is reflected in
all levels of aural communication in a self-similar fashion and is understood
through the cultural training humans receive from birth onwards and to a lesser
extent a genetic propensity. If there is a universal root to aural
communication it becomes possible to map the iteration of one form of aural
communication onto another form; in this case the aural iteration of poetry
onto the aural iteration of music.
There are three common areas between music and
language that are important to my thesis:
1. Both are primarily aural media;
2. Both have highly sophisticated representations of
the aural media;
3. Both have understood rules of well-formedness,
which may be understood culturally, historically or in the context of a unique
iteration.
Area three is the most
important to my thesis.
Music and language operate on surface and structural
levels. For instance: when listening to or reading a story it is possible
assume that there will be an understandable unfolding of events. What we are
hearing is the surface level, are descriptive passages structured to flesh out
a deeper level, which may be simple enough to encapsulated in one sentence,
such as "Boy meets girl, boy looses girl, girl finds boy". When
listening to music it is possible assume similar things, for example: a series
of musical passages may be strung together to flesh out as simple an idea as
three descending scale tones, as shown by Schenker's Ursatz.
The ways in which textual or musical passages are
organised follow highly detailed systems which are, in the vast majority of
cases, descriptive rather than prescriptive and understood as systems long
after the fact. Examples of descriptive systems are the sonnet form in poetry
and the sonata form in music. An example of a prescriptive system is the serial
style of musical composition.
This
thesis sets out to show:
1.
That a poem's sonic structure can be used to create a musical structure; and
2.
That a poem's aural expression can be used to create a musical expression.
Much
of the text below concerns the discussions of theorists and composers who have
well developed interests in tying music and language together. There are also
some analyses of compositions that use language as a basis for, or as an
integral part of, the composition. The purpose of my exploration into the works
of others is to inform the compositions I am submitting, not to create models
on which to base my compositions.
The links between music and language given below show
the fertility of the language/linguistic approach to musical understanding, in
its broadest sense. However there are areas that do not seem to have been
explored or used to their fullest extent; these areas centre on the aural
nature of music and speech. Noting that music and speech exist in the aural
domain seems obvious and trivial to say the least, but it is this similarity
that holds great promise in generating novel strategies for musical
composition.
To explore this belief I look first at using the
phonemic structure of a poem as a basis for a number of musical compositions,
assuming that the structural rules defining the relationships of phonemes will
translate into a set of rules defining the relationships of notes in a musical
composition and create a sense of cohesion in the compositions.
Next I use a reading of a poem as a basis for a
musical composition. This process assumes that the inherent aural structure of
the poem as expressed through it's reading will produce an effective structure
for musical composition. By digitally altering and enhancing the sound of the
reading, a musical composition is realised.
Finally I use the aural/intonational aspects of a
poetry reading to provide a setting for the reading of a poem, the purpose
being to enhance the emotional impact of that poem.
It is important to remember that throughout this
document I take poetry and music to be exclusively aural expressions and that
any written notation of either art form, while being extremely useful in this
work, is considered to be ancillary to my thesis.