|
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
Lyrical
poetry and music |
 |
Lyrical poetry was originally
poetry composed to be sung, and lyrical poetry
still shows its ancestory by making the musical element part
of the intrinsic content. Other forms of poetry — narrative
and dramatic — may use musical elements for memorable
and pleasing effects, but in lyrical poetry these elements
specifically convey emotion and rational
values. Little may be worth calling poetry if these elements
are removed or attentuated — as too often happens in
'faithful' translations. Musical terminology of course has
been applied to lyrical poetry, though without
great success: poetry seems to have its own (complicated)
rules. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lyrics for song |
 |
The
original conception of lyrical poetry is preserved
in the lyrics for song, i.e. in what remains when the elements
of music are stripped from popular or commercial music.
Good poets in France wrote for the nightclub, but the appeal
of their British or American counterparts is more in the
music than the words. Very different were the songs of the
Middle
Ages, Renaissance,
the Persian
world and India.
A singing element returned to Europe with the 19th and 20th
century composers who set popular poetry to music —
Schubert, Brahms, etc. — the musical elements making
their own interpretation of the poem. In different ways,
and with less sophistication, the writing of lyrics for
song continues today in rap,
cowboy
poetry and poetry
slams.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lyrical ballads |
 |
Long
before Wordsworth and Coleridges's Lyrical
Ballads, lyrical poetry had developed into forms that
were not intended to be sung: odes, satire, introspection,
sensual longing, religious devotion. By the Renaissance, poets
were composing works for publication, not for individual recitation,
and they had therefore to adapt the original themes, metres
and imagery to a new medium of presentation. Results were
marvellously varied. The 16-17th century lyrics of Shakespeare,
Marvell
and Milton,
the Romantic lyrics of Keats,
Shelley
and Wordsworth,
the Victorian classicism of Arnold
and Tennyson,
the Pre-Raphaelite melancholy of Rossetti
and Dowson,
the experimentation of Pound,
Bishop,
Robert
Lowell and Wilbur
— all developed the medium in new directions and provide
abundant study material. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Writing lyrical poetry |
|
Writing
lyrics for songs is a specialist art, requiring as much
musical expertise as literary. These sites provide help
or inspiration: middle
east music, poetry
workpage and music, music
sessions, Nashville,
and muse's
muse. Poets wishing to write good lyrical poetry today
will probably need to immerse themselves in good critical
studies, and learn their craft from at least Shakespeare,
Burns,
Tennyson,
Swinburne,
the early Yeats
and Pound.
Essential are an acute ear for rhythmic subtlety, vowel
melody and line control. The older books may have the better
material to work on — E. Smith's Principles of English
Verse (1923/70) and R. Brewer's Art of Versification
(1950) — but recent publications, among
many others, are L. Turco's The New Book of Forms
(1986), R. Pinsky's The Sounds of Poetry (1999) and
J. Hollander's Rymes Reason (1989).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
