"Marie Dormoy sang to me at the piano this evening: L’invitation au voyage*, set to music by Henri Duparc. Great disillusionment. It's not at all what I thought it would be. It’s blaring in the high notes. Not at all, in my opinion, in the spirit of the poem.”

Paul Léautaud, Private Diary, May 10, 1933.**

I remember that I was greatly disappointed by Aaron Copland’s songs on texts by Emily Dickinson. I miss the very special atmosphere of Dickinson’s poetry in these songs. The music isn’t bad, but unconvincing in relation to the poetry.

I wonder what our Loyal Members have to say about the relation between poetry and music.

<sub>*: L'invitation au voyage, a poem from Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire.

**: May 10, 1933 is also the date on which the book burning took place in Berlin. Léautaud doesn't mention this event in his Private Diary, but he makes a reference to the sexual obsessions of Léon Daudet, a writer who had far right and antisemitic views.</sub>

The succesful union of words and music is one of the main attractions in music for me.  I know that ‘abstract music’ is considered to be a purer form of music, but sung text brings the human person, with his past, his future, his personal relations, his thoughts and feelings central to the music.  Being a human person oneself, one can identify oneself more completely with the music.  In my case, anyway.

Sorry if I’m going to hijack this thread by being inappropriately and amateurishly philosophical, but anyway: I think there are different ways in which words can be paired to music, some of which go deeper than other.

Firstly, there are songs and arias etc. where the music mirrors perfectly the character, the personality of the person singing.  First examples I can think of: the father, son and the erl king in Schubert’s 'Erlkönig' each have there own music; the pompous Swallow in ‘Peter Grimes’ sings pompous music, etc.

Secondly, there are songs where the music mirrors the emotion of the character singing – evidently so.  An angry Vivaldi hero bursts out in violent coloratura, a sad Vivaldi hero sings in sorrowful, plaintive tones.

But thirdly, and most importantly IMO: the occasions when the music fits perfectly the intention of the words.  This is obvious in the first place in operatic dialogues, where every phrase has a certain intention directed at the other person.  E.g. in the duet ‘Dunqu’io son?’ from Rossini’s Barbiere:

'Tu non m’inganni?' 'Cosa fa?' 'Che ne dite?' (inquisitive)
'Zitto! Zitto!' (imperative)
'Su, corragio!' (spuring on)
'Eccolo qua!' (presenting something)
etc. ...

But of course, the same intentions can be directed, not at other person, but at oneself.  Eg. Figaro asks himself: ‘Gia era scrito?’

In the same way, I believe, every text/poem of every song is implicitly directed at an actual audience (‘O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!’), a virtual audience (‘Kennst du das Land?’), or directed at oneself, as if speaking to oneself.  Therefore, every phrase has a certain intention, of course not always strictly definable.  For example even in the most intimate Mahler songs I think every phrase has an intention.  Eg. in the Kindertotenlieder: "Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgehn" – a father, at the end of the night when his young daughter died, saying to himself ‘look how clear the sunrise is this morning’; the emotion is utter sorrow, naturally, but the words have an intention too: an ironic realisation, maybe with a dim little inner smile.  What’s great is that the music isn’t only sorrowful, but the melodic phrase describes this intention of ironic realisation perfectly.
Other example, from 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen': "Es is mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen".  There’s an emotion there, a sort of subdued bliss that pervades the whole song, but the specific intention here is ‘I really don’t care if anyone thinks I’m dead’ – one can read this carelessness, frivolity, negligence in the musical phrase.  And that’s what’s so powerful, IMO.


I believe every good word-setter is able, not only to mirror the character and the emotion of a person in his music, but to translate the exact intention of the words into a musical phrase.  Eg. Monteverdi, Mozart, Schubert, Mahler, Britten all do this consistently, each in their own way.  And of course, it’s absolutely frustrating when the music seems to have nothing to do with the intention of the text, as Pim points out in his opening message.

I also believe every good singer must live the intention of the words, truly telling them, to theirselves or to an audience, through the music.  For example Isolde, looking at the corpse of her beloved, strangely astonished by his complexion, truly thinking by herself "wie er lächelt!"  When the composer has chosen with utmost care the notes that express this intention, as Wagner has done, and then the singer lives this intention while singing the notes: that’s just unbelievably powerful.  I’ve posted a link to Jessye Norman singing ‘Amazing Grace’ on YouTube in the ‘Watch and listen’-thread.  I’m just baffled when I see how she means every syllable of what she’s saying and singing, throughout.  I don’t remember exactly who said this, I thought it was Rolando Villazón, but correct me if I’m wrong.  I think he said something like: “You lead the music, of course, because it is you who sings it.  But the music leads you too.”  Well-written vocal music, when sung, reveals automatically the right intention of the words you are singing. 


Thinking of it, there are still other ways in which music and words can relate.  The music can imitate the sound of the spoken words, spoken with their original intention.  I’m thinking for example of Albert Herring coming home at night and calling for his mum: "Mum! Mu-um! Yoo hoo!"   The music is just an imitation of how the spoken words would sound.  I heard on COTW that Janacek uses the inflexions of natural spoken Czech in his operas – so maybe this could belong to this particular category.  I don’t speak Czech, so I can’t really tell.  And on the ‘Operatic laughs’-thread we discussed laughter imitated in music, in very different ways. 

A fun word-music-pairing, I find, is when the music describes the content of the word musically.  For example, again in Isolde’s Liebestod: a high note on ‘hoch’, a shining top note on ‘leuchtend’, a piano subito on ‘leise’ in ‘wundervol und leise’.  One of my favourites is Aschenbach’s "strange hallucinations" in ‘Death in Venice’ – there’s a brief musical hallucination on the oo-sound.  Or in Strauss’ Vier letzte lieder, the soprano’s bird song on the word ‘Vogelsang’ in ‘Frühling’.

Still, I think that a perfect fit between the musical phrase and the exact intention of the words is, perhaps not the most conspicuous pairing of words and music, but surely the most fundamental and most moving one. 

Here ends MrYorick’s fit of DIY musicology.

Thank you for sharing this with us, Mr Yorick. I think that Mahler was a composer who really understood poetry. He used mostly poetry from the early nineteenth century for his songs and still I don't think the music is alien to the poems. Some composers seem to solve this problem by using poems from their own age. The music of the Second Viennese School for instance is so related to the poetry of Richard Dehmel and Stefan George that I keep thinking of this poetry even when I listen to instrumental works of Schoenberg and his students. The same is the case with Poulenc, whose songs are wonderfully connected with the poems of Apollinaire, Aragon and Carême.

Naturally, it makes a great difference when you know a poem before you hear the song.
I think Léautaud already knew the Baudelaire poem befor hearing Duparc's setting.