Music and the written word / guest editor, Gillian Dooley.

Format Book
EditionSpecial issue reprint.
Publication InfoBasel : MDPI, ©2025.
Descriptionxi, 196 pages : music ; 26 cm
Supplemental ContentClick here for online access
Subjects
Music in literature.
Music and literature.
Intertextuality.

Other author/creatorDooley, Gillian, 1955- editor, author.
Other author/creatorKennedy, Victor, 1953- author.
Other author/creatorWilliams, Sean, 1959- author.
Other author/creatorWebster, Jamie Lynn, author.
Other author/creatorLin, Xingyu, author.
Other author/creatorChattopadhyay, Shankhadeep, author.
Other author/creatorWimble, Jeff, author.
Other author/creatorGurke, Thomas, author.
Other author/creatorBell, Merri, author.
Other author/creatorOsta, Lola Abs, author.
Other author/creatorRatail, Lucie.
Contents Preface -- How the music machine makes myths real: AI, holograms, and Ashley Eternal / Victor Robert Kennedy -- 'Ring the bells': sound and silence in Garth Nix's Old Kingdom / Sean Williams -- Hearing written magic in Harry Potter films: insights into power and truth in the scoring for in-world written words / Jamie Lynn Webster -- Is This the Gate? J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello and its operatic adaptation / Xingyu Lin -- Bruce Springsteen, rock poetry, and spatial politics of the promised land / Shankhadeep Chattopadhyay -- "The noise of our living": Richard Wright and Chicago blues / Jeff Wimble -- The idea of Notational Ekphrasis in words and music / Thomas Gurke -- 'After all the years of separation': musically representing author L.M. Montgomery's suspended romances / Merri Bell -- The "Harold theme" as a Byronic microcosm: structural and narrative condensation in Berlioz's Harold in Italy / Lola Abs Osta -- 'I heard music': Mansfield Park, an opera by Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton / Gillian Dooley -- Adapting The Mysteries of Udolpho's musicality into real music: an impossible talk? / Lucie Ratail.
Abstract Words and song have long been thought to spring from the same expressive impulse. In Disgrace, JM Coetzee writes that "the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul". But what happens when the spoken word becomes text? To what extent can written language behave as though it were a type of music--or music act as a language? This special issue explores the many ways in which music and literature may be linked: music as a theme and a motif in fiction; rhetorical links between music and language in literary texts; the musician as author and the author as musician. Some questions which might be addressed include: What is the nature of the challenge faced by a composer setting a literary text to music, and what makes a song succeed? What is lost, and what is found, when a literary work is transformed into an opera? Can instrumental music tell a story, or move beyond mimesis of extra-musical sounds to convey abstract ideas? What are the limits of writing about music? How can words convey music's effect and its affect? How do oft-repeated narratives about composers' personal lives affect the reception of their music? This book includes eleven essays dealing in a variety of ways with the relationship between literary texts and music. It includes contributions on topics as diverse as the presence of musical notation and musical descriptions in literary texts, operatic versions of literary fiction, the potential for music to convey non-mimetic meanings, and musical devices used by literary authors and music lyricists.
General noteThis is a reprint of the Special Issue, published open access by the journal Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787)
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references.
Other formsAlso available online.
ISBN3725853193 (hardcover)
ISBN9783725853199 (hardcover)
ISBN9783725853205 (PDF)
ISBN3725853207 (PDF)