Musical ekphrasis : composers responding to poetry and painting / by Siglind Bruhn.
| Author/creator | Bruhn, Siglind |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | Hillsdale, NY : Pendragon Press, ©2000. |
| Description | xxi, 669 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Series | Interplay ; no. 2 Interplay (Hillsdale, N.Y.) ; no. 2. ^A458031 |
| Contents | Part I. Mapping the territorial boundaries of musical ekphrasis. Music and the sister arts ; Variations of ekphrastic stance: once again, poems on paintings ; Literature and painting imitating music -- Part II. From word to sound: non-vocal music responds to a literary text. Maeterlinck's death drama in two musical depictions ; Schoenberg's musical representations of fateful love triangles ; Elliott Carter's American narratives -- Part III. From image to sound: music on works of visual art. A twentieth century composer's quattrocento triptych ; Music for blessings in stained glass ; The twittering machine: sound symbol of modernity -- Part IV. The faun, and the virgin, the saint, and the reaper, multi-tiered transmedializations. Two pictorial cycles and their mediated paths towards music ; Two Mallarmé poems and their way through music to dance -- Part V. Musical re-presentations of visual and verbal works of art. Depiction and reference ; Means of musical transmedialization ; Variations of ekphrastic stance ; Musical ekphrasis and the benefit of the given topic -- Appendix. Biographical sketches I: The artists ; Biographical sketches II: The poets ; Biographical sketches III: The composers ; Biographical sketches IV: The choreographers. |
| Abstract | With increasing frequency, composers of instrumental music claim to be specifically inspired by a poem or painting, a drama or sculpture, transforming the essence of this art work's features and message into their own medium, the musical language. How does the knowledge of such a transformation from one medium into the other inform our understanding of the musical work? In this round-breaking study, Siglind Bruhn makes a case for a musical genre hitherto hidden under the term program music. She defines her subject matter in relation to the term, ekphrasis, which is used by literary scholars for poems responding to works of visual art. Bruhn develops a clear methodology and a precise set of criteria, which she employs to situate musical ekphrasis within the aesthetics discourse. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 633-650) and index. |
| LCCN | 00023683 |