Poetry and music are intimately related and reciprocal art forms, each striving to communicate through sound. This exhibit is a celebration of these artistic interrelationships, curated by the librarians responsible for the music and poetry collections in Regenstein.
Both poetry and music are meant to be performed aloud, although it is possible to experience them as notation – be it musical symbols, alphabetical symbols or a more abstract form – on a printed page.?We often think of music and poetry as united by a composer setting poetry to music, but their relationship can be much more subtle and complex. This exhibit explores the similarities between the two arts that each use notation not only to give meaning, but also to instruct a performer in the creation of the intended sonic experience
Occasionally both poets and composers add another dimension to their forms by crossing over into visual representations. Examples of this textual/notational – visual interplay have occurred from the dawn of writing and notated music, reaching a high point in so-called concrete poetry in the early 20th-century, and continuing as images become ever more abstract into the 21st. "Written to be seen" examines how similar shapes are utilized differently by composers and poets to express a variety of themes.
Poets and composers have often reacted to each other's artistry in a sort of "mutual admiration." In addition to setting text to music and vice versa, they have attempted to recreate the emotion that the poem or composition brought to them. Musicians have composed or titled pieces after poems, and writers have described music with words.
"Poetry atrophies, when it gets too far from music," Ezra Pound observes in his ABC of Reading.
Beyond reaction, there is the "art of imitation" as composes attempt to imitate poetic imagery and poetry focuses only on the production of sound.?Music has sought to overcome its lack of semantic meaning by expressing the poetic text through subtle imitation of sounds or specific images, such as the "word-painting" of 16th century madrigal. Composers reproduce images that evoke emotion and recount tales, in these examples through the direction of the musical line, tempi, and repetition.? Poetry has always been concerned with the sound of the words, with a large number of terms to describe them (e.g., consonance, assonance and alliteration, to name but three). Literary movements beginning with Dada in the early 20th century sought to elevate the sound above the inherent meaning of the text.
Works on display are drawn from our collections and are but a sample of the many that would be possible to include.