Written to be Seen
Shaped poems are poems that are arranged to imitate a physical object (like a crucifix or a swan) or a symbol (such as a heart or a star). Until the modern era, shaped poems were most often religious in nature, including Christian, Moslem, and Jewish devotional poems. In one well-known instance, 16th century English poet George Herbert composed his poem "Easter Wings" to suggest the shape of a lark in flight.
In 1918, Guillaume Apollinaire published his now famous volume Calligrammes: poèmes de la paix et de la guerre. In this book, Apollinaire utilized a similar approach as Herbert, but removed the religious iconography and evoked secular and often kinetic images. In "Il Pleut," for example, the words slant down the page to imitate rain in the wind.
Apollinaire was an important influence on the rise of concrete poetry. In concrete poetry, the poem's message is conveyed by graphic patterns of letters, words, and typographic elements rather than by the meaning of sentences and stanzas. The visual nature of language is privileged over the verbal, so much so that to read a concrete poem aloud would serve to erase its function and meaning.
In the modern era, musical notation has often been transformed into visual art. Avant-garde composer John Cage was instrumental in this revolution. Scores that move away from classic notation challenge the performers to interpret what they see. Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-58), for instance, is a compendium of his graphic notations (including tracings of astronomical charts) and implicates performer(s) in the process of composition.
Guillaume Apollinaire. "Lettre-océan." In The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry, 1914-1918. Ed Willard Bohn. Cambr.: CUP, 1986.
Apollinaire (1880-1918) can be considered one of the most important figures of modern visual poetry. His caligrammes, most written while serving in the French army, treat serious subjects in a seemingly playful manner. This spiral is a piece of his first visual poem, "Lettre-océan" ("Ocean letter"), published in 1914. The sounds invoked, e.g., the gramophone, issue from the noise-producer in ever-widening spirals before diffusing.
Baude Cordier. "Tout par compass suy composés." Ars magis subtiliter. Ensemble Project Ars Nova, New Albion.
George Crumb. "Spiral Galaxy," Makrokosmos. Peters, 1973
[listen (Classical Music Online)]
Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Cosmic Pulses," 2006.
Like poets, musicians have always been fascinated by the application of principles of painting to the musical text. The visual component of the score, essential in the act of reading but not necessarily in that of performing, adds another layer of signifiers, thus enhancing the meaning of the musical notation. In the early 15th century, Baude Cordier notated his rondeau "Tout par compass suy composes" ("With a compass I was composed") in a circular shape that visually represents the endless "chasing" of the two upper voices in canon.
In an increasingly visual culture, the 20th century has produced a number of scores with a strong graphic component. "Spiral Galaxy" for amplified piano by George Crumb (b. 1929) is part of Makrokosmos, a set of "12 Fantasy-Pieces after the Zodiac." The circular shape of the cosmos inspires also the notation of "Cosmic Pulses." One of the last compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), it is an electronic composition for transmitter, tape recorder, loudspeaker and mixing console.
Scott Helmes. "At the creation of Z." Writing to be Seen: An Anthology of Later 20th Century Visio-textual Art. Ed Bob Grunman & Crag Hill.
Visual poetry has moved away from its predecessor, concrete poetry, a form which manipulated typography and the arrangements of words on a page. Visual poetry goes a step further and often distorts letter forms and words into visual elements that lack any clear semantic meaning. This piece – only one page visible here – is suggestive of a genesis story, the final letter of the alphabet being born from the chaos of a letter-less alphabet soup.
Scores such as this one eschew the musical staff as they emphasize graphic design and allude to modern visual art. The kinetic notation in Treatise seems to float above the staff, imitating the mobiles of Alexander Calder. An English composer of experimental music and former assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen, Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) also occasionally worked as a graphic artist.
Adam Gumpelzhaimer. "Crux Christi cum titulo." In Ulrich Ernst. Carmen Figuratum, Köln: Böhlau, 1991.
Bavarian composer and theorist Adam Gumpelzhaimer (1559-1625) published this woodcut in 1611. The cross contains a 6-voice composition, and the circles an 8-voice one for Good Friday. Not all the voices are notated, but have to be obtained by solving the riddles (the "canon") hidden under scriptural quotations.
León María Carbonero y Sol. "Cruz con pedestal." In La poesía visual en España (Siglos X-XX). By Felipe Muriel Durán. Salamanca: Ediciones ALMAR, [2000].
Appearing in Esfuerzos del ingenio literario (1890), this is only one of the cruciform poems written by Carbonero y Sol (1812-1902). Founder of the journal La Cruz (The Cross) his other works of visual poetry similarly take the form of religious icons.
Christian Wolfgang Morgenstern. "Fisches Nachtgesang." Galgenlieder Gingganz und Horatius Travestitus. In Sämtliche Dichtungen. Basel: Druck, 1972.
Christian Wolfgang Morgenstern. "Fisches Nachtgesang." In Gallows Songs. Trans W.D. Snodgrass & Lore Segal. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan, 1967.
Ably translated by Snodgrass & Segal, this "deepest German poem" evokes the nature of fish in its form. Morgenstern (1871-1914) influenced the Dada movement and XXth century concrete poetry; its abstract form seems to relate more closely to the Helmes than to more contemporary works. The fish is composed of "the metrical correspondent of [the verses] prosodic quantity, short and long caesuras, impenetrable as "tempi" of space."1 Noted composer Sofia Gubaidulina has set the poem as a "soundless song."2
1. http://www.ubu.com/sound/morgenstern.html
2. Vera Lukomsky & Sofia Gubaidulina. "My Desire Is Always to Rebel, to Swim against the Stream!" Perspectives of New Music 36, 1 (1998), p13.