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The article profiles American composer J.A.C. Redford, citing his composition "Homing" which will be premiered in the American Choral Directors Association National Conference in March 2017. Topics include, Redford's early life and the artistic development, his professional career as composer, orchestrator and arranger, and his love for words which being used in poetry.

Debussy's early song settings of Théodore de Banville and Paul Bourget foreground the Romantic topic by which the singing voice revokes lost presence. The closed aesthetic space of music becomes, in these songs, the space of the nocturnal garden in which the souls of lovers merge with the containing landscape. But Debussy's fascination with the poetry of Paul Verlaine, over a period of twenty-two years from 1882 to 1904, juxtaposes such evocations of intense sensuous presence with songs of alienated absence and ironic distance. The poems Debussy set from Verlaine's Fetes galantes (1869) provoke both kinds of song, the latter embodied through the shadowy figures of the commedia dell'arte. In the case of two such poems, "En sourdine" and "Clair de lune," Debussy produced two different settings of the same text, ten years apart. The usual account is that these show the composer's progression from Romantic lyricism to a more sophisticated but withdrawn style, a development paralleled by a biographical story moving from his youthful passion for the dedicatee of the early songs, Marie-Blanche Vasnier, to the breakdown of his first marriage in 1904. But neither the stylistic nor the biographical narrative provides an adequate account of the Verlaine songs, and both miss their exploration of the economy of desire at the heart of the piano song. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Théophile Gautier stands out as a key figure in the context of critical-theoretical approaches to word–music relations in nineteenth-century France. This article seeks to re-examine his importance in the light of his musical collaboration with Hector Berlioz by reworking the Derridean notion of 'iterability', bringing it into contact with Gautier's and Berlioz's Nuits d'été songs and offering a fresh approach to the concept of 'writing and difference' that insists on the importance of the performative in song instead of privileging writing. With analyses of Les Nuits d'été, the figure of Mignon, the concept of the tombeau poétique, and of song-like qualities in poetry, this article tests the hypothesis that singing (in) poetry fundamentally reshapes our understanding of how language functions beyond its inscription on the page, discussing the underlying 'unperformability' inherent to song. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The song cycleThe Brides of Enderby(1977), composed by author and critic Anthony Burgess (1917–1993), has a complex, multi-layered authorship. Although Burgess originally wrote the cycle’s poetry in his youth, he attributed these texts to his fictional protagonist, Francis Xavier Enderby (from theEnderbyseries of novels). The text of the fifth movement, “She was all brittle crystal,” is his early poem “Girl” (c. 1939), which is thought to concern Burgess’s first wife, Llewela (Lynne). The movement serves as a means to explore how Burgess’s musical response here articulates a Muse figure, both aloof and intransient. The song cycle demonstrates Burgess’s lifelong interest in the connections between music and literature, and offers the opportunity to examine both the relationship between Burgess and Enderby, and the musical decisions Burgess made in setting a text that he attributed to his alter ego. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the publication of the novels "The Song of the Lark" and "Lucy Gayheart" of the American writer Willa Cather. It cites on the writer's musical journeys by projecting the characters in the novels. The article also discusses the artistical conclusion that Cather created a tale of loss in artistic and human ways.

The article offers the author's perspective on the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature received by musician Bob Dylan. The author is critical on the presentation of award to Dylan because he is not an author regardless of the merit of literary value of his songs. He says that he is a dubious literary individual due his reputation for counter culture.

The article discusses songs and poetries as part of the cultural communication in literary diegetic world. Topics discussed, include poetic expression to communicate and interpret the world in a metaphysical statement of the poetic character of the world, various cultures where oral transmission of culture and knowledge is predominant, and issues related to specific historico-mythological events associated with poetic communication.

This essay contends that the narrator's invocations of music in Harare Northare not as serendipitous and isolated as they seem. Rather, jazz and blues function semiotically and axially in the story. I argue that together they serve, on the one hand, as a reminder of and an indirect authorial salute to Harare's and, by extension, Zimbabwe's urban music history, particularly its long tradition of jazz and blues. As one of Zimbabwe's 'cultural workers' (Dube), as part of what Stuart Nicholson calls 'the global jazz scene,' and as the author of what Tsitsi Ella Jaji would dub an African stereomodernist text, Chikwava partakes of those illustrious legacies. On the other hand, although they are linked with the characters, jazz andblues extrapolate as joint signifiers of Harare North's postmodernist form and overtones. They codify and consolidate its metafictionality, its allusions, playfulness, contingencies, and irresolution, but then its crisis- and migration-engendered undertones of melancholia and stoicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this bluesy poetic prose, the author engages poetry, personal narrative, and performance to reflect on how hip hop served as a soundtrack for her transition to womanhood in the rural south. She uses lyrics from Killing Me Softly (originated by Roberta Flack in the 70s and repopularized by The Fugees in 1996) and other songs from the 90s to tell stories about growing up, love, loss, depression, and abuse situated within her race, culture, sex, and social class. She muses how the cadences of sound and the words of songs helped her become a writer and feminist. She also reflects on how her formal and informal education has informed and been informed by her relationship to hip hop, which at times has fluctuated from fixation to disillusionment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music has been successfully used for pain management with its proposed mechanism of action arising from endorphin release. In elderly orthopaedic patients it may reduce opioid related complications and result in earlier mobilisation, easier dressing changes and reduced length of stay. This paper systematically searched the literature for research on music as a postoperative analgesic in an orthopaedic setting. Eight articles were identified with seven reporting music as beneficial for pain management and one reporting no effect Other benefits reported were decreased anxiety and opioid use. and improved ambulation and mental state. With joint arthroplasty rates rising, music, unobtrusive and free from side effects, may be a pain management tool worth trialling. Practicalities of implementation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant vehicle for oral poetry in the song culture of Kalymnos is the mantinadha, a rhyming couplet in iambic decapentameter. Though this poetic form has been studied extensively by philologists and anthropologists working in the Greek Aegean, a combined philological, ethnographic, and musicological approach is necessary to establish an expanded theoretical framework capable of exploring the interaction between poetry, music, and sociality. In performance, the texts of these poems are stretched, rearranged, interrupted, and delayed in order to conform to the contours of different melodies, each of which makes unique structural demands on the couplets that are sung to it. Close musical, metrical, and ethnographic analysis of several performances and attention to the interpretive choices of the expert performer or meraklis suggests an implicit theory, a model of the internal theory encoded in the music that governs the Kalymnian melody-poetry interface and reveals the ways in which the application of specific poetic and musical techniques both heightens the dialogic quality of these couplets and imbues them with socially poetic power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism is presented of the novel "Reservation Blues," by Sherman Alexie. Emphasis is given to the appropriation and representation of the musical genre of blues in the context of Native American identity. Topics discussed include the blues as a form of storytelling, Native American collective memory, and the use of musical repetition of stanzas in character dialogue.

This paper aims to reflect (at the musical level too) the special sonority of George Cosbuc's poetry, 150 years from the birth of this national poet. We will provide relevant poetic and sonorous examples, and offer data from a rarely performed analysis concerning the semantics of the poetic verse and its musical aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses on the mimetic strategies in coveying information in poetry. Topics mentioned include the attempt of philosopher Susanne Langer to model the poem movement on music, the concept of poet Donald Davie on syntax that control the import and movement of poem, and the use of simile in the poem structure.

An essay is presented on the affect and musication of language in the book "Empty Words," by John Cage, focusing on the integration of art and everyday life through the conceptual boundaries of musical arrangements and texts. It explores topics including author Henry David Thoreau, the invention of mesostic, a poetic form of the acrostic, by Cage, and the use of affect in cultural theory by author Brian Massumi.

The article presents a report from an April 21-23, 2016 conference in Vienna, Austria on the history of a 1568 choirbook hosted by the art and music history institute at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften science academy and the TROJA Renaissance music colloquium. Topics of presentations delivered included the position of the motets in the book in music history, the quotation of the poem "Susanna un jour" by Didier Lupi in the choirbook's motet "Tertia Pars", and the Latin philology of the choirbook's motets.

A popular practice in France at the end of the nineteenth century was the creation of mélodies by French composers. Ernest Chausson was one such composer who excelled in this area. Having a fervent interest in all the arts, he was particularly attracted by the symbolist movement in poetry. In 1896, Chausson selected three poems to set to music from the repertoire of the poet, Camille Mauclair, resulting in the composer's opus 27. This article briefly outlines the periods when Chausson concentrated on mélodie writing, the importance Mauclair placed on musicality in his poems and then illustrates the effectiveness of Chausson's music in capturing the essence of three very different poems, Les Heures, Ballade and Les Couronnes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil War bands, indispensable to both Union and Confederate troops, were employed by officers to keep morale high during times of rest and relaxation, and to instill regional pride during times of battle. I engage in an inquiry into the functions of the Civil War band in order to highlight the nature of music as it offers at one moment the emotional integration of camaraderie and at another moment the impetus to spur soldiers to combat. As a means of investigating such cases, I start with the poem "Union Camp Music," included in my recent book of poems, Cyclozama, and conclude with a discussion of the receptive functions activated by both poetry and music in the listeners of each art form. Both poetry and music depend upon bodily reactions, the former relying more upon a referentiality inherent to meaning, the latter upon a nonreferen tiality that can turn intention obscure. Both art forms, nonetheless, retain as a primary effect, the performer to-listener synchrony that derives from somatic response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines how Kneehigh's--exuberantly theatrical--musical adaptation of the Tristan legend shifts the focus from the lovers to the 'unloved,' the members of their entourage (especially their spouses) who experience the fall-out from this great passion. A literary analysis of the play is followed b a discussion of Kneehigh's enthusiastic embrace of 'devised' (performance-based) theater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Associations between epilepsy and musical or poetic composition have received little attention. We reviewed the literature on links between poetic and musical skills and epilepsy, limiting this to the Western canon. While several composers were said to have had epilepsy, John Hughes concluded that none of the major classical composers thought to have had epilepsy actually had it. The only composer with epilepsy that we could find was the contemporary composer, Hikari Oe, who has autism and developed epilepsy at age 15 years. In his childhood years, his mother found that he had an ability to identify bird sound and keys of songs and began teaching him piano. Hikari is able to compose in his head when his seizures are not severe, but when his seizures worsen, his creativity is lost. Music critics have commented on the simplicity of his musical composition and its monotonous sound. Our failure to find evidence of musical composers with epilepsy finds parallels with poetry where there are virtually no established poets with epilepsy. Those with seizures include Lord George Byron in the setting of terminal illness, Algernon Swinburne who had alcohol-related seizures, Charles Lloyd who had seizures and psychosis, Edward Lear who had childhood onset seizures, and Vachel Lindsay. The possibility that Emily Dickinson had epilepsy is also discussed. It has not been possible to identify great talents with epilepsy who excel in poetic or musical composition. There are few published poets with epilepsy and no great composers. Why is this? Similarities between music and poetry include meter, tone, stress, rhythm, and form, and much poetry is sung with music. It is likely that great musical and poetic compositions demand a greater degree of concentration and memory than is possible in epilepsy, resulting in problems retaining a musical and mathematical structure over time. The lack of association between recognizable neuropsychiatric disorders and these skills is a gateway to understanding facets of the relationship between the brain and creativity. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled “Epilepsy, Art, and Creativity”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses upon the little-known musical refiguring of Robert Southey'sThe Curse of Kehamaby the British composer Granville Bantock (1868–1946). After noting parallels between the poet and composer's creative difficulties associated with their respective projects, and issues highlighted in the reception of both “texts,” two aspects of Bantock's project (a significant document in the reception of Southey's poetry) are discussed in more detail: his attempts to unify an extended musico-poetic structure, and his response to the sense of “other” in Southey's poem. In terms of the latter, and in the context of Bantock's complex relationship with the East, two specific ideas from Southey scholarship – the concept of layers of otherness in Southey's poetry and the panoramic mode – are identified as having a real potential in helping us to understand Bantock's refiguring. The application of these ideas in a musical context offers further parallels and contrasts between poet and composer, leading to a richer understanding of the complexities involved in creative responses to oriental material in literary and musical forms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue including the association between music and writing, essay collections, and visual essay.

An introduction to the journal is presented which discusess topics within the issue incluidng tension between sound and touch, feeling and doing in music; literary history of music; and the exploration of the phenomenological task of poetry in music.

The article examines art interactions, one of the most topical problems in literary criticism, in the form of literary-musical intermedial aspects in E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime. Principles of intermedial analyses have been introduced into the study with the aim of identifying artistic forms, namely specific piano phonic implications, of the musical genre of ragtime within the eponymous novel. These phonic aspects of recoding correspond to the term “word music" as defined in the typology of S.P. Scher. In addition, imitations of sound can be represented by both explicit and implicit poetological techniques defined as references in W. Wolf's conception of “musicalized fiction." E. Doctorow recodes figures of ragtime as complex literary forms based on organic interactions between different intermedial techniques – verbal music, word music, musical structures and techniques. In this respect, correspondences of word music to music as defined by A.Gier have also been considered in this study. The article also attempts to interpret the artistic sense of the analyzed literary-musical intermedial forms. To this end, two main lines have been defined which are connected to eternal human values as well as the writer's intentions to reveal controversial problems of American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The noteworthy relationship between music and text in the works of Julio Cortázar has typically been studied in terms of his predilection for jazz. This essay takes up a diverse assortment of references to tango in his oeuvre, paying special attention to the tangopoemas in the 1984 volume Salvo el crepúsculo. Using as its starting point his description of tango's effect in the Argentine listener as "sardonic recurrence," the essay considers Cortázar's varied acknowledgments of tango's role in his creative life subsequent to his relocation to Paris. It surveys these instances as proof of the preferential place classic tango lyrics occupy in Cortázar's memory and reference library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Considering that "music of resistance" is the expression of the dialectic relation between society and history as well as the reflection of the ideological and intellectual position of the creator-interpreter in the face of social and historical reality, the aim of this paper is: a) to present the social-political context which inspired Fernando Lopes-Graça and Mikis Theodorakis, to be creative, b) to highlight how their ideology is expressed in their musical and literary works and c) to reveal the 'epic character' of their music through a music-poetical analysis of the Canções Heróicas of F.L. Graça and of the Tραγύδια τoυ Aγώυαof M. Theodorakis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While few would contest the importance of phonology and aural considerations in the study of classical Chinese poetry, the musicality of guwen (ancient-style prose essays) writing has attracted little attention thus far. This article redresses this imbalance by examining the critical discourse of the Tongcheng 桐城guwen writers of the Qing dynasty 清(1644–1911). Liu Dakui 劉大櫆(1698–1779), Yao Nai 姚鼐(1731–1815), Mei Zengliang 梅曾亮(1786–1856), Fang Dongshu方東樹(1772–1851), Zhang Yuzhao張裕釗(1823–1894), Zeng Guofan曾國藩(1811– 1872), and YaoYongpu姚永樸(?–1939) all were deeply concerned with, and actively reflected on, the role of sound in guwen writing: both its effect on the reader and its significance in the training of the writer. For them, sensitivity to sound would not only ensure the perfect, empathic comprehension of a given essay but also would support the composition of essays capable of producing a perfectly empathic response in a reader. Furthermore, in a demonstration that this was not an unprecedented development in the history of Chinese literature, the authors trace the relationship between musical and poetic aesthetics from the Shijing up to the Qing dynasty. In doing so, they point to several key moments when these two sets of concerns were sharply distinct, and others when they cross-pollinate to significant effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 1956 essay, ‘Words into Music: The Composer's Approach to Text,’ Edward Cone proposed that a musical setting of a poem directed the possible meanings of the text toward a more specific interpretation. Since then, however, revolutionary movements in poetry and music challenge this paradigm, especially in artistic endeavors that embrace types of indeterminacy in their inner workings. This essay examines the collaboration of Thomas DeLio and P. Inman as one such project, discussing the precedents, contexts, and effects of their artworks. Inman's writing fragments language, questions the meanings of words, and dissolves standard syntax, resulting in an attention on microcosmic and macrocosmic structures, rather than on mid-level connections. DeLio's music amplifies these effects, and rather than channeling the potential meaning of a poem into greater focus, as Cone suggests, multiplies the significant potential of any single moment in rich and rewarding ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While I love the voice and have used it often in my work, it has always been very difficult for me to write for it. In this essay, I try to work through some of the reasons for this difficulty. Some of the main characteristics of the voice—its fixed identity, the fact that it communicates on an instinctive level, the urgency of speech's semantic level, and the primal function of song as a collective place for the sharing of emotions—give the voice it is very special identity, importance, and urgency. We listen from inside our body. This makes the voice and ‘instrument' that is much more powerful than any other. While it contains an endless range of expressions, the voice is so strongly contextualized that it is difficult to transform, abstract, or radically individualize. It is hard to escape the immediate signature of its unique identity. In six ‘interventions,' I present six attempts at rethinking my automatic impulses with regard to the voice, addressing a different fixated area in each instance. The paper closes with a perspective on my work with the voice today, in which the development of earlier approaches crystallizes into a poetic proposition where the sound of the breath is an equal partner to that of the voice. This encourages the release of the nodes of our vocal fixation, and might uncover the possibility of an even stronger mutation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]