Julian Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195372397
- eISBN:
- 9780199870844
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372397.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Opera
Mahler's music foregrounds the idea of a musical voice, by means of rapid changes or even reversals of the expressive tone in which it seems to address us. This was underlined in his earliest songs ...
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Mahler's music foregrounds the idea of a musical voice, by means of rapid changes or even reversals of the expressive tone in which it seems to address us. This was underlined in his earliest songs and first major work, Das klagende Lied, in which the power of the voice is dramatically staged. His work, comprising exclusively songs and symphonies, constantly renegotiates the relationship between the actual human voice and the figurative idea of the voice in orchestral music. The legacy of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony plays a key role here. Mahler's use of the orchestra is explored in terms of how it constructs a collective voice but also in how it is used to fragment any unitary idea of voice; how it amplifies the idea of expression and, at the same time, undermines it.Less
Mahler's music foregrounds the idea of a musical voice, by means of rapid changes or even reversals of the expressive tone in which it seems to address us. This was underlined in his earliest songs and first major work, Das klagende Lied, in which the power of the voice is dramatically staged. His work, comprising exclusively songs and symphonies, constantly renegotiates the relationship between the actual human voice and the figurative idea of the voice in orchestral music. The legacy of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony plays a key role here. Mahler's use of the orchestra is explored in terms of how it constructs a collective voice but also in how it is used to fragment any unitary idea of voice; how it amplifies the idea of expression and, at the same time, undermines it.
LLOYD WHITESELL
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195307993
- eISBN:
- 9780199864003
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195307993.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter explores the colorful array of lyric voices and personalities Mitchell brings to life in writing and performance. Special attention is paid to details of poetic technique. The first ...
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This chapter explores the colorful array of lyric voices and personalities Mitchell brings to life in writing and performance. Special attention is paid to details of poetic technique. The first section systematically maps out categorical distinctions of poetic mode, representation, syntax, diction, and vocal performance, then illustrates their use through the analysis of an entire poem. The second section highlights five character types of special importance in her work.Less
This chapter explores the colorful array of lyric voices and personalities Mitchell brings to life in writing and performance. Special attention is paid to details of poetic technique. The first section systematically maps out categorical distinctions of poetic mode, representation, syntax, diction, and vocal performance, then illustrates their use through the analysis of an entire poem. The second section highlights five character types of special importance in her work.
Mary Jacobus
- Published in print:
- 1989
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129691
- eISBN:
- 9780191671845
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129691.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Criticism/Theory
This chapter discusses the privilege figure of Romantic poetry, namely, apostrophe, as a stalking-horse for Wordsworth's conception of lyric voice in The Prelude. Attention is focused on The Prelude, ...
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This chapter discusses the privilege figure of Romantic poetry, namely, apostrophe, as a stalking-horse for Wordsworth's conception of lyric voice in The Prelude. Attention is focused on The Prelude, a lyrical dialogue between past and present, between the discourse of memory and the discourse of poetic aspiration. The lyric voice of The Prelude is a fiction of the poet talking to himself; the entire poem becomes a self-constituting apostrophe, a ‘glad preamble’ designed to constitute the poet and to permit Wordsworth himself to join the ranks of Homer, Milton, and other great poetries.Less
This chapter discusses the privilege figure of Romantic poetry, namely, apostrophe, as a stalking-horse for Wordsworth's conception of lyric voice in The Prelude. Attention is focused on The Prelude, a lyrical dialogue between past and present, between the discourse of memory and the discourse of poetic aspiration. The lyric voice of The Prelude is a fiction of the poet talking to himself; the entire poem becomes a self-constituting apostrophe, a ‘glad preamble’ designed to constitute the poet and to permit Wordsworth himself to join the ranks of Homer, Milton, and other great poetries.
Carrie Noland
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231167048
- eISBN:
- 9780231538640
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231167048.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This book approaches Negritude as an experimental, text-based poetic movement developed by diasporic authors of African descent through the means of modernist print culture. Engaging primarily the ...
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This book approaches Negritude as an experimental, text-based poetic movement developed by diasporic authors of African descent through the means of modernist print culture. Engaging primarily the works of Aimé Césaire and Léon-Gontran Damas, this book shows how the demands of print culture alter the personal voice of each author, transforming an empirical subjectivity into a hybrid, textual entity that it names, after Theodor Adorno, an “aesthetic subjectivity.” This aesthetic subjectivity, transmitted by the words on the page, must be actualized—performed, reiterated, and created anew—by each reader, at each occasion of reading. Lyric writing and lyric reading therefore attenuate the link between author and phenomenalized voice. Yet the Negritude poem insists upon its connection to lived experience even as it emphasizes its printed form. Ironically, a purely formalist reading would have to ignore the ways formal—and not merely thematic—elements point toward the poem's own conditions of emergence. Blending archival research on the historical context of Negritude with theories of the lyric “voice,” this text argues that Negritude poems present a challenge to both form-based (deconstructive) theories and identity-based theories of poetic representation. Through close readings, it reveals that the racialization of the author places pressure on a lyric regime of interpretation, obliging us to reconceptualize the relation of author to text in poetries of the first person.Less
This book approaches Negritude as an experimental, text-based poetic movement developed by diasporic authors of African descent through the means of modernist print culture. Engaging primarily the works of Aimé Césaire and Léon-Gontran Damas, this book shows how the demands of print culture alter the personal voice of each author, transforming an empirical subjectivity into a hybrid, textual entity that it names, after Theodor Adorno, an “aesthetic subjectivity.” This aesthetic subjectivity, transmitted by the words on the page, must be actualized—performed, reiterated, and created anew—by each reader, at each occasion of reading. Lyric writing and lyric reading therefore attenuate the link between author and phenomenalized voice. Yet the Negritude poem insists upon its connection to lived experience even as it emphasizes its printed form. Ironically, a purely formalist reading would have to ignore the ways formal—and not merely thematic—elements point toward the poem's own conditions of emergence. Blending archival research on the historical context of Negritude with theories of the lyric “voice,” this text argues that Negritude poems present a challenge to both form-based (deconstructive) theories and identity-based theories of poetic representation. Through close readings, it reveals that the racialization of the author places pressure on a lyric regime of interpretation, obliging us to reconceptualize the relation of author to text in poetries of the first person.
Daniel Karlin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199213986
- eISBN:
- 9780191803314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199213986.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines the nature of female ‘song’ by focusing on women poets as singers in the nineteenth century. More precisely, it looks at the figure of the singer modelled on Sappho, Germaine de ...
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This chapter examines the nature of female ‘song’ by focusing on women poets as singers in the nineteenth century. More precisely, it looks at the figure of the singer modelled on Sappho, Germaine de Staël’s novel Corinne, and the improvisatrice. It also considers the figure of the singer within the context of the the link between suffering and the lyric voice.Less
This chapter examines the nature of female ‘song’ by focusing on women poets as singers in the nineteenth century. More precisely, it looks at the figure of the singer modelled on Sappho, Germaine de Staël’s novel Corinne, and the improvisatrice. It also considers the figure of the singer within the context of the the link between suffering and the lyric voice.
