The Relation between Music and Poetry

Author(s): J. P. Dabney
Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Jul., 1927), pp. 377-383
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/738589
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Musical Quarterly

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 THE RELATION
BETWEEN MUSIC AND POETRY

By J. P. DABNEY

T HERE is in these days a great deal being written, argued and

thought as to what constitutes poetry, and what quality it
is wherein poetry as an art differentiates itself from prose
as an art. To discuss this question upon its moral or aesthetic
side, to claim that the emotional idea dynamically expressed con-
stitutes poetry, or, as Professor David Masson has said, that "at
a certain pitch of fervor or feeling, the voice does instinctively lift
itself into song,"' is to beg the question.
Many of the great poets have left us their definitions. Shake-
speare tells us,
"That art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes."

Coleridge says that poetry is "the vision and the faculty

divine"; Wordsworth, that it is "emotion recollected in tran-
quillity," Shelley, "the best and happiest moments of the best
and happiest minds."
But these definitions are elusive, inconclusive, and utterly
fail to define what poetry intrinsically is. They fail because when
we attempt to synthesize upon the subjective side, we are not
dealing with the fundamental principles wherein poetry as an
art differentiates itself from prose as an art, but with that emo-
tional and spiritual quality-the soul of the art, one might call it-
which inheres equally in both verse and prose. If it were not so,
we should haive to class as poetry an immense body of idealistic
prose-the glamored romances of Hawthorne, for instance, or
Stevenson's Essays, or Kipling's Jungle Books. For, finally, the
difference between poetry as an art and prose as an art is purely
one of form.
Form is the law of expression, whether of a universe or a minor
lyric. It is the objectifying of the abstract, the bringing of the
ideation into being. And we notice that all of the expression
of the universe is subject to fixed laws. Nature always develops
her forms symmetrically. She does the same thing in the same
'David A. Masson : "Theories of Poetry."
377

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378 The Musical Quarterly

way. Crystals fall into similar geometric patterns. T

balanced sepals and petals of a flower are always rep
the same lines, though they may vary in secondary
being the law of expression, the poet cannot, if h
himself at all, escape the use of form. He can only c
a good form and a bad form; between a symmetrica
amorphous form. And we might quote here the wor
Schumann: "The history of all arts has proven tha
form leads talent to continually increasing freedom.
The generic distinction between poetry and p
poetry is in rhythm, and prose-except in a larg
cosmic sense-is not in rhythm. And by rhythm I
a vague, loose, and flexible something, to be determ
experimenter for himself, but a fundamental law
determinative, as the laws of mathematics or those
the orbits of the heavenly bodies.
Professor Corson's definition of Verse, "poetr
thought, wedded to music, which is indefinite"l'-com
the truth than any other because it is in music that
of verse, and to music we must turn if we would rea
these basic rhythmic laws.
"In the beginning, out of the mists of Time, han
came those twin sisters of Art-Music and Verse. Man in the
exuberant infancy of the race, instinctively danced, and as
danced he sang. The rhythm of his lips gave the rhythm to
foot, and the rhythm of his foot gave the rhythm to his lips,
two interchangeably linked."2
We may form some idea of how all this would come about
studying the records of the songs and dances of primitive peop
First, the primitive man, expressing his emotions, warlike or ot
wise, in crude dancing, accentuating his movements by a recurr
stamp of the foot. Vocal expression would accompany the
gymnastics; at first mere inarticulate noises-like the click of t
bushmen, for instance-later taking shape in exclamatory phras
then longer phrases, at last emerging into the true lyric, alwa
marked off by that regularly recurrent accent of the dance-ste
And so on and on, down the ages, until, coming to the horizons
literature we find-as in Homer-the already perfected rhyth
instrument.

1Hiram Corson : "The Esthetics of Verse."

2J. P. Dabney : "The Musical Basis of Verse."
3Professor Francis B. Gummere, in The Beginnings of Poetry, tells us that savages
are not apt to have the sense of melody and harmony well developed, but that "their
sense of exact rhythm is universal and profound."

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 The Relation Between Music and Poetry 379

This close inter-relation between music and verse was always

recognized in earlier days. It is only in comparatively modern
times that we have lost the sense of it. The Greeks sang or chanted
their lyrics to the sound of the lyre or other instrument, and "the
Bacchic songs of alternating mirth and sadness gave birth, through
the dithyramb, to tragedy, and, through the Comus hymn, to
comedy."'
Classic literature declined with the decline of the Roman
Empire, but the Middle Ages found a fresh and vigorous Art
the songs of the Trouveres, the Troubadours, the Minnesinge
who, singing in the vernacular, went from castle to castle, fro
town to town spreading their Art among the people.
And as culture came to England it came in the same manner
The great age of Elizabeth was overflowing with music. Mu
was an indispensable accomplishment of the educated gentleman
and, in cruder forms, the solace of the multitude. High or lo
none could escape its influence. Such lyrics as we find scatte
through Shakespeare's plays could have emanated only from
music-saturated soul.
The sense of quantity-that method by which the Greeks
and Romans cooirdinated their verse-though in those flexible
tongues accent and quantity obviously coincide-died out with
the dying Latin culture. The poets of the Middle Ages sang in a
fresh spirit, entirely by ear.
It is universally conceded that English verse will not scan,
a fact which has caused a great deal of trouble to teachers of En-
glish verse, and given rise to colorless symbols of analysis, such as
XA, AX, XXA, XAX, etc. But when we substitute as a means of
mensuration the music bar for the classic foot-divisions, all diffi-
culties vanish; for music and verse are arts of a cognate order.
In other words, they are both arts of sound-of vibration, and are
governed by the same basic laws.
Technically music and verse overlap but a little way; there-
fore, in adopting the symbols of musical notation for the measure-
ment of verse, we cannot push the analogy beyond the very rudi-
ments of musical form. With the complicated science of music,
verse has nothing to do. In so brief a paper as this the subject-
a large one-must of necessity be treated in a most condensed
manner.

This basic principle of music is uniform

time, marked off by a regularly recurring,
accent, constituting a time-integer. The sam
1J. A. Symonds : "The Greek Poets."

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380 The Musical Quarterly
but in illustrating the rhythmic mensuration of verse,
reduce musical movement to its bed-rock, or to prima
This is, stated briefly, a movement of two beats to a m
first accented, the second non-accented) and a mov
three beats to a measure (the first accented, the other
accented). To the ear, these measures are marked o
regularly recurring accent; to the eye (in written mus
separated by a vertical line called the bar. Music,
makes multiples of these figures.
We can analyze, and mark off verse exactly along t
lines. We shall find that all verse stands upon thes
movements;-i. e., two words (or beats) to a measur
three words (or beats) to a measure. In musical notat
note may be multiplied, or, again, it may be absent, its
being represented by a rest-mark. In verse this is q
wise. The words themselves represent the time-value,
syllable (or time-unit) must, as a rule, be present in th
in order to establish the generic rhythm. I say, as a ru
in three-beat rhythm we sometimes find a heavy, acce
held over two beats of a measure, but ordinarily th
must be full, or a sufficient number of measures in t
line must be full, in order to produce upon the ear t
that rhythm in which the poem is conceived. If this i
the verse will halt and limp.
There may be an unaccented note (or word) before
ing accent, which unaccented note is called the ana
anacrusis alters the cadence of the verse, but in no way
basic rhythm.
I give an example of two-beat rhythm:
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."-

And of three-beat rhythm:

"Half a league, half a league, half a league onward."-

In very rare cases a rest (or pause effect) may be e

imparting to the verse a staccato effect.
Thus:
"Break, break, break
On thy cold grey stones, O sea."

Beyond this elementary measurement of verse, there is of

course a larger swing, or stress, of the line, and again of the stanza;
comparable roughly to the musical phrase and to the completed
theme.

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 The Relation Between Music and Poetry 381

There is also a great deal to be said with regard to the motion

of verse, and the differentiated motion of various verse-schemes.
Certain measures impart a sense of tranquillity; others impress us
with a sense of movement; these effects being dependent upon the
special rhythmic vibration. But our limits forbid treating of it
here. It may all be found in my book, "The Musical Basis of
Verse."
Another important quality in which verse is closely related
to music is Melody. Says Professor Corson: "The fusing or com-
bining principle of a verse is Melody. We often meet with verses
which scan, as we say, all right, and yet we feel that they have no
vitality as verses. . . . They are not the product of feeling, which
attracts to itself (a great fact) vocal elements, either vowels or
consonants, which chime well together and in accord with the
feeling."1
The greatest factor of verse-melody is, of course, rhyme, and
I may perhaps make clearer by an illustration why rhyme has a
musical root; but it must be kept in mind that, in all these com-
parisons, I am referring to the most elementary forms of music.
If we take any folk-song, or simple melodic phrase, we shall
see that it begins on one tone and then, half-way through, swings
into another chord-usually the chord of the dominant-returning
to finish upon the tonic, or original chord. This satisfies the ear,
because the tonic triad is the "perfect authentic cadence" and
completes the melody.
Now let us compare a simple quatrain of verse:
"She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love."

We find we get, at the end of the second line, a tone (in the
word "Dove") which requires a cognate tone at the end of the
fourth line to complete it to the ear;-hence rhyme. In this
stanza the first and third lines swing off from cadence, with a
different tone of their own. These do not need to rhyme, but
there must be a finish-rhyme at the end of the stanza or the ear
will get no sense of cadence.
It seems superfluous to say that rhymes do not require to be
alternated as in the foregoing stanza. With complex rhyme-
schemes they are often irregular and far apart; but they must be
so correlated in the stanza as to leave upon the ear a sense of
'Hiram Corson : "A Primer of English Verse."

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382 The Musical Quarterly

cadence and tonal finish. Rhyme, then, we must r

cadence-correspondence of verse.
The next greatest factor in the melody of verse is
which is an interplay of vowel-effects-or tonal in
enriching the general cadence. By a certain coi
thought, the concept of one sound seems to draw to i
or related sounds which chime harmoniously with it
Keats is easily the greatest colorist in English vers
are others whose song is full of rich effects. At the
this beautiful concomitant of verse seems rather neg
indifferently toned will leave upon the ear a sense o
crudity, often of cacophony.
We find other factors of melody, closely related
going, in alliteration and onomatopoeia-alliteratio
itself more or less onomatopoeic in effect. Allite
usually upon consonants, but need not necessarily
line:
"The league-long roller thundering on the reef?"

we get, just from the sound of the words, a vivid

sweep of the great mid-ocean surges hurling them
the ragged crags.
Again in these lines:
"And moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmur of innumerable bees,"

the incomparable blending of liquid alliteration with

toning imparts a sense of warm and dreamy peace.
Dissonant alliteration also has its place:
"The bare black cliff clanged round him"

connotes exactly the harsh impression intended.

In a certain class of poem wonderful cadence-effe
achieved with repetends and refrains, but these ar
to abuse and should be employed with a sure artistry
We cannot afford to dispense with any factor for
ment of verse; we need to study all of them. Be s
mind saturated with all forms of this varied music
evolve that vehicle best suited to the expression of t
thought.
It is not the intention of this paper to deal with the Impres-
sionism of the day which seems to have invaded all the arts. Far
be it from me to say that it has not added some notes to the gamut
of color or sound. Very likely it has introduced a fresh stimulus-

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 The Relation Between Music and Poetry 383

and it is quite true that art grows formal and stale unless it be
stirred from time to time by new impulses-but in verse its danger
lies in its tendency to blurr the purity of outline, and it invites
to slovenliness of technique and to amorphousness.
We have always to remember that the artist, quite as much
as the artisan, is a workman, and if he be not master of his tools,
even as the carpenter or plumber, he is not likely to do an accept-
able job. The boys of the Italian Renaissance began their appren-
ticeship at a very early age-sometimes as young as eight years-
the result being that before adolescence was reached they were
completely saturated with the atmosphere of their art, and the
technical mastery of their great teachers. As their own wings
grew, and they launched themselves into the empyrean of individ-
ual expression, they did not have to struggle with their media.
It is to this superb and fundamental drill that we owe a Leonardo, a
Titian, a Raphael, a Michelangelo.
The same is true of literature. In the great Elizabethan age
we find a similar intrinsic impulse governing among the literary
masters of that day and focusing in the greatest of them all.
Shakespeare was a many-sided man. He was a Nature lover, a
man of the world, a philosopher, a romancer; but above and
before all, he was a great artist. His workmanship, his artistry
was superlative; and it is by virtue of this artistry rather than by
his humanism, his philosophy or his talent for a good story, that
he has endured through the centuries and come down to us fresh,
vital, and convincing-a perennial joy to all lovers of great art.
If we look down the vistas of past literature we shall discover
one fact, that the poets who have survived have always been
primarily great artists. The thought alone, however great, is
not enough. It needs to be greatly clothed upon. Plenty of
other men, contemporary with these, have had great thoughts,
but, because of inadequate expression, have slipped into that
limbo which inevitably engulfs imperfection.
We too can study to make ourselves true and intrinsic artists,
even if not Shakespeares. We may learn by careful study to mold
our thought into a vital music and symmetry, and so, standing
upon the mount of vision:
"Catch
Upon the burning lava of a song,
The full-veined, heaving, double-breasted age."'

'Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

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