Re: kafka and rilke

Jim writes:
<< I think the distinction between "song" and "poetry" is a relatively
recent one, arising from the increase in printed text. >>

What's relatively new, I think, is the idea of a "song." For longer than we
have had writing we have had poetry and music -- sometimes poetry with
music, and despite some recent claims on this list, very often poetry with
no music (except, I suppose, insofar as a poem itself is "musical").

But the idea of a song -- the form of which almost all modern music takes --
as a relatively brief coupling of lyrics and melody, to be played
repeatedly, year after year, in essentially the same form, has perhaps had
occasional emergences into daylight but only really came into its own, I
believe, in the last few hundred years.

Most all Western music today can be said to have been derived in large part
from chant, and the Christian liturgical music closely associated with it.

-robbie

-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Fri Jun 27 22:44:33 2003