The Relationship between Music and Poetry

Author(s): Albert Wellek

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Winter, 1962), pp.
149-156
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/427187
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 ALBERT WELLEK

The Relationship between M

and Poetry

Program Music rhetorical figuration (Figurenlehre). It was

still valid for Handel and Bach and its tra-
Every informed person knows that it is
dition reaches
nowadays extremely easy-though onlyfar
in back into the past, at
the Western world-to brand the so-called least to the Renaissance when an imitative
and "descriptive" music flourished. Jane-
program music as an aesthetic aberration
quin's
and to condemn it completely. The fact choric paintings of battles go back to
the
does not impress us anymore that this first half of the 16th century, and the
genre
of art-if we allow it to be called art at all- caccia of Italian Ars Nova even to the Tre-

was extremely highly regarded for at cento.

least Today in the so-called "East," in the
Iron Curtain countries, where all art has
a century, and that great and even very
become
great masters contributed to its success. We politics and has been forced into
ideological
may, from a historical point of view, de- dependencies, program music
and imitative music are still exalted and
plore that this is so, but it is an incontro-
vertible fact anyhow. Still we shouldeven re- prescribed and demanded. The general
flect that not only the much maligned of program music is not even seen
decay
and certainly not shared-all on behalf of
romanticism since Beethoven must be held
responsible, but that program music the
had one and only proletarian and peasant
"Socialist realism." To quote only one ex-
been prepared during the Baroque age, and
by no means only by minor composers. ample,
Let an artist of the rank of Khatcha-
us recall in instrumental music the Biblical turian (an Armenian) has depicted a great
Histories of Kuhnau (in 1700 exactly) fire
or in his ballet Gayaneh (1942, revised
1952) in the most tasteless old-fashioned
Vivaldi's famous concerti Four Seasons, in-
cluding "The Tempest on the Sea" ("La manner, in our view, at least-programmat-
tempesta sul mare"), but above all the imi- ically; and he has included this move-
tative style in the whole of vocal music ment in the suite of the ballet which quite
which draws on the doctrine of musical rightly has become famous. Even Stravin-
sky, who from the other side of the globe
ALBERT WELLEK is professor of psychology andhas railed against any and all programmatic
head
of the department of psychology at the University
inclinations-in a booklet ironically called
of Mainz. The author of many books, his most
recent are Die Polaritit im Aufbau des Characters Poetics of Music-and who has mercilessly
(Bern & Munich, 1959), Der Riickfall in die ridiculed
Me- the Soviet musical critics for their
thodenkrise der Psychologie (G6ttingen 1959) obsolete
and and crudely naive point of view,
Musikpsychologie und Musikisthetik (Frankfurt
fits with his early works completely into the
1962). This paper was originally given as a public
line of program music cultivated by his
lecture at the University of Indiana, Bloomington,
Indiana on Sept. 19, 1961. Russian teachers and predecessors. As late

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 150 ALBERT WELLEK

as 1908 general considered

(when he in thewas
West. The con-
tw
age) he wrote The
nection is that between musicSong
and poetry
(Le chant and
du rossigno
even literature in general. This rela-
quite expressly,
tionship is historically, aat least
symph in our occi-
We must prevent
dental music, simply fundamental, a asmis music
emphasizing was originally that
vocal music and grew tone out of
gram music-though
it. This means that, historically, there was w
one breath-are
no music without speech by and not even no for-
Tone painting
mal and ritual speech is without amusic tech
at the
gram musicbeginning. is a genre
program for a
After all, the genre.
synthesis of the two arts, It
and cultivate tone
music and poetry, paint
is not a defection from
ject programabsolute music asmusic-tho
today's enthusiasts or zeal-
way round. ots for absolute music would
Tone like us to
paintin
its place even
believe. Just in the othervocal way round, this ab- m
diately obvious corresp
solute music-however necessary and im-
sound and portant
object or
aesthetically, and however situ
much it
primal may be the immanent goal of
synaesthesia evolution-
(Ur-
needs no absolute music is rather a very late
symbolism branch-
full
conventions. ing out from the communities of the arts,
Program m
so pure-instrumental
figuratively speaking an abstraction fromm it.
only in It is quite dependent
part) rightly called "absolute," dis-
But it needs also
solved, disconnected. sym
The program in the
though sense of a concert
there is program-or more
little thre-
laws or evencently the text on the case They
rules. of the record-
masters of is the
up to today art
indispensable even for the
quite
any most absolute music.
guarantee that Everybody, with the
this
be understoodpossible exception
or of theeven
expert-the wholec
ful by average musical
other people. public-must even Hetoday
fallacy" (Mr.
be told by theWimsatt'
program or the announcer,
threaten, what kind
or of work is being played,
more prop who is
failed to achieve his
the composer, what is its structure, in
its move-
which ments, etc.frequently
occurs Even the expert will have to be
of course. reminded-to cite an example-that a Trio
in g-minor by a master called Smetana is
Paul Verlaine in a famous poem asks the
going to be played, that he was a Czech, and
poet for "music above all": "de la musique
avant toute chose." The corresponding that he wrote this relatively early piece in
the year 1855 as a disciple of Schumann,
motto of the practitioners of program music
should be: Poetry above all (de la poesie
Chopin, and Liszt. It is a snobistic tyranny
to assert that it is aesthetically unacceptable
avant toute chose). But we would say today
to inform us about anything more than
that music sounds best without words, and
these "external" or formal facts-especially
that poetry speaks best without music. Both
of them do best alone. that it is strictly forbidden to add that the
trio was written on the occasion of the sud-

The Synthesis of the Arts den death of the five year old daughter of
the composer.
Still, the problem which has been formu- Even without such previous knowledge-
lated under the somewhat strange name in of
immediate experience-a real expert
program music can be seen and understood could recognize that the work has an inner
only in a much wider context-it doesand notprobably also historical kinship with
matter whether we consider it as still topi- Schubert's Quartet in d-minor which was
cal, as in the East, or as obsolete as it is even
in written at almost the same age and

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The Relationship between Music and Poetry 151
which acquired the title Death and
indulging the
in program music proper, i.e.,
Maiden (Der Tod und dasfrom literary instrumental
Mddchen) ac- music, even
though varies
cording to the movement which he was athe
great artist in tone paint-
theme of the song. One could
ing inentitle the
his musical dramas. The Siegfried
trio of Smetana: "Death and the Child," or Idyll is a symphonic movement, not a "sym-
"Death and the Little Girl." One genera- phonic poem," and the interpretations
tion later, similar examples are the two which Wagner wrote for his overtures to
quartets of Smetana's countryman Janacek: accompany performances in concert halls
though these are later works, the first writ- were written much later and can be dis-
ten with Tolstoy's tragic "heroine" in the pensed with. Wagner rejected instrumental
Kreutzer Sonata in mind, the other a program music quite expressly also in the-
thanksgiving for the late, much younger ory. It has been said of Siegfried Wagner
love of the aged master (in 1923 and with 1928).
ironic jocularity that it was his greatest
musical merit that he inspired his father by
Music with Titles or Music with Motto his birth to that musical and poetic celebra-
tion of his youthful years. The idyll has
From an aesthetic point of view it actually
is, no to be understood as such a celebra-
doubt, something totally different whether tion without any detailed programmatic de-
one stops with such biographical hints and
termination, though there are some whimsi-
through them-or by giving a title calto a
allusions, also in musical themes, to the
work as a whole-merely suggests an youth inter- of the mythological godfather and
pretation to the listener, or whether one of the boy.
namesake
asks him to study a detailed "program," As the quotation from Schumann shows,
either in a concert program or some right intro-at the beginning of the development
ductory notes, and requires him to look forsymphonic poem and tone poetry,
of the
and to follow its realization in the music.
such a hint is enough-it is even everything
There is a difference between just giving that ais possible and permissible. It is possi-
motto to a work and giving it a detailed ble and completely sufficient to give a cue,
program. Such a requirement may be hardly a motto, an inscription, to allude to a bio-
realizable and might be even aesthetically graphical situation of the composer and
absurd. Western aesthetics today leans thustoto give direction to the understanding
such a judgment, almost without dissent- and sympathy of the listener. But to force
at least since the abortive programmatic on the listener a detailed literary program,
studies of Beethoven's work made by Arnold with a symbolic depiction of individual
Schering in Germany. On the whole, Schu- events and incidents, is a lapse of taste that
mann proved right against Berlioz seems and peculiarly antimusical.
Liszt (or later against Richard Strauss) say- Quite rightly good concert guides of re-
ing, in a review of Berlioz' Symphonie cent fan-vintage (and if they showed good taste,
tastique (in 1835) which had been given even aearlier ones) emphasize that literary
detailed program by the composer: "Such music should be comprehensible as well as
directions (or sign-posts) have always some-to "content" as to formal structure, without
thing undignified and even charlatan-like. detailed programmatic information. (This
certainly can be said about the works of
In any case the five main inscriptions (head-
ing the five movements of the symphony) Schubert, Wagner, Smetana, and Janacek
would have been enough... One doeswe not
have mentioned.) What matters is what
want to be guided so crudely in his ideas. such music offers the listener in immediate
... What matters is whether the music
apperception. To declare that it is impossi-
without text and explanation is something ble without previous knowledge to under-
by itself, and peculiarly whether there is an instrumental work of Beethoven,
stand
any spirit in it." Schubert, Wagner, Smetana, Janiacek, as an
The excellent instinct, also on theoreti-elegy or as waiting for death, or as an idyll
cal matters, of Wagner preserved himand froma celebration of youth, etc., seems to me

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 152 ALBERT WELLEK

sheer dogmatism.
tet in A-minor, opus 132; and If we
even the pre-
about cannot this be
ceding marking: "Holy Thanksgiving the
Song t
we do not to the Deity on Recoverythe
refute from Illness" jus
gestion (Heiliger Dankgesang eines
through a Genesenden
title, an
rather prove its
die Gottheit) necessit
does not really go far beyond
From the adogmatic poin
hint at a religious, sacred, and simultane-
sic one could consider
ously personal relation. And this indication it
of pure is also given immediately
music needs by the music it-suc
understanding.
self if only through theBut one
use of the archaic
aesthetic or archaising and sacred ecclesiastical mode
enjoyment and
is not diminished
on F which had received the name seriou
"Lydian"
(and thus (erroneously,
by by the way).
such previo
that even the unknown,
cated or implied
The Substitution of a Text biogr
such a work rather lends it a human "exis-
tential" significance which not only does The dilemma of Literary Music was acute
not subtract from its aesthetic value, but
as early as Beethoven-the aberration of a
rather enhances it in a peculiar way. musicologist of such eminence as Arnold
To say it in more general terms: a con-Schering demonstrates this clearly. No
fessional art is also aesthetically distin-
doubt it is an old and recognised procedure
guished-all things being equal-above to substitute a text ex post to a melody or,
"pure art" as game or amusement. Is this an
if the melody has a text, to adapt another
extra-aesthetic, extraneous point of view?text-we know the trick used by modern
Or is this Romanticism? Is this Baroque? jazz "hits,"-and there is of course musical
Is this Titanism in the Beethoven style? (as
parody. But the same thing arises almost
Goethe sensed it and rejected it instinc-
spontaneously from the need for under-
tively). Knowledge of biographical relations
standing of any poetic or literary listener.
is not indispensable, but it brings the lis- To take the best known example: Bee-
tener nearer to a real understanding of thethoven's Fifth Symphony and its first theme
work and the master. One cannot take a was given the motto Es muss geschehn (It
work out of its cultural, that is, its historical
must happen) by no less a person than
context, and let it hang suspended Richard
in the Wagner. This explains the title of
air. But if you once allow the necessity of
the symphony as "Fate Symphony" which
knowing the historical and culturalhasposi-
become almost official. It makes the es-
tion of a work and of assuming it yourself,
sential only too explicit. But can one speak
then no limit can be drawn toward the seriously of a misuse (which seems today
consideration of intimate communications the general opinion)? This, of course, refers
and biographical details. to the first movement. The last one had
In the sense we have been discussing beenit adopted as a "victory" movement long
music with title or music with motto is, ago, and the Fifth Symphony as a whole was
also, at least in principle, say, a classical
claimed for that during the Second World
movement which is inscribed, for instance,
War by the Allied Peoples.
"Allegro molto appassionato e con brio." Now, think of a composer who suddenly
These are indications of expression whichinterrupts one of his most sublime sym-
go beyond the purely formal, beyond mere phonic conceptions in order to introduce a
indication of tempo which is symbolizedrecitative hardly comprehensible in its place
conventionally in the word "allegro" and then goes on to an operatic finale-as
(though we must not forget that "allegro" Beethoven did in the Ninth Symphony. He
means "joyful," and not "quickly," in Ital- could hardly have been surprised that his
ian). At least in isolation, looking at the most ardent admirers, from such great men
title or motto, there is only a short step to as Wagner to such humble poets as Hugo
an indication such as "Feeling new power" Salus, began to substitute texts to the
(Neue Kraft fiihlend) in Beethoven's Quar- themes of this particular work and of his

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The Relationship between Music and Poetry 153
other symphonic or sonatamusic
creations. The
is primarily song, and that verse and
also ritual
sharply contoured and closely hymnical prose were sung. Only
structured
themes of Beethoven seem to challenge
very such
much later, after the rise of pure in-
interpretations whether they strumental music and the independent
are "melodi-
branching
ous" in the ordinary sense or not. off of a pure recitation, there
Stravinsky
in his Musical Poetics-a witty but
arose the totally
new aesthetic problem: What can
incoherent and in this sense dilettantish be set to music?
book-tells us that Beethoven had been In original musical recitation the differ-
ence between
denied "the gift of melody" for which he metrical and nonmetrical lan-
had longed all his life: Beethoven, Stravin-
guage or speech did not matter, as every-
sky asserts, even had developed to greatness
thing kept in the vicinity of what later was
called recitativo,
in a struggle with this single deficiency of as "accent" and "concent"
talent. But such an opinion assumes the and concentus) were closely re-
(accentus
popular identification of melody lated. and bel-
Though in the Middle Ages and since
canto (or cantilena) as we see when Stra-texts also in prose were sung or
liturgical
vinsky cites Bellini of all peoplerather as the chanted, and though this persisted in
counter-example against Beethoven. (This
Biblical oratories and passions and found its
corresponds roughly to the contrastsecular between counterpart of the "accompagnato"
Wagner and Bizet which Nietzsche recitative drew in of the opera, still the prejudice
his last years.) This surely is a falseprevailed,
defini- till about the time of Richard
tion of melody, and the evaluationStrauss is quiteand the veristi, that only verse in
mistaken. The motivic and melodic inven- the proper sense can be set to music and
tion of Beethoven-which in his youthsung. was But the more aria and recitative be-
as full of cantilena as was Mozart but later gan again to approximate each other-in a
receded more and more into extreme pre- development running counter to the former
cision and self-restraint and sometimes to trend-the more the stylistic gulf between
the brittleness of sharply outlined melodic them began to be bridged, the clearer it
profiles-has something so "appealing"-so became that song is not confined to verse.
much "expression"-that the temptation Theto pride of the "inventors" of operas and
invent texts to them is almost irresistible. musical dramas on prose texts is thus his-
But also here there is ground for a profound torically quite unjustified, however much
psychological and aesthetic misunderstand- they may have subjectively felt the novelty
ing. Beethoven himself confessed that ofhetheir practice. The deviation into the
never had a melodic idea except in instru- melodrama (i.e., a drama not set to music
ments and never in the singing voice, never
but with orchestral accompaniment) turned
in a song in its immediate sense. Thus also
out to be not only inorganic but superflu-
ous. No really great composer has ever
in the Choral finale of the Ninth Symphony
the theme of the Hymn to Joy is introduced
written melodramas though the Czech com-
and carried out purely by instrumental poser Zdenbk Fibich, the German Max von
means within the symphonic development.Schillings, and others attracted some passing
There can be no doubt that this was an attention, and so did another Bohemian,
instrumental, not a poetic inspiration which
George Benda, as early as the 18th century,
only later was transferred to the lines of
followed by young Mozart in 1778 in one
Schiller's poem. Beethoven himself adopted single fragment only (Semiramis) the manu-
a text to his music. If we can believe his script of which was lost.
own words, such a procedure was his basicAll this is well known and could be dis-
situation when composing vocal music. cussed in much greater detail but it does
not seem necessary in our context. For the
What can be set to Music question of principle of the relation be-
tween music and poetry it is more important
As we hinted before, in our Western and
cul-more illuminating to discuss a special
ture it was originally a matter of course-as
problem which has not been given much at-
also in a majority of other cultures-that
tention in theory: the rise and perfection of

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 154 ALBERT WELLEK

the classical and

seen and formulated roman
by Norbert von Hel-
larly in Germany
lingrath, the editor and propagator and
of H61-
ified only derlin,
within who fell a victim to the First
the World fr
poetics. We allude
War. Following firs
ancient Greek rhetoric the-
fact that masterpieces
ory he envisages contrasting types of lyri- o
cal dictionif
frequently, as they are
notrepresented most
reg
and even clearly
at on the times
one hand by the song, andpo
while, theparticularly
other the folksong, and way
on the other r
lyrical poetry hand by the ode or have
hymn. Hellingrath bee
times over, speaks ofbut
"smooth" versusnever
"rough" struc-
ner.
ture. One could also speak of the contrast
Obviously we must recall the case "soft"
between of and "hard" types. Das Veil-
Schubert. There seems no question
chenthat his song) and Heider6slein are
(Mozart's
two famous song cycles, Die sch6ne
smooth orMiil-
soft structures, Wanderers Sturm-
lerin and Die Winterreise have rescued from lied or Harzreise im Winter, Goethe's free
certain oblivion the insignificant poetry ofrhythmic poems in what was considered the
Wilhelm Miiller (nicknamed "der Griechen-style of Pindar, are "rough" or hard struc-
Miuller" because of his poems in support oftures. The two Wanderers Nachtlieder are
the Greek independence movement in the somewhere in between.
twentieth of last century). But even Schu- The first two songs, Das Veilchen and
bert's settings-as later also Schumann's of Heiderdslein, have been set to music by the
mediocre poems by Heine-must be judgedgreatest masters, Mozart and Schubert, with
as only moderately successful if we look atan incomparable success. There is nothing
them from the point of view of poetry. Onsimilar for the other poems. The same is
the other hand, Schubert's setting of poemstrue even of the two famous "Night Songs."
by Goethe are comparatively less successfulBut this is not merely so because the settings
though we must allow for impressive excep-of Uber alien Gipfeln are not good-or not
tions, the Erlkinig, Gretchen am Spinnrad, as good-musically. Rather with such a
Heiderislein. Ganymed, though a fine song, poem as model the music appears easily as
distorts the meaning of the poem by a clos-a superfluous ornament, which does not
ing which sounds like a church hymn. Schu-convincingly enrich the resulting whole.
bert has not otherwise written music to There arises, with other words, the impres-
great lyrical poems (Death and the Maiden sion of an excess (Ubermass). To speak
by Matthias Claudius may be an exception). figuratively: the empty spaces are missing in
The same is true, all things considered,the of net or rather in the structure through
Schumann. Successful setting of first rate which or into which the music could glide
poems can be found only in his cycleand of there settle, so to say, with organic sig-
songs on texts from Eichendorff. nificance. A good poem is too "dense" in
The solution or at least bridging of the order to let in music (as setting). This seems
difficulty-of a certain (not necessarily the in- truth of the argument of the defenders
evitable) contradiction between a good of inane opera texts. The less ambitious are
the words, the more music is allowed to be
poem and a good setting-occurred only
with Gabriel Faur6 and Hugo Wolf, i.e., on its own and to display its power.
only after Wagner and Cdsar Franck, in the It seems obvious that Richard Wagner
transition to "modern" music, or in modern had to detest inane opera texts though he
music itself. argues from the point of view of the oppos-
The problem posed here can be tackleding type of artist. One has on occasion criti-
by the methods of modern poetics. The va- cised Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk for its
riety of poetry is such that we might recog- lack of open spaces in the structure, for its
nize decisive qualitative differences evenexcessive "density," particularly where Wag-
among poems of the same rank. One ofner deserts the very provisional draft of
these, possibly the most important, has beenwriting the librettos himself, and tries to

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 The Relationship between Music and Poetry 155
give the words the rank of opposed
independent
to everything conventionally song-
high poetry. Within our frame likeof
by reference
that very fact.
we could say that Wagner asInamusicalpoet melody
de- there is also a contrast
veloped from a loose more singable,
of typessmooth
comparable to the two types of
structure of words to the predominantly
poetic structure. We alluded to it when we
hard and rough structures mentioned
of his laterthe contrast between Beethoven
andof
works: particularly in the Ring Bellini.
the INibe-
have tried to elaborate it in
several
lungen, in Tristan and Parsifal, studiesless
though since 1934 and have called it
so in the Mastersingers which keep
either much
"harmonious" (stimmig) or "dishar-
nearer to folk-song. One can say,
moniousof (sperrig)
course, melody style. The first
that the total work of art envisaged
type belongs toby the song, particularly the
Wagner strikes us as "baroque," as massive
folksong, the traditional air, the belcanto,
and overcrowded. But one cannot
the lastsay that
to the recitative, particularly of
this is the result of the small "musicality"
Wagner, and or
thus to the Sprechgesang
rather "affinity for music" which
of the texts.
has been considered "unmelodious"
Wagner considered his poemsoriginally.
as poems Withand
the recitative and with the
read them aloud as such only whole
as long
turn as
backheto a musical diction remote
had not set them to music. Asfrom
soontheasold
they
aria, the presupposition for
were set to music he did not want to recog-
the setting to music of even "rough" or
nize them as poetry anymore. "hard"
Even structured
when inpoems was created.
his late works Wagner achievedThea problem
predomi- of what poetry can be set to
nantly hard structure in his words-he did
music or rather, why really excellent poetry
not always succeed-he still treated cannot be setthe
to music, is posed by the wide
words always as an anticipation of theinmu-
divergence, classical and romantic musi-
sic: he conceived the words as cal such anticipa-
practice, between song and arioso on one
tions and thought of them as side ready for theon the other. The prob-
and recitative
setting. lem was solved at the climax of romanticism
It is worth remarking that the Songs by and later in the development toward im-
Mathilde Wesendonck which Wagner set pressionism and expressionism when a new
to music and which are important as studies form of melody was invented in the sense
preparing the style of Tristan use texts of of a new recitative. "The endless melody"
smooth structure and very moderate poetic (in the sense of Wagner) is without end also
value. The five poems are songlike and because it does not have to recoil before
should be easily set to music, in the tradi- any however resistant verbal material.
tional sense. This is true in general of song- A similar development took place in
like, that is, smooth structure and diction.
poetry and also in poetic theory which usu-
Heiderdslein is an artificial folksong (to
ally rather follows than guides poetic prac-
speak paradoxically) and also Death and tice. As late as 1921 the conservative Swiss
the Maiden by Claudius belongs to thetheorist Emil Ermatinger defended the view
genre, something like a would-be folk bal-
lad. that the lyrical is antagonistic to the logical
in itself, that any logical distinction or dis-
The strophic, stanzaic poem is naturally
junction must be excluded or condemned in
particularly suitable for setting to music,
lyrical poetry. "But," "still" are unlyrical
and particularly the stanza with rhyme,
words which spoil the lyrical mood. A
either in a song, a romance, or ballad. It al-
most demands a strophic setting and onlyglance at the diction of the German ode
rarely requires a different air for each verse.since Klopstock, Goethe, and Holderlin,
Generally the stanzaic poem will have and even the mere possibility of philosophi-
smooth structure, unless it be a rhymelesscal lyricism (Gedankenlyrik) proves the one-
sidedness, or even narrowness, of such a
strophic ode on the Greek model, as in H61-
derlin. Hard structure requires a new set-point of view. It can at the most be valid for
ting for each part throughout and is thusthe smooth structure of the strophic song.

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 156 ALBERT WELLEK

It is as come the contrast between harmonious

one-sided asand th
in the style
disharmonious melodyof Belli
(stimmig and sper-
countered in the Musical Poetics of Stravin- rig).
sky. We can thus conclude that the aesthetics
This one-sidedness can be overcome in
of music and literary criticism have much to
offer to each other if they use phenomeno-
poetic theory by the fruitful idea of Helling-
rath of the two types, hard and soft, logical
whileand psychological points of view on
in music Wagner had solved the problembothbysides and use them comparatively. I
his recitative and his endless melody.have tried to do so, in this paper, though
In the
artsong Hugo Wolf has successfully only
over-briefly and sketchily.

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