Literature and musical adaptation

Bibliographic Information

Literature and musical adaptation

edited by Michael J. Meyer

(Rodopi perspectives on modern literature, 26)

Rodopi, 2002

  • : bound

Available at  / 4 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references after each section

Description and Table of Contents

Description

It can safely be said that when literary texts are utilized or adapted by a musician to create a new work of art, it is seldom that a diminished or lessened product results. Rather, such a merging usually enlarges and enhances both text and tune, perhaps significantly changing the message of the original. Discovering exactly what the new form has to offer and how it relates to the text or melody that preceded it is often a daunting task, requiring a close examination of both the author's and the composer's intent. The essays in this collection offer an analysis of several adaptations, some successful, some not so successful, and attempt to assess just what the musicians or writers have modified or changed from to the original as they re-form it into an altogether different media. Ranging from Pasternak's appropriation of Tchaikovsky to Britten's operatic versions of Billy Budd and the Turn of the Screw, from Celan's use of fugal technique in his "Todesfuge" to the way that the musicianship of several women writers found voice in their writing, a broad spectrum of collaborations is examined. As readers examine an author's respect for a long dead musician (Hopkins' admiration of Purcell) or as they discover how John Harbison worked to transform Fitzgerald's musicality in The Great Gatsby, it will be evident that musical adaptations often provide a richness that the originals did not possess and that the potential for greatness is heightened when the arts intersect.

Table of Contents

1. Irene Morra: " 'A Song Not Without Words': Singing Billy Budd" 2. Kim Moreland: Music in The Great Gatsby and The Great Gatsby as Music 3. Jennifer Stolpa: Henry Purcell and Gerard Manley Hopkins: Two Explorations of Identity 4. Gyllian Phillips: "Something Lies Beyond the Scene [seen]" of Facade: Sitwell, Walton and Kristeva's Semiotic 5. Jenifer Cushman: "Dann sang er": Das Marienleben from Rilke to Hindemith 6. Karen Evans-Romaine: Pasternak and Tchaikovsky: Musical Echoes in Pasternak's Blind Beauty 7. David Clippinger: The Hidden Life: Benjamin Britten's Homoerotic Reading of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw 8. Karl Henzy: Musical Interpretations of Modernist Literature 9. Sarah Ann Wider: When Performance Ends: Musicians as Writers 10. Solveig Olsen: Celan's "Todesfuge": The Musical Dimension of a Verbal Composition

by "Nielsen BookData"

Related Books: 1-1 of 1

Details

  • NCID
    BA62206621
  • ISBN
    • 9042008024
    • 9042008121
  • Country Code
    ne
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    Amsterdam ; New York, NY
  • Pages/Volumes
    221 p.
  • Size
    23 cm
  • Parent Bibliography ID
Page Top