The Fourth Dimension of a Song

Rodgers, Stephen

doi:10.1093/mts/mtv002

Music Theory Spectrum

2015

DOI: 10.1093/mts/mtv002

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The Fourth Dimension of a Song

Stephen Rodgers¹

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Cited by 6 publications

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“…In an earlier article (Rodgers ) I applied Abrams's ideas about the physical sensation of reading poetry to the analysis of songs by Schubert and Britten; Randel () has explored the interaction of music with poetic sound, rhythm and syntax in four songs from Schumann's Dichterliebe ; and Voigt () has written about Schoenberg's and Webern's treatment of poetic rhythm, rhyme, assonance and alliteration in their freely atonal songs.…”

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Song and the Music of Poetry

Rodgers¹

2017

Music Analysis

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As much as the Lied has been a mainstay in studies of the relationship between text and music, one important aspect of that relationship has been largely ignored: the ways in which composers respond to the sounds, or phonemes, of words themselves. Analysts of German Lieder (and art song in general) have emphasised the diverse ways in which music expresses the meaning of poetry, but they have remained largely indifferent to how music captures, and often enhances, poetry's materiality – its patterns of consonants and vowels, its intonational shapes, its ‘music’. Drawing in part upon literary scholarship on the sonic aspects of poetry (by Robert Pinsky, M. H. Abrams and others), this article explores how the sound worlds of poetry and music interact. I begin by evaluating three common approaches to the analysis of art song, each of which neglects poetic sound to some degree. I then propose an alternative approach, one designed to ensure that the music of poetry is given its due. Finally, I apply this method to a detailed analysis of ‘Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’’, from Dichterliebe, and to another setting by Schumann, ‘Melancholie’, from the Spanisches Liederspiel.

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Song and the Music of Poetry

Rodgers¹

2017

Music Analysis

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Slanted beats, enchanted communities: Pavement's early phrase rhythm as indie narrative

Heetderks

2017

Pop. Mus.

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Previous studies of indie music from the 1980s and 1990s have noted that it uses a number of stylistic markers – involving production values, singing style instrumentation and lyrical themes – to convey difference from a perceived mainstream. However, the ideal of difference also influences other aspects of songwriting. As a case study, this article examines early songs by the highly regarded indie band Pavement in which irregularity in phrasing and hypermeter supports a narrative of differentiation. Recurring strategies for creating irregularity include thwarting expected closure at the ends of phrases, using the sounds of words to project conflicting cues for grouping boundaries and creating highly irregular hypermetric lengths. These metric and phrasing devices, when heard in the context of songs, often have vivid narrative or expressive implications.

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Norms of Textual Scansion and Rhyme in Beatles AABA Forms

Heetderks¹

2021

Music Theory Spectrum

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In AABA songs (sometimes called verse–bridge songs) written and performed by the Beatles, the song texts’ scansion and rhyme show significant contrasts between different sections, and these contrasts often have important formal and narrative functions. Combining rock Formenlehre with phonetic analysis, this article shows that A modules tend to have irregular scansion and frequent rhyme, while B modules tend to show regular scansion and less frequent rhyme. In the unusual cases where A modules have infrequent rhyme, the B modules tend to offer contrast by showing greater rhyme frequency. These contrasts represent an independent, recurring formal device in the Beatles’ catalogue that does not entirely comport with other well-defined formal processes, such as the loose-verse/tight-chorus schema. The scansion and rhyme have various narrative and formal functions: They often suggest a contrast between an active and passive state in the song’s protagonist, and disruptions to regular patterns or conflict with grammatical boundaries can play a critical role in shaping phrases. B modules that thwart the norm can connote an especially high emotional arousal or suggest a process of intensification and conclusion, linking the form to an expanded statement–response–departure–conclusion form. The analyses demonstrate the central role that prosody often plays in popular song and show the importance of considering its relation to other musical patterns.

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The Fourth Dimension of a Song

Cited by 6 publications

References 4 publications

Song and the Music of Poetry

Song and the Music of Poetry

Slanted beats, enchanted communities: Pavement's early phrase rhythm as indie narrative

Norms of Textual Scansion and Rhyme in Beatles AABA Forms

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