Wallace Stevens' "Orchestration" of "The Whole of Harmonium".
Item
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Title
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Wallace Stevens' "Orchestration" of "The Whole of Harmonium".
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Identifier
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AAI9432335
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identifier
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9432335
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Creator
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Comins, Barbara.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Joan Richardson
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Date
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1994
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American | Music
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Abstract
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Following the cue of the Symbolists and Mallarme, the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) drew upon music's emotive power throughout his oeuvre. In Stevens' poetry, music serves as, what he termed, a "transcendent analogue" for the intangibles of thought and feeling. This interdisciplinary dissertation examines representative poems from Stevens' work in terms of his underscoring of idea, character, emotion, and spirit through use of musical allusion, rhythm, tonality, color, instrumentation, and other techniques of orchestration. He depicted mood through musical effects and dynamics (pizzicato, crescendo, accelerando); foreshadowed ideas of later poems through use of musical jokes, quotes and allusions; characterized personality type through assignment of specific musical instruments or voice timbre; underscored the themes of certain poems by casting them within the framework of such musical forms as madrigal, bagatelle, mass, hymn, or waltz; and identified specific emotions through musical tonality or key signature.;The dissertation's first chapter, "Frettings on the Blank," explores Stevens' synaesthetic project, his musical background, and his sensitivity to musical effect. The second chapter, "Score this Anecdote," examines "The Comedian as the Letter C" as a bildungspoem/symphonic tone poem in which Crispin's odyssey is orchestrated with various instruments foreshadowing and portraying his development. The next chapters, "Jocular Procreations" and "A Million People on One String," examine Stevens' use of the musical joke and the blues. The fifth chapter, "Invisible Audience," uncovers polyrhythmic interplay accenting the tension between private rehearsal and public performance in "Mozart 1935" and "The Idea of Order at Key West." The sixth chapter, "Then the Theatre Changed," elucidates how musical instruments and forms underscore knowledge as a provisional construct. Chapter Seven, "Like a Page of Music," interprets "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" as a transgressive reading of scriptures, framed as a musical score in Byzantine kanon form. The penultimate chapter, "Silent Rhapsodist," examines silences and musical scoring of natural objects as a rehearsal for death, in Stevens' last poems. The "Coda," "Transcendent Analogue," reveals that the cumulative effect of Stevens' techniques of orchestration transforms the reader into an active performer of his poetic score.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
