'For Evermore': An Examination of Musical Ekphrases of E. A. Poe's "The Raven"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12795/REN.2023.i27.4Keywords:
E. A. Poe, music, poetry, adaptation, transmediation, musical ekphrasis, uncannyAbstract
This article analyses the transfer of poetic language into music, focusing on Edgar Allan Poe’s celebrated poem “The Raven” (1845). After a theoretical study on poetic language and theoretical questions regarding transmediation, I look into different pieces of instrumental music directly inspired by Poe’s lines. To this end, I draw on ground-breaking research regarding media transformation by authors such as Lars Elleström, whose work provides the theoretical framework, and, most especially, Siglind Bruhn, who has written about the relation between poetry and music, and who coined the term “musical ekphrasis”. Finally, I argue that these composers transmediate Poe’s “The Raven” by using musical devices similar to those employed by Poe in his poem. Particularly important for this analysis will be compulsive repetition and variation as strategies of the musical ekphrasis, and the re-presentation of the uncanny in music.
Downloads
Metrics
References
ALLIS, Michael. “Holbrooke and Poe Revisited: Refiguring The Raven as the Musical Uncanny.” Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic, and Musical Patriot, edited by Paul Watt and Anne-Marie Forbes, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, pp. 117-152.
BRUHN, Siglind. “A Concert of Paintings: ‘Musical Ekphrasis’ in the Twentieth Century.” Poetics Today, vol. 22, no. 3, 2001, pp. 551-605.
---. Musical Ekphrasis: Composers Responding to Poetry and Painting. Pendragon Press, 2000.
CAMPBELL, Edward. Boulez, Music and Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
CLUCK, Nancy Anne. Preface. Literature and Music: Essay on Form, by Anne Nancy Cluck, Brigham Young University Press, 1981, pp. vii-viii.
DIBBLE, Jeremy. “Narrative and Formal Plasticity in the British Symphonic Poem, 1850-1950.” The Symphonic Poem in Britain, 1850-1950, edited by Michael Allis and Paul Watt, Boydell & Brewer, 2020, pp. 15-54.
DUARTE, Anabela. “Lou Reed, Diamanda Galás, and Edgar Allan Poe’s Resistance Aesthetics in Contemporary Music.” The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 11, no. 1, Spring 2010, pp. 152-162.
ELIOT, T. S. “The Music of Poetry”. The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition: The War Years, 1940–1946, edited by David E. Chinitz, and Ronald Schuchard, vol. 6, John Hopkins University Press, 2017, pp. 310–25.
ELLESTRÖM, Lars. Media Transformation: The Transfer of Media Characteristics among Media. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
FISHER, Benjamin F. “Poe and the Gothic Tradition.” The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 72-91.
FLEURY, Michel. “Joseph Holbrooke, le double musical d’Edgar Poe.” CLASSICA. 28 February 2021. https://classica.fr/joseph-holbrooke-le-double-musical-dedgar-poe/Accessed 10 Oct. 2021.
HALLIDAY, Iain and Mariateresa Franza. “Edgar Allan Poe’s Words as Musical Inspiration.” Edgar Allan Poe across Disciplines, Genres and Languages, edited by Linda Barone and Alfonso Amendola, Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2017, pp. 185-202.
LANFORD, Michael. “Ravel and ‘The Raven’: The Realisation of an Inherited Aesthetic in ‘Boléro’. The Cambridge Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 3, September 2011, pp. 243-265.
ŁAPETA, Oskar. “Zjawisko muzycznych idées fixes w twórczości kompozytorskiej Eugeniusza Morawskiego: w poszukiwaniu genezy i interpretacji.” Muzyka, vol. 64, no. 3, 2019, pp. 69-89.
NEIMEYER, Mark. “Poe and Popular Culture.” The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 205-224.
Nox Arcana. “Shadow of the Raven.” Monolith Graphics. https://noxarcana.com/raven.html. Accessed 20 Oct. 2021.
PATER, Walter. The Renaissance, Studies in Art and Poetry: The 1893 Text. University of California Press, 1980.
PEEPLES, Scott. The Afterlife of Edgar Allan Poe. Boydell & Brewer, 2003.
POE, Edgar Allan. The Annotated Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015.
---. “The Philosophy of Composition.” Poetry Foundation, 13 Oct. 2009, www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69390/the-philosophy-of-composition. Accessed 10 Oct. 2021.
---. “The Poetic Principle.” Home Journal, no. 36, August 31, 1850, p. 1. www.eapoe.org/works/essays/poetprnb.htm. Accessed 15 Oct. 2021.
---. “The Rationale of Verse.” The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. II: Poems & Miscellanies, edited by N. P. Willis, J. R. Lowell and R. W. Griswold, J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall, 1850, pp. 215-258. www.eapoe.org/works/essays/ratlvrsd.htm. Accessed 17 Oct. 2021.
---. “Letter to B--.” Southern Literary Messenger, July 1836, 2, pp. 501-503. www.eapoe.org/works/essays/bletterb.htm#fn50101. Accessed 25 Oct. 2021.
SANDERS, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. Routledge, 2006.
Scott Gendel. “Scott’s Musical Works,” 2021. www.scottgendel.com/the-raven.html. Accessed 19 Oct. 2021.
SEDERHOLM, Carl H. “That Vexing Power of Perverseness: Approaching Heavy Metal Adaptations of Poe.” Adapting Poe: Re-Imaginings in Popular Culture, edited by Denis R. Perry and Carl H. Sederholm, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 193-206.
SIAGIANNI, Diletta. “Reflections of Darkness.” Interview with Nox Arcana, Greece, July 2007. Monolith Graphics. https://monolithgraphics.com/interviews/reflections-of-darkness.html. Accessed 20 Oct. 2021.
STEDMAN, Edmund Clarence. Edgar Allan Poe. Houghton Mifflin, 1880.
STOCKWELL, Peter. “Poe’s Gothic Ambience.” Edgar Allan Poe across Disciplines, Genres and Languages, edited by Linda Barone and Alfonso Amendola, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018, pp. 7-24.
WALKER, Ian Malcolm. Edgar Allan Poe: The Critical Heritage. Routledge, 1997.
YOSHIDA, Minoru. “Word-Music in English Poetry.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 11, no. 2, Special Issue on Oriental Art and Aesthetics, December 1952, pp. 151-159.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Accepted 2023-09-19
Published 2023-10-04
- Abstract 191
- pdf 197
