Melody in words. Gerardo Diego’s musical approach to his poetry

Abstract

Sound poetry has been a particularly influential phenomenon in the development of 20th century artistic representations linked to the exploration and re-representation of sound. These poetic creations have expanded, broadening their fields of representation. Sound poetry, radio art, interactive sound art, and sonic art are some of the new manifestations that have been included
within the broad domain of sound art. Sound poetry constitutes a genre of acoustic art or sound art that inhabits the intermediate space between poetry and music, mobilizing all elements of language: orality, breathing, the body, and all the sonorous dimensions of the phonatory apparatus, used as material for artistic creation.
This study establishes the assumptions that preceded the formation of this discipline, while also focusing on its main characteristics and early development in Spain. The aim is to explore how these new inter-artistic experiences find a correlative in the score-poems of the
Santander poet Gerardo Diego. To this end, an interdisciplinary analysis of four poems from his ultraist period will be conducted to delve into the exploration of the sonic world in the poetry of this Generation of ‘27 poet.