5/10/2023 0 Comments Utopia ave![]() ![]() ![]() There is an unattributed maxim that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” If music is indeed a language in itself, then something seems to be lost in translation it is almost like there is this intangible, quintessential je-ne-sais-quoi about music that words can never do justice to. ![]() However, despite the many attempts, there seems to be a sense that his unnamed genre is still fundamentally problematic for writers. Forster’s Howards End contains a lengthy description of a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, while Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time includes a fictional violin sonata. Strangely, there seems to be no such verbal equivalent for writing about music, despite numerous examples: Zadie Smith’s Swing Time focuses on two girls bonded by their love of tap dancing, while Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes tells the stories of five musicians. There are many examples in literature: Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’, Keats’ ‘Ode On A Grecian Urn’, the Iliad by Homer. Ekphrasis is defined as a literary description or commentary on a work of art. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |