Robert Schumann, Liederkreis, Op. 39, “Mondacht” Response
“Mondnacht” Schumann’s song for voice and piano features a soaring and delicate melody over a pulsing piano accompaniment. The piece is quiet and unhurried, while the poem praises the ethereal beauty of the night sky, and the gentle loveliness of the natural world on the earth below. Mondnacht is a poem and art song about dichotomies coming together. The poem contrasts the earth and the heaven, movement, and stillness; Schumann’s accompaniment mimics this distinguishing characteristic with the gentle contrast of the piano and the voice. All these elements seem opposed to each other but instead come together in harmony rather than in opposition.
“Mondnacht” begins m.1 1 with the starting
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The voice layered on top fashions a clear, almost crystalline tone, just as the poet describes the night as radiant and “stemklar”. The soprano’s voice ascends above the quietly repeating piano and in mm. 8, 14, and 36; her voice is the “Himmel”. The poem describes the viewer's delight in observing the heavens at night and the perceived longing of the earth reaching up to them; the singer's voice also reaches up, signifying the earth’s the yearning and dreaming for the sky.
The gentle contrast between the voice and piano accompaniment creates a subtle tension that underlies the piece and emphasizes the dichotomy and separation of the sky and the earth throughout the poem. While they are detached and dissimilar, the melodies lean into each other and long to come together. There is a yearning to join, intertwine, and expand into each other.
Schumann does this with the addition of ninth chords and a fully sounded inner voice, particularly in mm. 18, 28, 40, or as in mm. 7 and 36. The chords that occur in the first two stanzas are smaller and clearer than their following counterparts. The following measures mimic their predecessors but the addition of the ninth once again shows the distance between the ground and the sky, but also adds a dissonance that creates greater tension and need for resolution, just as the Earth dreams of heaven’s kiss and longs to be
In the first stanza the sentence, “it’s a singular, human thud”, this line creates a picture in the mind that there’s feel of isolation and lonesomene...
The first stanza describes the depth of despair that the speaker is feeling, without further explanation on its causes. The short length of the lines add a sense of incompleteness and hesitance the speaker feels towards his/ her emotions. This is successful in sparking the interest of the readers, as it makes the readers wonder about the events that lead to these emotions. The second and third stanza describe the agony the speaker is in, and the long lines work to add a sense of longing and the outpouring emotion the speaker is struggling with. The last stanza, again structured with short lines, finally reveals the speaker 's innermost desire to "make love" to the person the speaker is in love
John Hollander’s poem, “By the Sound,” emulates the description Strand and Boland set forth to classify a villanelle poem. Besides following the strict structural guidelines of the villanelle, the content of “By the Sound” also follows the villanelle standard. Strand and Boland explain, “…the form refuses to tell a story. It circles around and around, refusing to go forward in any kind of linear development” (8). When “By the Sound” is examined in regards to a story, the poem’s linear development does not get beyond the setting. …” The poem starts: “Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound” (Hollander 1). The reader learns the time of the poem’s story is dawn. The last line of the first stanza provides place: “That was when I was living by the sound” (3). It establishes time and place in the first stanza, but like the circular motion of a villanelle, each stanza never moves beyond morning time at the sound but only conveys a little more about “dawn.” The first stanza comments on the sound of dawn with “…gulls shrieked violently…” (2). The second stanza explains the ref...
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
To that end, the overall structure of the poem has relied heavily on both enjambment and juxtaposition to establish and maintain the contrast. At first read, the impact of enjambment is easily lost, but upon closer inspection, the significant created through each interruption becomes evident. Notably, every usage of enjambment, which occurs at the end of nearly every line, emphasizes an idea, whether it be the person at fault for “your / mistakes” (1-2) or the truth that “the world / doesn’t need” (2-3) a poet’s misery. Another instance of enjambment serves to transition the poem’s focus from the first poet to the thrush, emphasizing how, even as the poet “[drips] with despair all afternoon,” the thrush, “still, / on a green branch… [sings] / of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything” (14-18). In this case, the effect created by the enjambment of “still” emphasizes the juxtaposition of the two scenes. The desired effect, of course, is to depict the songbird as the better of the two, and, to that end, the structure fulfills its purpose
From the very first word of the poem, there is a command coming from an unnamed speaker. This establishes a sense of authority and gives the speaker a dominant position where they are dictating the poem to the reader rather than a collaborative interacti...
Albertine Zehme, who commissioned the monodrama and was the reciter at its first performance, had been performing twenty-two of Hartleben’s Pierrot poems in her own three-part arrangement – the first part dealing with relatively happy poems, the second with a dark series of “lurid and erotic nightmares,” and the third with images of death. Schoenberg, in crafting his own Pierrot lunaire, “…retained some elements of Zehme’s narrative progression from lightness, to darkness, to death, but he transformed them into a personalized narrative of the plight of the artist in society.” In selecting his twenty-one poems, the composer carefully omitted any that dealt with daylight (except, significantly, the fi...
A strong relationship between the music and the text can be seen throughout the melodic line, particularly in measures 22-23; 26; 32-33; and 36 as the soloist sings the word “ah!” This word is particularly emotive and in fact does not even act as a word, but rather something closer to a sigh. The music reflects this by placing multiple notes on one syllable, stretching it melismatically to mimic the drawn-out and lethargic nature of sighing. Additionally, each instance of “ah!” involves an arching line within the melody (this is particularly evident in measures 26 and 36), which further solidifies the resemblance to sighing (an act that involves a “swell” of breath). The idea of sighing occurs in many instances throughout this piece, even acting outside of the melodic line. The string accompaniment contains occasional slurs, and these slurs usually occur on a strong beat moving to a weak beat (e.g. see both violin parts in measure 9). This adds to the...
The speakers and audience in poem are crucial elements of the poem and is also the case in these poems. In the poem Untitled, it can be argued that the poem is being written by Peter based on what his father might say to him...
The first stanza introduces the setting of a play and the main idea of the poem with the use of romantic descriptions and figurative language. Poe’s use of figurative language compares the setting to other personified traits that are coherent to the romantic era. Poe writes, “An angel throng, bewinged, bedight/ In veils, and drowned in tears,” personifying the tears is used to create a powerful description to set the scene of the poem. Poe also uses personification to describe the mood of the play with this description, “ While the orchestra breathes fitfully/ the music of the spheres.” Poe’s use of the personification to describe the orchestra and the life like beauty that it makes relates to the romanticism of the time period. This part of the play describes the accord of the play between all the aspects of life, but as the poem, at some point, denies the romanticism, it is ultimately destroyed. As the romantic mood changes drastically, the romantic aspect only elaborates more about the horror found in the gothic style. Although the poem describes a play, the figurative meaning defines much larger ideas such ...
The elements in the poem work very well together to help set the theme of this poem. The tone set the overall mood of the poem, so show that it was rushed but not in a chaotic way. The imagery helps to show us little details of the setting, which are very helpful. And finally, the figures of speech, help the reader to compare the scene to things they have experienced in their lifetime to fully understand the poem.
I believe that the structure of this poem allows for the speaker to tell a narrative which further allows him to convey his point. The use of enjambment emphasizes this idea as well as provides a sense of flow throughout the entirety of a poem, giving it the look and feel of reading a story. Overall, I believe this piece is very simplistic when it comes to poetic devices, due to the fact that it is written as a prose poem, this piece lacks many of the common poetic devices such as rhyme, repetition, alliteration, and metaphors. However, the tone, symbolism, allusion and imagery presented in the poem, give way to an extremely deep and complicated
The youth of today are more likely to have a favourite song rather than a favourite poem. Although the feelings and hidden meanings expressed in songs are often unacknowledged by the listener, they often have qualities that resemble those of a typical poem. These qualities include word choice, mood, hidden meanings and imagery. Using the songs “Luka” by Suzanne Vega, and “April Come She Will” by Simon and Garfunkle, I am going to prove that songs can be considered a form of modern day poetry.
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.
To begin, the sound of this poem can be proven to strongly contribute an effect to the message of this piece. This poem contains a traditional meter. All of the lines in the poem except for lines nine and 15 are in iambic tetrameter. In this metric pattern, a line has four pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables, for a total of eight syllables. This is relevant in order for the force of the poem to operate dynamically. The poem is speaking in a tenor of veiled confessions. For so long, the narrator is finally speaking up, in honesty, and not holding back. Yet, though what has been hidden is ultimately coming out, there is still this mask, a façade that is being worn. In sequence, the last words in each of the lines, again, except for lines nine and 15, are all in rhythm, “lies, eyes, guile, smile, subtleties, over-wise, sighs, cries, arise, vile...