The Mind's Ear: imagination, emotions and ideas in the intersemiotic transportation of Housman's poetry to song

Mike INGHAM

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Abstract

The present chapter will explore an intertextual, interdisciplinary phenomenon that has not been very closely studies by those who work in the field of adaptation studies, namely the setting of secular poetry for vocal musical performance in the form of art song. Given that the musical and poetic ideas that go into the creative mix are rarely synchronic, and that the poem is, except in highly unusual conditions of production, invariably the source text inspiring the musical creation, it seems appropriate to consider the practice as a legitimate area of adoption studies. This approach naturally recognizes the relevance of established scholarly perspectives in the disciplines of musicology and intermediary (Wolf 1999). However, in the present study the relationship between source and target texts (terms which inevitably imply kinship with translation studies) will be explored with special focus on how the poem texts are transformed by vocalization in terms of repetition, variation, expansion, contraction, dilution, accentuation, and colouring of words - and the utterance and performance of written verse as sound vocalization within the tempo-rhythm of performance (all significant aspects of the intersemiotic transfer process).
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationTranslation, Adaptation and Transformation
PublisherContinuum
Pages188-209
Number of pages22
ISBN (Print)9781441143488
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2011

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