Mallarmé and dance
Although Stéphane Mallarmé’s writings on dance are few, he has come to be considered an important dance theorist who allied and underscored two aspects of dance that are seldom simultaneously...
View ArticleMark Twain on opera
Mark Twain’s reactions to grand opera are epitomized by a passage from A tramp abroad in which he described a performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin. “The banging and slamming and booming and crashing...
View ArticleThe refugee as epic hero
K’naan’s 2005 debut album, The dusty foot philosopher, can be viewed as a modern-day epic poem that draws on his experiences in Canada’s Somali refugee community. The album employs many classic epic...
View ArticleJoyce’s musical sirens
In the “Sirens” episode of Ulysses James Joyce made words represent music by playing with or even overcoming certain conventional features of language. Particularly notable are Joyce’s representation...
View ArticleDickens and music
Charles Dickens’s works attest to a keen familiarity with the ballads and traditional songs of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Less obvious from his writings is his deep love of Western classical...
View ArticleModulations and caterpillars
A fragment of Pherecrates’s comedy Chiron, as quoted in Plutarch’s Peri mousikēs, provides insights into aesthetic controversies in ancient Greece. The scene depicts Dame Music as she recounts to Dame...
View ArticleProkof’ev’s bad dog
In 1917 Sergej Sergeevič Prokof’ev briefly returned to one of his childhood interests: writing fiction. He considered what this pursuit entailed. “My style caused me concern,” he wrote. “Did it have...
View ArticleLouisa May Alcott’s musical leitmotif
Louisa May Alcott effectively depicted collective musical performances to affirm community in Little women; but more significantly, she used music to represent the feminine sphere as she and the...
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