Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Con brio ~ Spirited, a prompt

Music and Poetry, close relatives, if not siblings, share so much. Both rest in the hands and hearts of humans in numerous kinds of relationships. They are both scores at times, as Music is written and Poetry is written and then both are expressed or 'read' from those scores such that Original Breath of their Emergence may be again tasted. 

This prompt is an invitation to explore ways of notating your poetry score such that your score has the benefit of noted tempo (timing), dynamics (loudness), emotionality (quality of feeling) for the reader and for the possible speaker of your written word.

Here's some direction, if you wish: look up some the musical terms on the Wikipedia sites (see below) to stir inspiration in whatever way you'd like your 'musicality' to be expressed in your poetry. There was a time when composers only had their notations to convey all the other aspects of their music than simply the notes on the page.



A page of the heart-shaped manuscript by Baude Cordier, showing a rhythmically complex piece of ars subtilior.        ~ Notes from Wikipedia: "Coloration of single notes could also be used to override rules of perfection/imperfection that would otherwise have been called for. The use of red notation flourished in the so-called ars subtilior. Perhaps the most famous example is a heart shaped manuscript by Baude Cordier, which uses the notation for its symbolic effect to set down a line of music all in red within the larger heart."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamics_%28music%29

Or the more general Glossary of musical terminology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affettuoso#A

2 comments:

  1. LOVING this prompt! A poem in itself... "such that your score has the benefit of noted tempo (timing), dynamics (loudness), emotionality (quality of feeling)" - how better to learn about music than through the bardic arts?

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  2. Just curious, has this prompt mused you yet, Scooter? I'd so love to hear and to possibly read anything that bespokes you thus. I wrote something, but like you so boldly published a poem you were not that open to or content with, I've held mine back, at least for now... Thanks for your comments. I'm looking again at comments so wonderfully offered lately and in the past. I appreciate your voice!

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