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Parisian Intersections

Baudelaire’s Legacy to Composers

by Helen Abbott (Author)
©2023 Monographs XIV, 216 Pages

Summary

The period from the 1850s to the 1890s in Paris marked a key turning point for poets and composers, as they grappled with the new ways in which poetry and music could intersect. Under the particular conditions of the time and place, both art forms underwent significant developments which challenged the status of each form. In both creative and critical work from this era, poets and composers offered tantalising but problematic insights into «musical» poetry and «poetic» music.
The central issue examined in this book is that of what happens to poetry when it encounters music, especially as song. The author places Baudelaire’s famous sonnet «La Mort des amants» at the heart of the analysis, tracing its transposition into song by a succession of both amateur and professional composers, examining works by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Serpette, Rollinat, Debussy and Charpentier, as well as an extraordinary parodic song version by Valade and Verlaine.
A companion website offers recordings of each of the songs analysed in this book.

Details

Pages
XIV, 216
Publication Year
2023
ISBN (PDF)
9781803740119
ISBN (ePUB)
9781803740126
ISBN (Softcover)
9781803740102
DOI
10.3726/b20206
Language
English
Publication date
2023 (May)
Published
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Wien, 2023. XIV, 216 pp., 16 fig. b/w, 2 tables.

Biographical notes

Helen Abbott (Author)

Helen Abbott is currently Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham. She specialises in relationships between poetry and music in nineteenth-century France and has published widely on Baudelaire, Debussy, Mallarmé and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. She also promotes performance of French mélodie through regular collaboration with professional pianists and singers.

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Title: Parisian Intersections