Given that any musicalization of a verse renders the music itself less esoteric by virtue of the fact that the words make it so, Art Song is perhaps the most refined and communicable of musical genres.
In the writing of Art Song, or any vocal work, save perhaps that of "rock" or "pop", the questions and answers of the actual music-making are inherent in the words themselves, for without the poem, there can be no song.
What is poetry? It is an elevated expression of thought in metrical form, a crystallized and concentrated region of curiosity, bringing to light that which is obscure and giving it the external appearance of form. It is, to the composer using it as a text, a teacher.
Finding a suitable poem to set to music is the composer's first objective and selections vary from composer to composer as do the poems vary from one to the next. Ideally, the sum total of both parts i.e. the words and the music, should be greater than the individual parts themselves, which is to say, a wise composer will not touch any statuesque verse which stands steadfast alone. Unless the composer is certain the poem's existence would be enhanced by such adornment, it would be inappropriate to musicalize a poem when that poem may well be music itself.
Bear in mind too, that once one medium - music - imposes itself upon another - poetry -the pulse changes, for the sung word will almost always be slower than when it is spoken, and its articulation is altered. Therefore, attention should be given to what is known as PROSODY : the science of versification, or the laws of metre; the relationship between the words themselves and their rendering, and what is known as TESSITURA, which is the radius within which most tones of a voice - part dwell.
How successful a composer is in setting a poem to music will be determined by that composer's sensitivity to the words, their texture, and the imagery shed forth.
Any composer or student of musical composition wishing to put their technique to the test to determine the agility of their craft need only turn to Art Song. In Art Song, one's dimensions will soon be defined and valuable lessons learnt.
In the majority of cases, the mood and tempo of the music will be set by the words, unless of course the composer makes a conscious decision to work against the text hammering square pegs into round holes. For myself, I simply set the words as I say them, thus bringing about a certain economy of style which to date has yet to fail me. Simply put, set it how you say it. Like the hibernating forms in the raw marble of Michelangelo, the music is in the words. Out of the words, the composer will sculpt a sound - the rhythmic pattern of the words forming the phrases forming the verse.
If one recites the poem, witin the inflection of the spoken words you will hear a hidden melody waiting to be sung, more often than not, of natural rise and fall, thus rendering all aspects of execution for the singer and elocution of the song pleasurable.
Again, the composer may well choose to work against the grain, elongating and distorting syllabic structures as they see fit, but the end result should always maintain a certain degree of literal sense. Much like a gold-miner panning for gold, eventually from out the words will glisten a melody to greet you, and once you have this gold in your hands, all that remains is to fashion about it an accompaniment which will support the voice but not intrude. Where in centuries gone by accompaniments were merely employed to attend the voice along its journey, from the nineteenth century on, and particularly through the songs of Schubert, we have seen they can often be on equal footing, at best living a life utterly independent of the vocal line. Such is the case with the more virtuosic songs of Duparc and Debussy and from our own shores, the German-born pianist/composer Franz Holford.
Imaginative composers, aside from simply evoking a poem's aspect in their writing, may delve deeper into their cachet of accumulated effects to produce a narrative so comprehensible as to mirror the text, producing a soundscape of the poem's imagery.
True to form, whilst the composer of Art Song is more often than not a miniaturist, and may well not be suited to a more extended genre of musical expression ie: symphonic works,the composer can perhaps say in but a page all that needs to be said. Good things come in small packages - often, less is more.
Having tried as best I can to convey to you some semblance of thought appertaining to the setting of poetry to music, let me close by saying that there is no one way, no definite procedure by which to compose an Art Song. There are, in fact, as many ways to set a poem to music as there are composers to set it: to each their own, but the text, for the most part must commandeer this oneness of words and music in such a way that the literal sense is always maintained.
To quote the American composer, Virgil Thomson:
"If songs really need words (as indeed they mostly do, since the human voice without them is just another wind instrument) then there has to be in the marriage of words and music a basic compatibility in which the text's exact shape and purpose dominate the union, or seem to. I say seem to, because actually a large part of music's contribution lies in the emotional timings, the urgencies about continuity, the whole pacing and moving-forwardness of the composition that only music can provide."
PHILLIP WILCHER
Article for Music Teacher Magazine
