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Poetic Images of Nightingale in the Art Song. On Some Aspects of Musical Meaning

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Żerańska-Kominek S.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2019

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issue 19

117-134

EN

Birds are not only part of nature, but also an important element of culture. The life and behaviour of some bird species has been reflected in literary tradition in the form of poetic images and representations reflecting existential problems and stereotypically associated with specific states of the human psyche. These images and their poetics inspired composers of the Romantic era to create their musical, semantically charged counterparts. A special place in European poetry and music is occupied by the nightingale, which has wide symbolic connotations. My article discusses the musical replicas of the nightingale’s poetic representations in the songs of F. Liszt, J. Brahms, F. Schubert and K. Szymanowski. Each of the presented songs constructs meaning and relates to the poetic images in a different manner, despite the suggested or even expected repeatable nature of the emotional expression and experience symbolically associated with this bird.

2

Democritus’ hypothesis’ of the origins of music

100%

Żerańska-Kominek S.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2009

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issue 8

57-70

PL

The oldest conception of the origins of music in European culture was formulated by Democritus, who stated that music arose as an imitation of birdsong. This conception was the most serious working hypothesis on the beginnings of music before Darwin. In the musicography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it constituted an alternative to the predominant creationistic theory, paving the way for the scientific positivist approaches which in the nineteenth century led to the eventual depreciation of thinking rooted in religion. In evolutionistically- and scientisticallyoriented comparative musicology the mimetic theory was rejected on the grounds of a lack of scientific evidence of the evolutionary link between birds and man and especially between birdsong and music.The aim of the article is to show that the mimetic theory of the origins of music was a relict of a mythical vision in which birds represented the materialised image of transcendence. The beginnings of music were linked to the voices of birds, which in many cultures symbolised human spirituality-above all spirituality manifest through death. Thus Democritus’ ‘hypothesis’ may be interpreted as a myth in which the ‘song of the beginning’ is identified with mourning

3

Editorial

50%

Żerańska-Kominek S.

Musicology Today

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2015

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vol. 12

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issue 1

1-2

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Poetic Images of Nightingale in the Art Song. On Some Aspects of Musical Meaning

Democritus’ hypothesis’ of the origins of music

Editorial