Music and words. When asked about the meaning of my music I often say that if I could express my music in words I would be a poet. Last night in Memphis one member of the audience told me that I was a poet nonetheless, a poet of music. Here are some words from Alex Ross regarding the poet Federico Garcia Lorca – taken from the liner notes that accompany Ainamadar:
Lorca was among the most musical of poets — an accomplished pianist, a part-time composer, some-
thing of a musicologist. He supplied countless cues for music in his writing; in one poem he compared
the crescent moon to a fermata, a held note in the harmony of the night.
Beautiful. I want to find that poem. And:
Lorca memorably wrote, “The melody begins, an undulant, endless melody. [It] loses itself horizontally, escapes from our hands as we see it withdraw from us toward a point of common longing and perfect passion.â€
And I marked this in Portrait of Silverio Franconetti….”He passed through the notes without breaking them.”… the latter part of the poem differs now that we can hold music dear for centuries because of true recording methods.
“Now his melody sleeps with the echoes. Final and pure. With the last echoes.”
That last quote is beautiful, Carol.
The poem which refers to the moon as a fermata is called “The Interrupted Concert.”
Yes, it is. And the sound of music, though it grows softer never really dies away.