Prima La Musica E Poi Le Parole

I notice my posts have been entirely political in nature, and since I need something to distract me from the noiseless demise of American democracy, I’ll divide my time between politics and something modern society has rendered meaningless: culture.

And I thought: What’s more important in song; words or music? Obviously, the only way to answer that question was via a scene/dialogue between two people who are technically dead:


Guiseppe Verdi - Composer
Arrigo Boito – Writer

(Boito is sitting at his desk, holding a copy of Othello. He is reading aloud intently as he copies down the words onto a piece of paper.)

Boito: “Soft you; a word or two before you go. I have done the state some service, and they know't. No more of that. I pray you, in your letters, when you shall these unlucky deeds relate, speak of me as I am; nothing – (someone in the next room starts playing the piano) nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but – (The piano music gets increasingly louder, causing Boito to pause) but too well; ff one not easily jealous, but being wrought, Perplex'd in the extreme; (shouting to make himself heard) of one whose hand, like the base Indian, threw a pearl away richer than” –(By now, it is so loud he cannot hear himself) Oh, come on! (Boito gets up and walks over into the next room, where Verdi is banging away at the piano.) Will you stop that?!?!

Verdi: (Also yelling) Stop what?

Boito: The piano!

Verdi: (stopping) Absolutely not. (He resumes)

Boito: Please! I’m trying to write.

Verdi: Well then, I definitely won’t bother stopping. Arrigo, I hope I’m not hurting your feelings, but whatever mangled verses you manage to wrench out of Shakespeare are hardly crucial to making this opera a good one. If we succeed, you can thank my piano, and not your pen.

Boito: Pardon me? Are you suggesting that how words are sung is more important than what they are?

Verdi: I’m hardly ‘suggesting it. I’ve taken it as a rule of musical composition that a good scale will beat a good dictionary.

Boito: Well, that is a bunch of nonsense. It is the words that are most important in conveying the full meaning of any song, chorus, or opera. Music may enhance it, but without a means of clarification, people are lost.

Verdi: ’People are lost’? I can’t imagine what you’re talking about. Words exist to convey meaning. We feel and we think and we react, and we attempt to communicate what happens in our minds. At our lowest level we grunt and gesture. Above that there’s verbal language, and beyond that, music. If you are merely going to say something, you’d be surprised by how little you are understood. Music, by contrast, is not the abstract expression of human emotion, but the emotions themselves. Words like ‘love’, ‘joy’, and ‘fear’ mean very different things to different people. Yet we can tell, by a rustling in the strings, a murmuring of the horns, or a slight inflection in the soprano’s A-flat whether someone is happy, sad, or indifferent. One can lie with words, certainly. With music, never.

Boito: Really! And do you really believe that no one listening to a song cares about what is being said? The emotions you talk about may be universal, but the actual text of a song is not. To some, this may reduce the experience, I admit, but to others it will add the greatest poignancy and depth. I might not care overmuch when a father sings about losing his daughter, but the man sitting next to me may be moved to tears, because he knows what it is like.

Verdi: I never said prose and poetry didn’t matter, only that they matter rather less than melody, harmony, and rhythm. Look at the level of literary skill present in most song-writing. It is appalling. Take this example:

We are ships on the silver waves
Cast adrift
Each pleasure is a rock
The whole of life, a sea.*

Do you recognize that bit of doggerel?

Boito: No, I don’t.

Verdi: Well, it doesn’t matter. The point is that poor Vivaldi was obliged to obscure it behind the most elaborate ornamentation and vocal pyrotechnics. Do you understand? He had to hide the words to make it a decent song.

Boito: I call foul on that. You have chosen an extreme example of overwrought, florid writing. Of course I’m not going to be able to defend every syllable ever set to music.

Verdi: You may be right. Very well, let’s look at something more straightforward:

Che faro senza Euridice?
Dove andro senza il mio ben?**

Repeat unto infinite. On the page, it looks terrible. Yet, thanks to Gluck’s skill, Orpheus’s sorrow and heartbreak are perfectly plain.

Boito: Well, if you’re going to be a snob, and focus on nothing but classical music…

Verdi: I am not a snob. Did you think I was leaving out jazz and other popular entertainments? Not at all. The only differences are in instrumentation and scales. Even in those genres, a strong beat or memorable tune takes precedence over any lyrics. Here, I’ll give you an example:

Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear
And he shows them pearly white
Just a jackknife has Macheath dear
And he keeps it out of sight
On the sidewalk Sunday mornin'
Lies a body oozing life
Someone sneakin' round the corner
Is that someone Mack the Knife?***

If I had merely spoken those lines, what meaning would they have?

Boito: They would have as much meaning as I chose to give them. I think this is even more true in regards to words than to music. An A is always an A, but as you said, yet ‘love’, ‘joy’, and ‘anger’ are different to all who hear them. I tried composing for years, and was never very successful. It was only when I focused entirely on literary style was my true voice heard.

Verdi: Well, I think my composing music to your libretti had something to do with it. I should say that in every writer there is a failed – or, more hopefully, an aspiring – composer. If you need more proof, consider this: a song with the same lyrics but different music could hardly be considered the same song; a song that has a different text but remains otherwise unchanged is merely an alternate version. Words are slurred, omitted, mispronounced, and otherwise rendered unintelligible. The effect is nominal, if there is one at all.

Boito: You can talk forever about how much we can tell from music, but if what you’re saying is true, there could be no such thing as the political song or the national anthem. You must admit that the music for these things is often rather lacking. I believe the poetry of ‘Jerusalem'^, for example, is far superior to the music. Do you think it doesn’t matter to people whether they are singing the words to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, ‘The Internationale’ or ’Deutschland Uber Alles’?

Verdi: As for political songs and anthems, I think you’ve chosen some unfortunate examples. None of the songs you mentioned are now sung to the lyrics for which the melodies were written^^. As for national anthems - well, I admit, there are exceptions, as always. But political songs are hardly the norm. I should say that at least nine songs out of ten deal overwhelmingly not with social justice and activism, but with pure human pathos.

Boito: Do you think so?

Verdi: I do.

Boito: Well, it’s one of those things that are impossible to measure, isn’t it?

Verdi: Undoubtedly so. One other thing to consider: Music is more natural. People who sing to themselves are pleasant, people who talk to themselves are insane.

Boito: Unless they talk sense to themselves, which is better than singing nonsense to others.

Verdi: We’re getting off-topic. That’s enough for now, I have work to do.

Boito: As do I. I’m going to find a nice quiet place for me and Shakespeare.

(Boito exits humming softly to himself, Verdi mutters under his breath as he watches the librettist amble away.)

*Siam navi all’onde algente’ from L’Olimpiade. Music by Antonio Vivaldi. Lyrics by Pietro Metastasio.

**Che faro senza Euridice?’ from Orfeo ed Euridice. Music by Christoph Gluck. Lyrics by Ranieri da Calzabigi. Literally, it translates to this:
What will I do without Eurydice?
Where will I go without my love?

***Mack the Knife’. Music by Kurt Weill. Lyrics by Bertol Brecht.

^Jerusalem’, a poem by William Blake, was set to music by Hubert Parry and became a sort of secondary anthem of the British Labour Party.

^^Originally ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was a Scottish drinking song knows as ‘To Anacreon in Heaven’ while ‘The Internationale’ was sung only in French, and Deutschland Uber Alles was the wordless second movement of a Haydn string quartet.