Literature and Music

Poets aspire to the condition of music, and novelists structure their works like symphonies. The comparative study of literature and music — word and music studies — examines the deep affinities and stubborn differences between the temporal art of sound and the art of words.

Definition

The comparative study of the relations between literature and music, including the literary evocation of music, the musical structuring of literary works, and the theory of musico-literary intermediality.

Scope

Treats the relations between literature and music: structural and thematic comparison of the two temporal arts, 'verbal music' and the literary evocation of musical works, and the musicalization of literary form. Concerns how literature imitates, incorporates, and is shaped by music, a recognized branch of comparative interart study.

Core questions

• On what basis can the temporal arts of words and music be compared?
• How does literature evoke or represent music in language?
• Can literary works be structured according to musical forms?
• What are the limits of the analogy between literary and musical form?

Key theories

Music and literature as comparable arts

Brown's foundational study compared music and literature as temporal arts, examining shared structures such as theme, variation, and rhythm while noting their differences.

Verbal music

Scher distinguished 'verbal music' — the literary attempt to render the impression of actual or imagined music in words — as a distinct mode of the music-literature relation.

Musicalization of fiction

Wolf theorized how narrative fiction can imitate musical forms and effects, developing a systematic intermedial account of the musicalization of literature.

History

Calvin S. Brown's 1948 Music and Literature founded modern comparative word-and-music study in English. Scher's work from the 1960s, including Verbal Music in German Literature (1968), refined its categories, and Werner Wolf's 1999 The Musicalization of Fiction integrated the field into the broader theory of intermediality, consolidating word-and-music studies as a recognized sub-area.

Debates

Reality versus metaphor of musical form in literature

Whether literary works can genuinely take on musical structures or whether such 'musicalization' is ultimately metaphorical, given the difference between sound and language.

Key figures

• Calvin S. Brown
• Steven Paul Scher
• Werner Wolf

Seminal works

• brown1948
• scher1968
• wolf1999

Frequently asked questions

Can a novel really be structured like a piece of music?

Writers have attempted it — using leitmotifs, theme and variation, or sonata-like structures — and scholars such as Werner Wolf study these as 'musicalization'. Whether such structures are literal or finally metaphorical, given the difference between sound and words, is itself a central debate.