There is one thing that remains built-in within the musical gustatory sensations of every coevals and that is the thought that a vocal is merely every bit captivating as its wordss. Basically, the wordss – the written and spoken words – influence the mind ; they are followed by the tune that, as a fillip, moves the organic structure. Lyrics are responsible for conveying significance and act uponing the mind. The power of music, hence, stems from how good the wordss evoke images in the head and pervade the psyche with passion. Today ‘s lyrists are far from the lyrists of the Restoration and Renaissance coevals, viz. John Dryden and John Donne. Both authors have created compelling poetries for us to chew over, though it is through their lyrical poetry, specifically Dryden ‘s A Song for St. Cecilia ‘s Day and Donne ‘s A Nocturnall upon St. Lucy ‘s Day, Bing the Shortest Day, where readers recognize their poetic and lyrical ability as acapella poets. Respectively, both poets ‘ wordss supply a power of music that each harmoniously vocalizes. This sends a message that religion and optimism do non hold to melt on the concluding word of a lyric, but instead the terminal of a vocal offers a ageless Resurrection to see a fresh sense of strong belief and hope on a high note and lengthier chord.

Dryden wrote A Song for St. Cecilia ‘s Day to memorialise November 22[ 1 ]as the twenty-four hours dedicated to the Roman virgin and frequenter saint of music — Saint Cecilia.[ 2 ]The juncture was twofold, for it was non merely a musical jubilation filled with gaiety and fear but besides, as Earl Miner and Vinton Dearing province, the twenty-four hours “ reflects the new societal character of music every bit good as poesy ” ( 460 ) . In fact, Dryden ‘s vocal was different from his precursors ‘ odes since he fused two philosophies of musical theory: the musica mundana and humana, jointly known as “ bad ” music, and music rhythmus. Possibly, the best manner to understand these two theories, as Dryden incorporates them into his work, is to analyze briefly his position of music and its effects on poesy as written word.

The impression that poets considered themselves as instrumentalists was non a discovery during the Renaissance and Restoration epoch. As David Wykes points out, both were synonymous or considered “ a stock analogy that. . . could be used automatically ” ( 151 ) . This deduction existed throughout Donne ‘s and Dryden ‘s coevals. The humanists of Donne ‘s epoch, on the contrary, saw the Fieldss of poesy and music as two distinguishable humanistic disciplines. Dryden, however, did portion certain musical humanists ‘ beliefs, particularly in the philosophy of independent music, in which his coevalss, every bit much as his predecessors, upheld that music did non hold any important virtue in and of itself, but instead is validated by the emotional effects produced in its audience ( 151 ) .

D.T. Mace farther expands on this musical philosophy by claiming that authors from the seventeenth and 18th centuries viewed music as an artistic “ war between word and tone ” ( 258 ) . If music was unflattering to the multitudes as a solo look of art, so it did non derive much empathy from poets and critics one time Italian opera emerged on the English scene. The major ailment approximately opera as a legitimate art carried beyond the war between words and sounds because it was seen as a genre that “ represented the victory of harmoniousness ( music ) over sense ( the spoken play ) ” ( 258 ) . This impression, that music could non efficaciously reassign ground and passion, was the normative sentiment between Dryden and the Restoration critics.[ 3 ]Dr. John Wallis[ 4 ]voiced that music should pretermit the “ mindless polyphonic music of several voices in harmoniousness and subordinate itself to poetry ” ( qtd in Wykes 152 ) . Meanwhile, John Dennis ‘ claimed that “ [ m ] usic may be made profitable every bit good as delightful, if it is low-level to some baronial art, and subservient to ground ” ( 154 ) .[ 5 ]

Dryden agreed with his coevalss ‘ sentiments about opera and music. This is obvious in The Foreword of his operatic work Albion and Albanius, where his antipathy for opera surfaces. He believes that independent music saps the emotional energy from poesy: “ The nature of an opera denies the frequent usage of. . . poetical decorations ; for vocal music, though it frequently admits a highness of sound, yet ever exacts an harmonious sugariness. . . ” ( Dryden, The Preface 271 ) . Dryden believes that opera does non hold the ability to show the deepness and comprehensiveness of emotion in the manner that poesy does. He merely can non take opera earnestly, as a true art. He farther states his ain trouble in conforming his poetries to music, which foreshadows Louis Grabu ‘s failed effort to convey Dryden ‘s words through music: “ [ T ] he necessity of dual rimes, and ordination of the words and Numberss for the sugariness of the voice, are the chief flexible joints on which an opera must travel. . . . I have hence no demand to do alibis for beastliness of idea in many topographic points ” ( 277 ) . Dryden farther defines the difference between poet and composer expression,

I am frequently forced to coin new words, resuscitate some that are antiquated, and blunder others, as if I had non served out my clip in poesy, but was bound ‘prentice to some jingle rhymester, who makes vocals to melodies, and sings them for a support. ‘T is true, I have non been frequently put to this plodding ; but where I have, the words will sufficiently demo that I was so a slave to the composing, which I will ne’er be once more. ‘T is my portion to invent, and the instrumentalist ‘s to humor that innovation. ( 277 )

Dryden ‘s bold concluding statement expresses his purpose to explicate that poets and instrumentalists every bit good as their aesthetic ideals could work every bit one every bit long as the poet had a dominant function in the coaction. In fact, Dryden touches on this impression as a new musical philosophy while making Albion, as The Preface references, “ [ T ] he main secret is the pick of words, ” non simply the “ elegancy of look, but properness of sound, to be varied harmonizing to the topic. . . . which was decently called rhythmus by the ancients ” ( 277 ) .

It seems that Dryden ‘s run for music rhythmus stems from analyzing Isaac Vossius ‘ De poemathum canta et viribus rhythmi, a musical thesis. Had Dryden used a more dominant application of rhythmus in his Albion, he could hold achieved higher congratulationss than those received from the Grabu induced production, which was disdained by critics.[ 6 ]Indeed, Vossius ‘ argued that both poet and musician played an of import function in the manner each must back up the other ‘s abilities if music were to keep any permanent significance where music “ initate [ s ] in its beat ” the “ passions and fondnesss produced in the head ” ( 262 ) . In other words, the poet should utilize his cognition of classical poesy – its “ rhythmical devices ” and “ metres ” – to elicit emotion in poetry while the musician compliments the poet ‘s words by using a “ monodic, ” non “ polyphonic ” line of music ( a individual line alternatively of a multiple musical line ) to show balance in emotions and thoughts ( 265 ) .

Dryden ‘s Cecilia Ode blends old humanitarianism with a new musical philosophy that non merely vividly communicates the thoughts and faith the power of music has but besides conveys a sense of optimism that lifts emotions and allows its readers and hearers to non merely see a new societal alteration channeled through music and poesy, between “ bad music ” and musica rhythmus, but besides allows them to see a musical flight that is round in nature, interweaving the two domains of heavenly harmoniousness and secular passions. If Dryden ‘s function were to ‘invent ‘ poetries for a musician to ‘humour, ‘ so the irregular stanzas and inconsistent rime strategies would play a strategic function throughout the ode. Furthermore, these structural elements help to demo music ‘s initial map, presented by Dryden in his Creation stanza ( stanza one ) as “ bad music, ” a map that is the cosmopolitan theory of harmoniousness: “ [ T ] he aural image of all that is good and perfect in the existence and in adult male ” ( Miner 460 ) .

From harmoniousness, from heav’nly harmoniousness,

This cosmopolitan frame began.

When nature underneath a pile

Of clashing atoms lay,

And could non heave her caput,

The melodious voice was heard from high,

‘Arise ye more than dead. ‘

Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,

In order to their Stationss leap,

And music ‘s power obey. ( 1-10 )

In these initial lines, Dryden adapts the spiritual narration of the six yearss of Earth ‘s creative activity, which he would hold known from analyzing Biblical and hexemeral literature of his clip, every bit good as from a blending philosophical and scientific idea ( Platonism and Epicureanism ) .[ 7 ]In fact, Dryden ‘s impression of both Epicurus and Lucretius helps piece the material existence from the lawless and “ discordant sea of pre-existence ” to an being where music ‘s definite order, through the “ melodious voice ” of our first instrumentalist and Godhead – God, stirs the Epicurean atoms ( the four elements of life and of mediaeval composing – earth/ “ cold, ” fire/ “ hot, ” water/ “ moist, ” and air/ “ dry ” — to their disposed locations on an elevated musical graduated table ( Ames 619 ) .[ 8 ]However, harmoniousness ‘s regulating authorization of order is non complete within its cosmic creative activity but instead within God ‘s ideal Concord, the “ octave meter, ” as John Hollander asserts, stopping points in the Creation of Man ( 153 ) :

From harmoniousness, from heav’nly harmoniousness

This cosmopolitan frame began ;

From harmoniousness to harmony

Through all the compass of the notes it ran,

The diapason shuting full in adult male. ( 11-15 )

The job at the terminal of Dryden ‘s first stanza remainders in its concluding lines. God ‘s image of adult male, as opposed to adult male ‘s actions, is what closes on a perfect consonant rhyme. Therefore, God ‘s perfect chord – his image of adult male – and the “ bad music, ” the melodious notes of harmoniousness that control the musical domains to set up a heavenly-created existence is suspended in a Pre-Edenic yesteryear. Of class, God ‘s empyreal music of the creative activity is ignored one time Man falls from his musical grace in Eden. After the Fall of Man is the period in which humanity must restore its Pre-Edenist being, where religion and optimism in music ‘s power can regenerate a spiritually discordant universe back to a spiritually harmonious one with the assistance of its musica instrumentalis and the affectional rhythmus.

Dryden ‘s following move is to get down his readers and hearers on the way of music ‘s round journey. The rhetorical inquiry that begins and ends stanza two serves as the vocal ‘s drawn-out chorus through the remainder of his ode: “ What passion can non music rise and quell! ” ( 16, 24 ) . The passions that music rises are illustrated through the assorted musical creative activities Man has made since his unfaithful autumn from God ‘s musical grace. Furthermore, the undermentioned stanzas ( II-VI ) briefly take us through a historical ocean trip where Man ‘s “ immortal accomplishment, ” as Miner provinces, is illustrated through his musical instruments and the rhythmus he sparks in human emotion while seeking to mend his once perfect chord with God ( 176 ) .

Indeed, the first person instrumentalist after the Fall of Man is Jubal, who harmonizing to Biblical tradition, as Dryden references, “ struck the corded shell ” that incites his “ brethren ” and lures them “ [ T ] o worship that heavenly sound ” ( 17-20 ) . Now, Jubal ‘s usage of his tortoiseshell to advance spiritual emotions among the multitudes has optimistic “ Dorian ” effects, as Douglas Murray claims, but the Dorian undertones, much as Man is the octave meter, is ephemeral one time Man begins making musical instruments to function secular intents instead than heavenly 1s ( 329 ) . The “ cornet ‘s loud clangor ” ( 25 ) and the membranophone ‘s “ dual dual dual round ” ( 29 ) combined with the “ soft kicking flute, ” ( 33 ) the “ warbling luting, ” ( 36 ) and the “ [ s ] harp fiddles ” all have lending tunes to the flux of human emotions and passions ; for case, war and choler, love and hatred, decease and birth every bit good as their several manners of musica rhytmus ( Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Aeolian ) . Yet, the lone musical instrument that has the hope and faithful power of tune to convey order back to an boisterous and idolatrous society is the organ:

But oh! What art can learn,

What human voice can make

The sacred organ ‘s congratulations?

Notes animating sanctum love,

Notes that flying their heav’nly ways

To repair the choirs above. ( 42-47 )

Of class, Dryden accredits this “ sacred organ ” ( 44 ) to the lone person whose “ human voice ” ( 43 ) and secular “ [ n ] otes inspire ” ( 45 ) Man ‘s psyche to a higher religious love and convey all his discordant chords into agreement with the Divine Spirit of God. This person is non the classical fabulous musician – Orpheus, whose voice and lyre did act upon the natural universe and caused its dwellers to travel: “ Orpheus could take the barbarian race, / And trees unrooted left their topographic point, ” ( 48-49 ) . Sadly, by contrast, Orpheus ‘ awards and achievements to motivate the animate and inanimate are simply a footer to those of “ bright Cecilia ” whose organ and celestial “ vocal breath ” “ raise [ s ] ” humanity ‘s “ wonder higher ” lures an angel from above to decorate their presence ( 51-52 ) . Therefore, St. Cecilia is the lone person capable of bring forthing the amazing harmonious and “ bad music ” that Dryden illustrates in his Creation stanza.

Furthermore, it is in Dryden ‘s Grand Chorus that non merely closes his vocal but besides completes our round musical journey from the “ bad ” to the rhythmus and back once more. The message of the Grand Chorus tunes us to the hereafter and to the Day of Judgement on which God ‘s “ melodious voice ” of the Creation stanza is now merely every bit harmonious as of all time. The at hand devastation of our fallen universe will bespeak God ‘s expansive design for a new universe and new Eden:

So when the last and awful hr

This crumbling pageant shall devour,

The cornet shall be heard on high,

The dead shall populate, the life dice,

And music shall upset the sky. ( 59-63 )

The power of music does non hold to decease one time the concluding melody falls level with this, our “ crumpling pageant ” ( 60 ) , our discordant universe, yet even with the humane wane and flow of passions, as Donne ‘s words will exemplify, Man can be a life Epitaph and still be lifted into the higher domains of harmoniousness. Man does non hold to decease the twenty-four hours the music dies ; his religion and optimism through music ‘s power can reserve him a topographic point in ageless life where the notes are ne’er level and the chords ne’er broken.

John Donne ‘s dramatic words A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy ‘s Day, Bing the Shortest Day is different from John Dryden ‘s Cecilia ode, chiefly due to the poet ‘s topic, which mostly develops from negation, every bit good as the talker ‘s personal loss of person beloved to his bosom. In fact, Donne ‘s lyric rubric has little to make with his vocal, unlike Dryden ‘s words, which is dedicated to St. Cecilia. Yet Donne ‘s rubric provides his readers with a day of the month and clip that is correspondent to the talker ‘s bing province: “ ‘T is the twelvemonth ‘s midnight, and it is the twenty-four hours ‘s, / Lucy ‘s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ; ” ( 1-2 ) . The poet ‘s gap mentions allude to two important events: First, the winter solstice[ 9 ], as the talker references, when the full planet ‘s “ sap is sunk ” since the “ earth hath rummy ” it ( 5-6 ) , for nature ‘s winter blankets the universe in darkness in which “ life is shrunk, / Dead and interred ” ( 7-8 ) . Second, it alludes to the midnight or nighttime commemoration of the festival of St. Lucy who was “ beheaded as a virgin sufferer during the persecution of Diocletian ” ( Andreasen 154 ) .[ 10 ]

However, the sarcasm of depicting nature ‘s darkest hr and a extroverted festival is twofold. Indeed, the poet ‘s linguistic communication describes his milieus negatively ; his temperament is crestfallen, non celebratory, and his Sun is “ exhausted ” ( 3 ) on all degrees – the physical, emotional, and religious – for its beams are no longer “ changeless, ” ( 4 ) but are lessen to mocking, wavering “ flasks ” and “ squibs ” ( 3-4 ) . In other words, Donne views the universe ‘s natural decease as a procedure less blue than his ain, and he is, possibly, resentful of the land he walks upon since it resembles a graveyard for all that perishes in the winter. Donne, furthermore, is a populating keystone the dead “ all. . . seem to express joy, / Compared with [ him ] ” ( 8-9 ) , or as Leonard Unger provinces, “ [ T ] he things that are dead and buried are less plaintive than he, less negative. . . ” ( 47 ) since Donne is an active “ epitaph ” of the dead ( 9 ) .

Donne, the life epitaph of decease and kernel of darkness, in the proceeding stanzas leads his readers on an emotional solo act that builds from his melancholy province while supplying penetration into that which caused his emotional transmutation. The poet ‘s current status takes him on a living-hell journey in which his words advocates his readers, current and possible lovers, to “ Analyze me so, you who shall lovers be / At the following universe, that is, at the following Spring: / For I am every dead thing, ” ( 10-12 ) . The talker furthers his wisdom or, better yet, warns those presently or potentially in love to analyze non merely his words but besides his nature since it was love ‘s jinx or love ‘s “ new chemistry ” ( 13 ) that has veiled him in darkness and made him the active epigraph of survey – the “ ether ” of “ nothingness ” ( 15 ) .

N.J.C. Andreasen takes this impression farther by asseverating that “ [ cubic decimeter ] ove has taken a group of negatives which normally accompany love, ” as Donne provinces, “ dull wants, ” “ thin emptiness, ” “ absence, ” “ darkness, ” and “ decease ” ( 16, 18 ) , and has “ artfully reduced them [ and Donne ] to their [ or his ] fifth or simple kernel, bring forthing an elixir that gives non life, but decease ” ( 156 ) . The poet, furthermore, continues to slop his belittling message of love in the 3rd stanza by comparing those who are possibly novitiates to love ‘s chemistry, love ‘s temporal cloud nine of goodness, to him, who has experienced love ‘s inauspicious fleeting province and the devastation that it renders on its sick person.

In fact, when readers reach the 3rd stanza, Donne ‘s chorus ( if one can name it that ) or individual word chorus remainders on the negative word ‘nothing, ‘ and his status stems from the word ‘s root since the negative side effects of love ( the obtuseness, emptiness, absence etc ) merely rise his hopelessness and province of void. From the gap of this stanza, the talker compares himself and love ‘s negative side effects to love ‘s positive side effects and to all others who relish in a province of somethingness: “ All others, from all things, pull all that ‘s good, / Life, psyche, signifier, spirit, whence they being here ; ” ( 19-20 ) . His comparing to all others becomes hard to go on, for they persevere to bask what the poet one time did. The others of the universe experience love ‘s chemistry in cloud nine, non trouble as he does now ; they have a organic structure and psyche which proceeds in a universe filled with life, unlike the talker whose spirit is broken and organic structure is simply a frame that is “ the distillment of void ” ( Unger 47 ) : “ I, by love ‘s limbeck, am the grave / Of all that ‘s nil. ” ( 21-22 ) .

To compare or mensurate those in a universe where life and love still exists proves to be bootless when the universe ‘s mirror reflects Donne ‘s image upon it. This is because Donne ‘s words is a personal vocal that tunes out dear heartache, unlike the Dryden ‘s ode that is nonsubjective, at least when compared to Donne ‘s words, in its bringing and tone. As Donne ‘s subjective lyric develops, it bit by bit has cosmopolitan qualities, much like Dryden ‘s ode. However, what is revealed to the readers now is that all others fail in comparing to Donne ‘s, for they have yet to walk down his way or sing from the sacred halls of his nothingness province.

Donne, nevertheless, in an attempt to transport his lyric farther, uses the brief, painful, point of comparing in which he clearly begins to paint and explicate the ground for his fallen province. It is a image that shows two lovers – Donne and a adult female ( presumptively his married woman, Anne ) – wildly engaged in a love matter, much like the lovers the poet advises. Yet all that remains of Donne ‘s love matter stems from his memory and the cataclysmal effects of his memory along with the relationship allows him to “ [ revive ] the memory of a clip when there was something to mensurate it against, non this relativistic desert of unbeing ” ( Sanders 117 ) . Though one time the poet ‘s memory slices to remember, he is once more brought back to a world that climaxes with the truth that his darling remains alive merely in memory, non in physical presence:

Oft a inundation

Have we two wept, and so

Drowned the whole universe, us two ; frequently did we turn

To be tow pandemoniums, when we did demo

Care to aught else ; and frequently absences

Withdrew our psyche, and made us carcases. ( 22-27 )

The poet ‘s graphic memory recounts an matter that depicts a loving twosome to the full enthralled with each other ‘s presence and love. Their love for each other flooded all things around them, for when together their love made them into “ two pandemoniums ” if they displayed attention or feeling for something besides themselves, and two “ carcases ” when they separated from each other since each shared the other ‘s psyche. Likewise, the love that was granted to each of them created their ain existence. Their existence was created out of their loving relationship ; nevertheless, unlike Dryden ‘s words, which conveys that God ‘s melodious voice and music formed the existence, Donne ‘s words, his music of love ( at least though his memory ) , allows him to visualize his once perfect harmonious universe.

But, as Clarence H. Miller references, Donne ‘s memory besides provides the destructive nature of the melodies of love and a lesson that Donne, possibly, naively forgets, while profoundly in love: He wants those who study him to recognize that love is temporal on Earth and it ‘s effects, after the minute and emotions flee, can destruct one ‘s personal existence: “ Donne ‘s colossal reversal of Genesis in lines 22-29. . . , where he sweeps back from the inundation, to the creative activity of the universe, to the pandemonium out of which it was formed, to the nil before pandemonium, to the ‘Elixir ‘ . . . of that nil ” ( 86 ) brings Donne to the realisation that his void is generated from a existence that lacks his dear ‘s love and presence: “ But I am by her decease ( which word wrongs her ) / Of the first nil the elixir grown ” ( 28-29 ) .[ 11 ]

At this point in Donne ‘s words, readers are cognizant of the cause of the talker ‘s overpowering depression of its first half. By the talker ‘s bosom rendering recognition that his wife/lover is dead, he easy begins to raise his down mentality and raise the head covering of darkness that has covered his bosom. In fact, Carol Marks Sicherman adds that Donne ‘s choruss or “ repeats ” on the word ‘nothing ‘ and ‘nothingness ‘ are much more than negative words and phrases that he uses to depict his status alternatively “ these obsessional phrases form an self-asserting surface beneath which the talker ‘s temper is fixing to alter ” ( 82 ) . Donne ‘s emotional alteration out of heartache for the adult female he has loved is clip oriented, and it is with clip the poet may to the full retrieve, at least from a secular place, from his doomed.

Still, clip may trust to mend some lesions, but a adult male ‘s heartache over person he loved in a heartfelt way ne’er slices. Indeed, Donne ‘s transmutation has intensified from his ‘quintessence ‘ of ‘nothingness ‘ in stanza two to that of him going the ‘first nil the elixir ‘ in stanza four. Her decease alone has caused the poet to travel backwards in history to a period before God created the universe ; her decease and his advancement back through clip has made his full being missing an individuality:

Were I a adult male, that I were one

I needs must cognize ; I should prefer,

If I were any animal,

Some terminals, some agencies ; yea workss, yea rocks detest, . . . ( 31-34 )

Donne subsequently heightens his deficiency of physical individuality by marking precisely what his 2nd extremist grade of nil portrays when he says, “ If I an ordinary nil were, / As shadow, a light and organic structure must be here ” ( 35-36 ) . The significance of these lines is that when his woman/wife was alive she was his guiding visible radiation, and since she is no longer of this Earth his beam of sunlight produces no more shadows of him.

As readers read the concluding stanza, Donne ‘s temper bit by bit begins to travel from his province of void to the hereafter. In many ways, the first and 2nd grades of nil have been a procedure of mending for the poet. Donne ‘s emotional transmutation back to the yesteryear, to the beginning of creative activity, has sparked a religious regeneration that takes topographic point within him. Although he realizes that his “ Sunne ” ( his wife/lover ) will ne’er “ renew ” ( he will ne’er hold the opportunity to physically bask her presence and passions ) , Donne does promote the lovers from the earlier stanzas to to the full “ [ vitamin E ] njoy [ their ] summer ” every bit good as each minute that is physically possible to prehend ( 37, 42 ) .

With the return of the seasons that will come, life, excessively, will of course travel through its rhythms as they do in Donne ‘s life. The poet returns to his beginnings as he points out that “ [ B ] oth the old ages, and yearss deep midnight is, ” and so it is ; yet Donne applies the significance of his words ‘s day of the month and clip to mark the lone saint that has of all time graced his life, his darling married woman, who now “ enjoys her long dark ‘s festival, ” where this minute in clip will everlastingly be linked as “ her Vigil, and her Eve ” ( 42, 44 ) .

The talker, at this point in his words, has been consoled to a grade ; even though, the heartache will ne’er give manner to pleasure every bit long as he walks on Earth. Therefore, Donne looks towards his hereafter and holds onto his belief that his spiritualty will let him and his married woman to go on their loving cloud nine under the harmonious skies of Eden, for Donne ‘s merely responsibility on this Earth is to “ fix towards her ” ( 44 ) . Donne ‘s religion and newfound optimism through his heartfelt words will reserve him a topographic point in Eden to portion ageless life and love with the 1 he loves, much as the religious message in the words of Dryden ‘s Grand Chorus Dryden ‘s, where God ‘s power of music lifts those one time entrenched in the beliefs of a discordant universe to the beliefs of a universe Born of pure musical harmoniousness.

Notes