Mr. Rowland,
    One thing Pound certainly got from music was some
ideas of rhythm, il basso profondo, and the character
of repetition of a certain theme in variations (which
he used many times throughout The Cantos, thinking of
Johann Sebastian Bach’s fugues, mostly, but without
regularity). There are many inspiring singularities
you can get from his study on George Antheil called
"The Treatise on Harmony". It is easier to find the
essay in Selected Prose of Ezra Pound (1909-1965),
William Cookson (ed.), Faber & Faber.
     Another important feature was the words set to
music, or the conception that all poetry tries to
reach the condition of music (as Jorge Luis Borges
refers Walter Pater’s dictum). Pound even discovered
a fine chanson by Arnaut Daniel in the Biblioteca
Ambrosiana, and Walter Rummel transcribed it to a
modern notation, with Pound’s literary assistance.
Music was for him a way of criticizing, too. He
couldn’t translate Villon, so he tried to understand
and bring about, with music, the poetic qualities of
every syllable in Villon’s oeuvre.
      You can find musical references throughout his
critical works (the ABC of Reading, for instance)and,
as I do believe, implicit in his own poetry. An
imitation of the beautiful patterns from elizabethan
songs — i.e. Thomas Campion’s mostly, who said “Music
is Heaven” — can be found in Envoi, from Hugh Selwyn
Mauberley. Or take his translations of Chinese in “The
Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius”,one of the
most beautiful books of poems last century produced.

             Hope this was useful,

                                       D.








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