You can get the texts of Pound's music from http://www.ezrapoundmusic.com

I'm wondering what you mean by "almost laughably unintelligible" with 
reference to Pound's music, and also presuming that the cd you refer to 
is /Ego Scriptor Cantilenae/, but please correct me if I'm wrong. With 
anticipation of your answer to the foregoing wonderment, the following 
thoughts occur to me. Forgive what will probably be a long ramble, but I 
don't have time to make it short.

How any music strikes one is somewhat determined by one's musical 
background and tastes. I'm pretty eclectic in my musical tastes, but 
generally find frustrating most vocal music in which the words are 
detached from the music as though the words are simply a background and 
generalized organizing principle. This means that I'm in a constant 
battle with music composed for "serious" singing. My affinities are with 
Harry Partch's conception, as expressed in his /Genesis of a Music/, of 
a difference between "organic" and "abstract" vocal music. My one-line 
gross over-simplification is that the difference between the two is that 
organic music makes the words primary to the vocalization while the 
abstract makes the music music itself primary. But this 
oversimplification serves well when encountering Pound's operas, 
especially "Le Testament".

If one is accustomed to or prefers primarily the metronomic effect in 
music of definite closed periods and smooth, even rhythms in unchanging 
or slowly changing time signatures, whether in folk music, "classical" 
music, jazz, or whatever, then a music that forefronts the rhythms found 
in words is bound to sound strange at first, especially when the words 
themselves come from a master of verbal rhythmic complexity. Even though 
Villon wrote his Old French verse in regular stanzaic patterns, he 
nevertheless composed in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than 
that of the metronome, even though the metronome beat out it's regular 
time in the line lengths and endings. Pound heard the open phrasing 
within the closed regular form. He heard the music Villon's words 
created independently of the formal stanza, and he tried to create music 
that followed those patterns.

Bold statement? Not bold enough yet.

Not only did he TRY to create music that exemplified the musical 
phrasing of Villon's verse, he frequently succeeded in a way rare in any 
occidental music of any period. There's the bold statement. But it gets 
worse (or better, depending on one's viewpoint).

11 p.m., December 31, 1923. Antheil completes his notation of Le 
Testament. This is the version from which excerpts appear in Ego 
Scriptor Cantilenae. Yes. Strange music. Music that moves with the 
words, in the microrhythms of the phrasing. As Mauberley and Homage to 
Sextus Propertius are completed, Le Testament begins: 1921 -- the first 
version completed with Agnes Bedford. Also in 1921 - a look at Eliot's 
first shot at "The Wasteland". Then 1922, Pound edits Eliot's second 
draft of "The Wasteland", begins the Malatesta Cantos. In 1923 publishes 
"Criticism in General": Melopoeia, Logopoeia, Phanopoeia, full circle 
here back to the Antheil score.

I believe that these are all of a moment, of a single piece, but that Le 
Testament, in Antheil's rendition, is the crystalline form of Pound's 
concept of melopoeia, the completed (al)chemical process, free from 
being bound to the reagents of his own words. The exact corollary to the 
treatment of rhythm in Le Testament vs. dominant trends in music (then 
and now) is the treatment of rhythm in the Cantos vs. the treatment of 
rhythm in most closed forms, e.g. Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

There. My fortress is undefended. My troops are in disarray. Let the 
attack begin.

Just kidding. But I do hope you and others will at least throw some 
stones at these superficially expressed ideas to help me refine them or 
discard them.


Robert Kibler wrote:
> I wouldn't mind  a copy of that limited edition text. Where did you get it? I have one of the cds of Pound's music and it sounds like anything but melopoeia to me, almost laughably unintelligble, so perhaps you can share some of your own ideas here on the Pound listerv, knowing, of course, that if they get interesting, you will awaken the denizens. But so what! Robert Kibler
>  
> "The man of excellence understands what is moral. 
> The petty man understands what is profitable." 
> Confucius, Analects 
>   
> Robert E. Kibler Associate Professor of English and Humanities 
> Director, Northern Plains Writing Project 
> Minot State University 229 Hartnett Hall West 
> 500 University Avenue West 
> Minot, North Dakota 58707 701 858 3876 
> [log in to unmask]
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine on behalf of Dirk Johnson
> Sent: Sun 4/20/2008 2:38 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Le Testament
>
>
>
> List members,
>
> Since its release, I've been using every spare moment (which admittedly
> isn't saying very much) to study Ezra Pound, /Le Testament, "Paroles de
> Villon"/, 1926 'Salle Pleyel' concert excerpts & 1933 Final Version,
> complete opera, Margaret Fisher, Robert Hughes Editors. Not that I've
> made much progress, being dense of mind and short of time, but the work
> is illuminating and rewarding.
>
> This is one of the most important pieces of Pound scholarship (and
> original texts by Pound) to become available in many years. It deserves
> all the attention it can be given. I'm wondering whether there's anyone
> else on this list who has looked into Pound's music and in particular
> the work of Fisher and Hughes (especially /Villon/, /Cavalcanti/ and
> /Collis O Heliconii/) sufficiently to carry on a discussion about this
> with me (this is not some veiled claim that I'm an "expert" -- I most
> certainly am not). Pound's music is a large subject, and I would
> appreciate some interaction around it by the brilliant members of this
> list. In particular, I'm interested how his settings of poems by Villon,
> Cavalcanti, Catullus, and Sappho reflect and illuminate Pound's own
> ideas about and practices of melopoeia in the his critical writings, the
> /Cantos/, and elsewhere. Fisher and Hughes have done a lot of work in
> this area, and I have a lot of respect for their accomplishment and
> their views. But it would be enlightening to know what others,
> especially those belonging to this list, think of the uncovering of Ezra
> Pound's music and it's relationship to Pound's verse.
>
> If no one expresses interest in the subject, I suppose I'll just begin
> to throw out my thoughts and see what kinds of attacks it provokes from
> the usually silent, though dangerous, denizens of the deep.
>
> I feel fortunate to have acquired a copy of /Le Testament/, not only
> because of the quality of the work itself (both Pound's and the
> Editors'), but because it was released in a limited printing which
> appears to be nearly sold out. I've kicked myself in the past (pretty
> hard at times) for not buying Poundiana when it was readily available
> and reasonably priced. To me, this is like getting a first edition of/
> The Pisan Cantos/ or some other important printing -- who would have
> thought it possible to get a newly printed first edition of a major work
> by Ezra Pound in 2008?
>
> Dirk Johnson
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>   

-- 
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