I was re-reading Eliot's introduction to Literary Essays to figure out
how to approach the question of deficiency in the music. Eliot confirms
what many of the essays state - Pound's efforts (here I would add, in
music) are to teach the English language ear something specific about
the poetry that has come before and shaped it. Pound uses music to state
what the movement of the poem and its emotional affect are, especially
poems that do not translate well. A number of the essays and GK attest
to this fact, listing Villon, Sappho and Catullus and occasionally
Cavalcanti among the poets he (EP) was forced to set to music because he
couldn't translate them. By 1934 he writes in Dateline that setting
words to music is a form of criticism.
    So, music technique aside (Pound was the first to say he was an
amateur "apart from accommodating notes to words"- Ant. and the Treatise
on Harmony 134), and dramatic ideas aside, does his music do what he in
the end claims for it? That is, teach the ear something about the poem
that will not come across in translation? Does it teach the English poet
something about the earlier poem in Italian or Provencal or Old French
or Latin that is crucial to know for someone writing modern English
poetry? For example, Pound refused to translate Sordello's "Tos temps
serai" (Letters) because he believed there was nothing in the poetry of
value to the cognitive perception. When he set it to music, though, he
believed he had captured an authentic spirit in the sound.
    It probably requires a mental shift to listen to music in a manner
different from our usual response to music. We normally ask, Does this
music intrigue or please our ear? Does the music challenge what we
accept as music or confirm same? Does this meet our standards for music,
and our reasons for listening to music? With this perspective, we
generally ask about Pound's music, Is it any good? not realizing that
Pound's criteria are based in poetry and not in music.
To listen to Pound's music from his point of view, we need to ask
ourselves, What can I hear in this song that I hadn't perceived in the
POETRY before? and What can I hear in this foreign language song that
has relevance to modern writing in English?
   I doubt that anyone set poetry to music for these reasons before, or
was so intent on capturing something essential in the poetry. Pound took
his "accomodating notes to words" (N.B. - not words to notes) very
seriously. He claimed he took his pitches from the tonal inflections of
the words, and the rhythms from the spoken language. This shows up
especially in the fact that his works only rarely employ a repeat. He
was obviously intent on learning something through the composition
process that would serve his own poetry, and this was his method. Does
the method transfer? Can another (especially English) ear hear what
Pound hears?
  I think it may be better not to look at the music to answer this.
Stephen, hope you don't mind, I'd like to recommend a different essay of
yours, "The Metrical Contract of The Cantos" (Journal of Modern
Literature, 15 (Summer 1988) pp. 55-72).
  Le Testament has been issued on two LP recordings (US and Holland) -
hopefully many academic libraries purchased these for their collection.
The Beinecke Library, The Pound Center in Hailey Idaho, and the Pound
Study Center in Merano have been supplied with music from the 1983
Cavalcanti performance. We are working toward the release of an audio CD
of excerpts of the two operas and the violin pieces.
Best,
Margaret Fisher