Wow!! What can I say? Thank you!!! Marshall McLuhan, a prodigious scholar himself, as well as a very fine English teacher, did a paper on Pound's influence on THE WASTE LAND. He outlines the tussle between P. and E. about the dramatic character of the poem and whether it should have 4 or 5 parts. We all know who won. :) I suppose Pound's style/life is reesponsible for the fact that one here's mostly only about the poems and the theory. 'Twas a tale told by an Eliot, Full of Pound and theory. Cheers, Peter -----Original Message----- From: Dirk Johnson To: [log in to unmask] Sent: 2004-Nov-12 12:40 PM Subject: Re: Pound's back-door comment to Eliot Peter, Regarding work on Pound and drama, I'd like to recommend four additional resources. One of Pound's stated critical means was "criticism by composition". This is generally taken to mean "poetic composition" (i.e., translation) but, as you know, Pound had deep interests in drama and music. These interests weren't separate from the Cantos, but deeply informed the Cantos. In fact, Pound engaged in direct composition of both drama and music while working on the Cantos. In addition to his translations of Greek tragedy, he wrote two complete operas ("The Testament of Francois Villon" and "Cavalcanti") and left a third ("Collis O Heliconii") unfinished; he also wrote many solo violin pieces. Pound's operas (dramatic chamber pieces, really) draw on Pound's engagement with the Noh plays, sometimes in stylization, sometimes in their organization of a thought or image from beginning to end, and always in their presentation of a living poet's intimate visit with the ghost of the earlier poet (subject rhyme to the nekuia scenes of Cantos). The four suggestions: 1) "Ezra Pound's Radio Operas: The BBC Experiments, 1931-1933" (Margaret Fisher, MIT Press 2002) A deep, readable, eminently informative, and fascinating study of the composition and transformation of "The Testament of Francois Villon" for live Radio performance (including a great deal of information regarding Pound's second radio opera "Cavalcanti"). Pounds first opera is "The Testament of Francois Villon", which was produced for radio by the BBC and broadcast October 26 and 27, 1931. Though translation is one of his forms of criticism, Pound never translated the poetry of Villon. Here we witness Pound's critical encounter with Villon through the means of composition: most of the opera is a setting of Villon's poetry to music, which functions not only as a critique of Villon, but of western music and drama. Pound received assistance in the scoring for the opera from George Antheil. Link: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=8767&ttype=2 2) "Cavalcanti: A Perspective on the Music of Ezra Pound" (Robert Hughes and Margaret Fisher, Second Evening Art 2003) This great work begins with a quotation from Canto CV: "Guido had read the Proslogion / as had, presumably, Villon". The first line of the commentary reads, "Pound wrote two operas, an incomplete third, and his major violin works for literary reasons". This is the perfect summation. Not only does "Cavalcanti" contain the complete score of Pound's second opera "Cavalcanti" painstakingly assembled and edited by Robert Hughes from all available archival material (plus a piano reduction by Hughes), beautifully engraved by Margaret Fisher: Cavalcanti also includes an extensive and clear book-length monograph discussing Pound's artistic process as it relates to his music and cross-fertilizes his poetry. The introductory essay by Robert Hughes and Margaret Fisher (203 pgs including index and bibliography) is an indispensable contribution to the Pound literature. A complete understanding of Pound the poet cannot be achieved without taking into consideration his musical achievements. It is well known that Guido Cavalcanti was a major influence on Pound; that Pound translated all of Cavalcanti's poems; and that Pound produced a critical edition of Cavalcanti's poems. What is not so well known is how Pound HEARD Cavalcanti's poems. By setting Cavalcanti's poems to music, Pound directly shows us how he hears Cavalcanti. Link: http://www.ezrapoundmusic.com/ 3) "Ezra Pound: Complete Violin Works, 1923 -1933" (Edited with commentary by Robert Hughes, Introduction by Margaret Fisher, Second Evening Art 2004) Pound's violin works are transcriptions of poems into music. They are NOT music for poems to be sung to. This is something entirely different. This is Ezra Pound displaying his creative genius to its limits. A quotation from the book may serve as best introduction: "The idea of creating a purely instrumental work from the structure of a poem -- its form, rhythm and, eventually, aspects of its melopoeia -- was inherent in Pound's earliest, simplest, quasi-compositional effort as transcriber of Faidit's 'Plainte' from the pages of the Ambrosiana manuscript in Milan into Olga Rudge's partbook on the stage of the Conservatoire in Paris. From an application of this idea to the complicated sestina form through its simplification in the 'Sonate Ghuidonis' to a final flowering in Dante's 'Al poco giorno', Pound continued to search for the multiform and intricate fusion between words and music." To me, this is something like the essence of Ezra Pound: the complete interpenetration of words and music to the point that each can be abstracted from the other. The commentary shows in detail the connections between each violin work and the particular poem it encounters. This is a sterling example of the authentic avant garde. Link: http://www.ezrapoundmusic.com/ 4) "Ego scriptor cantilenae: The Music of Ezra Pound" (Other Minds Compact Disc) The indispensable companion to all three books. The CD provides excerpts from all three operas and Pound's violin music performed at various times and in a variety of places. Included with the CD is a lovely little booklet that could stand alone as a charming and informative Pound monograph. It includes libretti of included excerpts plus a valuable essay by Margaret Fisher, "Ezra Pound: Composer", discussions of individual performances, and a lot of other useful odds and ends (including some rare photographs). Performances on the CD include selections from the first stage performance of "Villon", conducted by Robert Hughes in 1971 and released in 1972 on LP by Fantasy (12001). As additional treats from "Villon", we are given a 1980 performance conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw and a 1992 performance conducted by John Stringer. Also included are copious excerpts from "Cavalcanti" and "Collis O Heliconii", as well as some of Pound's violin music (performed by Nathan Rubin), recorded on various dates in 1983 and 2001, some of the former supervised by Olga Rudge! Enjoy! Dirk Peter Montgomery wrote: >Btw. I'm now a proud owner of: >A GUIDE TO EZRA POUND AND ERNEST FENOLLOSA'S CLASSIC NOH THEATRE OF JAPAN >by Akiko Miyake, Sanehide Kodama and Nicholas Teele, Editors > >Courtesy Ms. Gail Sapiel, Prof. Burt Hatlen, and a dose of mastercard. >What a piece of work! > >Cheers, >Peter > > > -- Dirk Johnson 676 Geary #407 San Francisco, CA 94102 Phone: 415-771-7734 Work: 510-208-8206 [log in to unmask] This message has been scanned by Norton Anti-Virus, and is believed to be free of any virus.