Prioritizing Poetry: Examining the Role of Poetics in Song Structures

Abstract: Pianists who are active collaborators in song repertoire often engage with poetic works, but how often do they initiate and experience the sounds of the words? Most collaborative pianists develop an understanding of the text, informing and infusing instrumental color in performance, but there are ways to go further: by engaging with poetic details, pianists can interact with the aesthetics of the art from which the piece comes, as well as the very human sources for those aesthetics. This column will suggest tools for parsing the poetics of song repertoire through compelling examples of text–music interactions.