MAGORZATA PAWOWSKA

(Academy of Music in Krakow)

Musical narratology an outline

The story of narratology becomes as much
an auto-reflexive as a postmodern tale.
Christine Brooke-Rose

Explosion
Musical narratology is currently undergoing a phase of dynamic
development. It is part of the expansion of narratology that we have
observed within the last few years in the interdisciplinary sphere that has
resulted, among other things, in the creation of the European
Narratological Network and the organization of its conferences. As Anna
ebkowska, a Polish author, wrote in 2006: the ubiquity of narrative has
become fact (181). Mrta Grabcz, a musicologist who has worked on
musical narratology since the early 1990s, observed in 2008:
Today () I find myself confronted with the problem or rather exceptional
opportunity that narrative studies encounters: namely an e x pl os io n , a
lightning renaissance of narrative theory and analysis. (19, my emphasis);

By musical narratology I understand the study of the relation

between narrative and music, expressed in the persistent debate on
whether music can be narrative or not, as well as analyses of musical
pieces as narratives, from the perspective of narratology.
As we know, postclassical narratology is an interdisciplinary
endeavour, and narrative is treated as a many-sided phenomenon
(Herman and Vervaeck 2008: 450). Therefore, the question of the
relationship between narrative and music has become a part of
narratological investigations, as seen for example in the writings of Werner
Wolf, or in Marie Laure-Ryan's Narrative across Media: The Languages of
Storytelling, in which a separate section is devoted to music. At the same
time though, many narratologists, including the aforementioned, deal with
the subject of the relation between narrative and music with great caution.
Among the variety of media to which the concept of narrative is applied,

music seems to be the most controversial. The question arises of whether

we should not leave music as a completely abstract phenomenon; as
Walter Pater writes:
All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music, because, in its ideal,
consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form from the
matter, the subject from the expression(1986: 135)

Despite the complexity of the issue, the phenomenon known as musical

narratology has made itself perceptible in the humanities. In this paper, I
will examine the question of narrative and music relation mainly in the
writings of music specialists who draw on narratological concepts (such
as, inter alia, Fred Everett Maus, Jean Jacques Nattiez, Eero Tarasti, Marta
Grabcz and Byron Almn). It is the work of these the narratological
musicologists (Ryan 2004: 270) that constitutes musical narratology
as a separate subdiscipline.
The term narrative is often used in relation to music both in
colloquial expressions and in scholarly discourse. The expansion of the
term in the theory of music (together with a whole set of other terms
derived from literary narratology) was connected to a paradigm shift. In
the 1970s and 1980s, as a reaction to post-Hanslick formalist tendencies
(that is, to treat music as sonorous forms in motion1), issues concerning
expression and meaning in music began to reappear along with the
flourishing of musical semiotics. Since the mid-1970s the subject of
narrative has held a significant position during annual meetings of the
American Musicological Society. In 1991 an issue of Indiana Theory Review
was devoted entirely to musical narrative. The problem of musical
narrative is also discussed during the recurring International Congress on
Musical Signification2.
What sealed the phenomenon of musical narratology was the
appearance of the entry Narratology, Narrativity (by Fred Everett Maus) in
2001 in what is considered by many to be the worlds most important
music encyclopedia, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. It
presents, however, a rather scattered account of the literature (containing
mostly articles) which, in a fragmentary way, introduced mainly the fierce
debate on whether the existence of narrative in music is possible. In
recent years the field of musical narratology has developed greatly. Two
books which address the issue of narrative in music have appeared in
recent years: A Theory of Musical Narrative by Byron Almn (2008) and
Musique, narrativit, signification by Marta Grabocz (2009).
1
2

Tnend bewegte Formen, Hanslick

The ICMS is a biennial conference that provides a platform for presentations and
discussions of recent developments and future trends in Musical Semiotics. It has been
held since 1986 as part of the International Project on Musical Signification.

Musicological debate on narrative in music

As I have already mentioned, since the 1970s a debate on whether
narrativity can exist in music often appears in musical writings. Central
questions have been posed: Is the term narrativity in music used in a
metaphorical sense, as derived from literature? Is narrative possible in
music especially in instrumental music without text or literary program?
I will only present briefly some chosen, exemplary attitudes to the
problem. As we shall see, authors advocating for, respectively, a positive
or negative answer to the question of whether music can be narrative take
up very diverse concepts in their arguments. This diversity results inter alia
from differences in the understanding of the very term of narrative and
from different ideas about which elements are to be regarded as crucial for
the existence of narrative.
Among the first authors to take up this subject and advocate for a
positive answer to the question of whether music can be narrative were
Edward Cone and Anthony Newcomb.
In his works from 1970s, Cone proposed perceiving music as a
language of gestures. He posed a question: who speaks to us through a
musical work? He used such terms as virtual persona, virtual agent, virtual idea
we can identify them, but cannot strictly define them. He treated
repetitions in music (for example da capo) as being of the past tense,
remembered by the persona. Cones writings therefore launched the
debate on whether musical compositions can be treated as stories told by
someone.
Following Cone, Anthony Newcomb (1984, 1988, 1994, 1997) noticed
that when listening to music we can recognize action, tension and
dynamics similar to those which we experience while reading a literary
text. So he proposed an analysis going beyond the formal level to the level
of functional elements in the temporal span of the work. This series of
functional events constructs a musical narrative. Newcomb also searched
for plot archetypes and paradigms in musical works, with reference to the
work of Propp and Todorov, but in a much more general sense. (Example
scheme: suffering leading to redemption Symphonies No. 5 and No. 9
of Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 of Schumann).
An outstanding contribution to the theory of narrative in music has
been that of Eero Tarasti, who in his book A Theory of Musical Semiotics,
published in 1994, clearly stated that narrative units can be observed in
music. Tarasti became famous for his narratological analyses of Chopins
Polonaise-Fantasy Op. 61 and Ballade in G minor op. 23. According to him, we
can perceive narrative programs in the structure of music itself, without
referring to literature. He draws on the Greimasian model: the idea of the

semiotic square, isotopes, modal categories, and actants. Tarasti also

showed how the performance of a musical work is crucial for bringing out
its narrative elements, and has recently presented a theory of three kinds
of narrativity: conventional, organic and existential.
Conventional narrativity takes shape following the Proppian functions as clearcut
narrative programs in which the musical subject appears as actors and does
something. () Organic narrativity, on the other hand, exceeds borderlines; it
resists clear segmentation as it strives for continuous growth in accomplishing
musical telos () The operatic principle or organic narrativity is to let the music
appear by itself (). Finally, existential narrativity crystallizes in those moments
that constitute unique situations of choice, from which a paradigm of virtualities
is opened. In such moments one gets free from the power and necessity of both
conventional () and organic-corporeal processes (). (2008: 112)

At the same time, the concept of musical actants was taken up by

Joseph Kerman, according to whom the study of musical narration should
begin with the concerto genre. In his article Representing a Relationship: Notes
on a Beethoven Concerto Kerman writes:
While plenty of exceptions exist () in general one knows exactly who is who in
a concerto and who is doing what. There is a soloist and an orchestra, and there
is usually quite a sharp sense of character, of the powerful and multicolored
orchestra and its weak but high-spirited adversary as Tchaikovsky once put it.
The agents exist in some kind of relationship, and what is traced in a concerto is
the course of a relationship. (1992: 97-98)

Kerman alluding to the change of paradigm in music theory postulates

an attempt to decipher extra-musical meanings, because on some level
they are evident and intersubjectively verifiable. The reception of a work
as it develops in time is significant in the context of musical narrative. In
the linear course of time the listener uses the function of memory; he
compares earlier passages with future ones, he anticipates, he is taken by
surprise, he is being led by the musical narration.
The possibility of music being narrative is postulated also by authors
such as Robert Hatten, Marta Grabocz, Byron Almn, Karol Berger, Vera
Micznik, Susan McClary and Raymond Monelle.
Among skeptical voices addressing the possibility of musical narrative
we find: Jean Jacques Nattiez, Carolyn Abbate and Fred Everett Maus.
Nattiez, for instance, argues that music is unable to narrate in the past
tense, that music lacks a subject, as well as lacking the subject predicate
relation and causality. He claims that we need a literary reference point to
understand a musical work as narrative. Without it we can only speak
about narrativity in music metaphorically. So to Nattiez music can only
suggest a narrative or be similar to a narrative. Formal syntactic relations
developing in time can create an illusion of narration, but only in the mind

of a listener. Nattiez quotes Theodor W. Adorno, writing about Mahler,

that music is a narrative which relates nothing (1990: 149-319).
Whereas, following Hayden White, he uses the distinction between the
verbs narrate and narrativize. The second verb does not mean narrating in
the strict sense, but making an illusion of it so for Nattiez music
narrativizes (1990: 249). Because of its imitative ability music can imitate
narrative style.
Carolyn Abbate shares the critical attitude of Nattiez. According to
her, through music we can hear the voice of narration, but we do not
know what it is talking about. Music therefore imitates a narrative mode.
She strongly opposes narrative interpretations which, in her opinion,
trivialize music.
Fred Everett Maus claims that music is more similar to drama than to
narrative (1988, 1991, 1997). Maus thinks that literary language is fully
justified in the interpretation of music, but on a high level of abstraction,
which means for example that actants should not be identified. He
concludes: the exploration of instrumental music as narrative remains a
tantalizing, confusing, problematic area of inquiry (Maus 2001).
The books by Byron Almn (2008) and Marta Grabocz (2009) were
partly reactions to the critical attitudes mentioned above. In his book
Almn debunks these critical arguments one by one, as we shall see later.
Puzzling definitions
It is easy to observe that in this debate many discrepancies are caused
by differences in the understanding of the very term narrative, by mixing
and blurring the notions of epic and narrative, and by different ideas
about which elements are to be regarded as crucial for the existence of
narrative. No wonder, since even among narratologists there is no single
concept or definition of what narrative is.
I would therefore like to focus on the definitions and ways of thinking
presented by authors who to some extent have organized this chaotic
terminology. By doing this, these authors have simultaneously refuted the
abovementioned arguments against musical narrative.
Karol Berger, in his text Narrative and Lyric (1993), tries to organize
notions connected to narrative, epic, lyric and drama, with reference to
Aristotle, Genette and Ricoeur. The most important among his proposals
is the introduction of a dyad narrative and lyric instead of a triad. As
Berger notes, Genette has traced the ways in which modal and thematic
categories have been mixed through the history of these terms. The
narrative category, in Bergers understanding, contains both epic and

drama, and it is characterized by what it presents, that is by storyline, plot.

The difference between epic and drama lies in their modes of
presentation, though both present the same thing. (In this light, Mauss
argument that music is more similar to drama than to a narrative loses
its point, because it seems that Maus has equated the narrative with the
epic). Narrative and lyric are, according to Berger, types of form. Whereas
narrative is a temporal form properly suited to representing human
actions, lyric is an atemporal form representing states of mind. Berger
explains, however, that:
To be clear I would like to add that all music and all literature happen in time.
Yet the notion of form with which we deal here does not concern either the ways
of existence of a work of art in the real world or the ways in which it is
experienced, but it concerns the temporal or atemporal structure of the world
presented in the work. (1993:54)

In narrative there is a sequence of parts which succeed one another in a

determined order, governed by relationships of causation and resulting
from necessity or probability. Such a narrative form implies an active and
synthetic hearing, in contrast to the lyric form which encourages rather a
passive kind of hearing by evoking a certain atmosphere. Berger, referring
to the essay of Heinrich Besseler Das musikalische Hren der Neuzeit (1959),
points to the moment in the history of music in which active synthetic
hearing reached its height: the end of the 18th century, i.e. the times of
Hochklassik. This is the very moment in which the musical theme an
entity returning throughout the piece of music and subject to
modifications adopted individual features, became original and
expressed the unique personality of a particular author. The musical work,
united by the main theme which preserved its identity despite all its
transformations, was understood as an expression of constant individual
moral character. While listening to such a composition (for example of
Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven), one synthesizes its consecutive phases so
that it emerges as an integrated entity in which something has
happened. A composition evoking a state or moment, however, for
example in the musical impressionism of Debussy, is not narrative music.
This is why we sometimes have the impression that there can be music
that evidently does not try to tell us any story, while sometimes when
listening to music we might sigh and say: How narrative! (Tarasti 2004:
287).
Byron Almn, in his book A Theory of Musical Narrative (2008),
debunks one by one the critical arguments concerning the existence of
narrative in music (i.e. the arguments of Nattiez and Maus), proving that
the existence of narrative does not require a meta-linguistic discourse that
presupposes causality, narrator and referentiality. He arrives at the

conclusion that narrative in music is possible, that it is not a secondary

phenomenon taken from literature, and that it can manifest itself through
the interaction of musical elements. He indicates that the definition of
narrative is the source of confusion:
Because narrative was first conceptualized in relation to literature, we have largely
failed to recognize the distinction between narrative proper and narrative as
manifested in literature. (2008:12)

Among the existing definitions, he distinguishes between those which

are based on a descendant model and those on a sibling one. Almn writes:
To use a genealogical metaphor, I prefer a sibling model rather than a descendant
model for articulating the relationship between musical and literary narrative. The
descendant model presupposes a conceptual priority for literary narrative, while the
sibling model distinguishes between a set of foundational principles common to all
narrative media and principles unique to each medium. (2008: 18)

According to Almn, narrative categories such as the four mythoi

distinguished by Northrop Frye, of comedy, romance, irony/satire and
tragedy - are present in music. They are the outcome of particular
sequences of narrative formulas. The author gives his own definition of
musical narrative: Musical narrative is the process through which the
listener perceives and tracks culturally a significant transvaluation of
hierarchical relationships within a temporal span (Almn 2003: 12).
As we can see, it is possible to claim that music can be narrative if we
accept rather general, broad definitions of narrative such as those quoted
above. If, however, we base our analysis on the definitions proclaiming
the existence of a narrator or representation specified in semantic details
of the plot as a necessary condition of narrative, we will not be able to
claim that music can be narrative. For example, according to Marie-Laure
Ryan a narrative text must create a world and populate it with characters
and objects (2004: 8), and according to Gerald Prince, the presence of at
least one narrator is necessary for narrative (2003: 58). In this case
referring to Marie-Laure Ryans distinction (2004: 9) we would rather
say that music cant be narrative, but can have narrativity, because it is able
to evoke narrative scripts in the mind of the audience.
Narratological perspective in music analysis
In music, there is no narrator or concrete fictional world filled with
objects and characters, but musicological narratologists claim that there
can be a subject of mental processes and signification present in musical
utterance itself. If we try to abstract the manifestations of what is regarded
as a narratological perspective in musicological works, they will be:

Structures of musical signification, such as, inter alia:

- musical gestures
Energetic shaping through time, grounded biologically and culturally in
communicative human movement. Musical gesture is expressed within the
conventions of a musical style, whose elements include both the discrete (pitch,
rhythm, meter) and the analog (dynamics, articulation, temporal pacing). (Hatten
2004:224)

topics

A complex musical correlation originating in the kind of music. (Hatten, 1994:

294-5)
From its contacts with worship, poetry, drama, entertainment, dance, ceremony,
the military, the hunt, and the life of the lower classes, music in the early 18 th
century developed a thesaurus of characteristic figures (). They are designated here
as topics subjects for musical discourse (Ratner, 1980:9)

modalities

Modalities are general human ways of evaluation (). As a series of emotional

states, modalities account for the way the listener unites a musical text with
human values. (Tarasti, 1991: 136)
The prevalent modalities of music are being and doing, in addition to the
normal temporal process of music, which I call becoming. Being means a state of
rest, stability, and consonance; doing is synonymous with musical action: event,
dynamism, and dissonance. ()
The basic modalities of being and doing are sur-modalized by several others: will,
the so-called kinetic energy of music, its general direction, its tendency to move
toward a goal; know, the information conveyed by music, its cognitive moment;
can, the power and efficiency of music (); must, the control exercised by the
rules of genres and formal types (); believe, the epistemic values of music ()
One can also speak of modalities that is to say, a process of modalization in
the performance or listening to music (). (Tarasti, 2004: 295-6).

intonations

Intonation signifies formulas, types of specific musical sonorities which transmit

a human and social meaning, represented by the characters set out in the entire
composition ; their destiny is shaped in large musical and dramaturgical units like
the characters observed in dramas, and plays its part in revealing the complex
world of artists. (Ujfalussy 1980, after Grabocz, 2008: 26)

semes, classemes, isotopies

Categories helping to distinguish the extent of the different dimensions of the

signified (the smallest is the seme, the largest the isotope, while the classeme
would correspond to the level of the phrase and the musical period in the
Classical and Romantic eras. (Grabocz 2008: 27)

Isotopy a set of semantic categories whose redundancy guarantees the

coherence of sign-complex and makes possible the uniform reading of any text.
(Tarasti, 1994: 291-2)

Moreover, in certain pieces of music one can detect actants.

Musical narratology also deals with:
The organizing strategies of the signified
On the micro-level: binary oppositions, functions and directions of
action, such as enclosure, disruption, subversion, counteraction,
withdrawal, interruption, realization, together with all possible
transformations.
On the macro-level: musical forms and plot archetypes, narrative
schemas, narrative programs, arrangement of topics and isotopies
through time
The narratological tools derived from literary theory which have been
most frequently used in music analyses are those of Propp (with his
functions), Greimas (with such narrative units as actants, predicates,
modalities, isotopies, the semiotic square, narrative programs and
canonical narrative schema) and Todorov (with his narrative schema).
Musical narratives versus literary narratives
If analytical tools for examining musical narrations are taken over from
the theory of literature, what elements of the systems are then analogous
for literary and musical narrations? Both music and language can be
perceived as systems of utterance, which enable interpersonal
communication, with a sender and a receiver. Here we have to add that
this utterance in the case of music is far remote from linguistic
pragmatics. They both have a temporal, linear structure. Therefore both in
the perception of literary and musical narratives, Husserls categories of
retention (an intentional awareness of a past event as past) and protention
(an intentional awareness of a future event as about to happen) are essential
(see Polony 2005: 81). Of course, the experience of time is different in the
perception of literary and musical narratives. Both language and music are
systems of conventional, phonic signs. In both cases we observe the use
of grammar understood as rules enabling the formation of an unlimited
number of new structures. As part of the grammar in both systems we
find syntax. Therefore in both cases the formal relations established
between elements in time like consequence, transformations, repetitions

 are significant. In musicology, Schenkerian analysis3 and the generative

theory of tonal music by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff (1983)
(inspired by Noam Chomsky) focus on musical syntax. Todorov claimed
that in literary narratives spatial relations, such as antitheses, gradations,
and repetitions, are very important. We can observe that these relations in
music are, in fact, even emphasized. Finally, both literary and musical
narratives can be understood as processes, as dynamic and energetic
structures.
Apart from the obvious difference concerning the mere material of
literary and musical narratives, the biggest dissimilarity seems to emerge in
the sphere of semantics. Music cannot make a proposition (Micznik 2001:
218), there is no link between subject and predicate in music; moreover,
what music lacks, is vocabulary4 (Rosen 1971: 38). Nevertheless, in
musical narratology many misunderstandings (as part of the already
mentioned debate) result from the use of the term narrative in
reference to only one of its two levels, which are: story and discourse. Such
adversaries of the narratological approach to music as J. J. Nattiez and C.
Abbate, while criticizing the use of the term narrative, seem to admit in a
way that musical works can fulfill one of the two aspects of narration:
discourse. (Here let us remember Adornos quote, used by Nattiez: music is
a narrative which relates nothing and Abbates claim, that through
music we can hear the voice of narration, but we do not know what it is
talking about). Seemingly, to these researchers music lacks the capacity to
carry a story, to become a narrative.
However, the problem of the ability or otherwise of music to tell a
story is more complex. There is no doubt that literary narrations provide
full semantics we follow a particular plot. There is a possibility that
music conveys a particular story in program music, or together with a
literary text. The same story can be told by means of literary and musical
narration then we talk about intersemiotic transpositions or about
transmutation.
The question is: What about narration in instrumental works without
text or program, so called absolute music? Can we, with reference to those
works, talk about narrative with its two components, discourse and story?
Two extreme attitudes to this question are presented; on the one hand by
the proponents of the literal transfer of particular stories to the music we
listen to, and on the other hand by autotelists, who think that music can
only be syntactic without semantics. Yet there exists an entire spectrum
of shades between the two extremes.
The method of musical analysis of tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker,
first presented in Harmonielehre in 1906.
4 Charles Rosen, Art Has its Reasons. 1971, after: Micznik 211.
3

Musical signifi ?
Musical gestures, modalities, topics etc. refer, after all, to meaning which is
not purely musical. It is rather abstract meaning which, however,
indicates some semantic fields. Marie-Laure Ryan recalls an anecdote
about the composer Aaron Copeland, who was reportedly once asked:
Does music have meaning? Absolutely, he replied. Can it be put into
words?; Absolutely not (2004: 267). If we agree that semantization can
be a phenomenon of various degrees and does not have to represent
specific objects which have names, faces and shapes, but just general
phenomena which can but do not have to undergo specification or
elaboration in the mind of the listener, we will have to admit that music
can tell a story.
Semantics in music is like an algebraic formula, giving possibilities for
the substitution of particular elements with more or less strictly specified
designators. The ones specified will be a result of the cognitive process of
the music perceiver, in the form of a construction of images. But the most
general ones are intersubjectively verifiable and encoded and present in
the very music, whether based on natural or cultural musical signs. As
Werner Wolf argues:
Narrativity is () considered to be a gradable quality whose constituents ()
and characteristic features can be best illustrated with verbal stories (be they
factual or fictional) as prototypical narratives. But narrativity is, of course, by no
means restricted to such stories. (2008: 324)

Therefore: if in the Ballade in F major by Chopin we have Andantino and

Presto con fuoco, we recognize a binary semantic opposition a structure of
sounds that is calm, gentle and as its contrary one that is restless and
abrupt. No one would say that it is the opposite (although one might use
slightly different words to describe this elementary meaning), so it can be
intersubjectively verified. The clash of these two qualities constructs some
sort of event. Furthermore, we can correlate these contrasting qualities
with more specific semantic designations: war and peace etc. Similarly, in
music we can hear masculine and feminine actants, but we do not have to
say that they are Tristan and Isolde. The general meaning contained in the
very musical structure suggests the nature and direction of images. As
Vera Micznik writes:
The description of musical materials with all their multiple levels of meaning,
including the semantic level, offers a solution to the objection that music cannot
be narrative because it does not have meanings as literature does: it has its own
musical meanings which, hence, qualify its materials broadly speaking as events.
(2001: 219)

We can ask ourselves whether claiming that a specified story applies to

our algebraic formula does not lead to a trivialization of music. Maybe it

does. But musical narratologists do not encourage that. They do not

encourage the creation of a specific story with a group of characters with
distinctive features. They use the concepts of semic opposition and
semiotic square, functions, transformations, plot archetypes, isotopies and
modalities to discover the deep narrative structure of a given work
assuming that musical signification is another type of meaning.
Narrative in Tchaikovskys Romeo and Juliet
Let us have a look at the symphonic poem Romeo and Juliet by Peter
Tchaikovsky (1880). I chose an example of programmatic, although purely
instrumental, music on purpose it is namely a special case in between
various types of relationship between word and music. On the one end of
the scale there would be a work of music with text, like a song or an opera
(say Romeo and Juliet by Gounod, Bellini); at the other end is
autonomous, abstract music (for example Brahmss symphonies). There
are some possibilities between these extremes, connected with the most
generally understood program music without texts, referring to ideas
beyond music, determined explicitly by the composer, which can be
suggested by the title (for example Schumanns Dream), or by a story
written as a part of the score (for example Berliozs Symphonie fantastique).
1. Story level5
Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky certainly alludes to Shakespearean drama,
but the original plot is decomposed. Tchaikovsky extracts and abstracts
basic narrative units first of all the juxtaposition of the idea of love and
hate as well as the actant of Helper (Friar Laurence)6. In the course of the
narrative we can also hear the evocation of the idea of death, fate and
tragedy.
The first theme the classeme of hatred in a minor key, consists of
short, abruptly ending motifs with a dense rhythmical structure and dotted
rhythms, with repeated notes and rapid scales, sharply articulated, with
5

As proposed by Vera Micznik in 2001 and appropriated by Byron Almen in 2008, in

musical analysis the description of the story level concerns the identification of coherent
music units (thematic material, musical events, musical actants) as a kind of a static
structure whereas the description of the discourse level is connected with meanings
resulting from the syntagmatic, relational aspect of how the musical events are linked
together and how the musical material is transformed.
We have the evidence of associating some musical themes with respective ideas of hate,
love and Friar Laurence from the correspondence of Peter Tchaikovsky with Mily
Balakiriev. But these associations are intersubjectively verifiable, which was proved by my
experiments with students listening to this piece and guessing which ideas from
Shakespeares play correspond to respective musical sections.

loud dynamics, usually in tutti, with emphasized sharp timbres of

instruments, and with sudden percussion strokes. The contrasting second
theme the classeme of love consists of open phrases in a slow, stable
movement (long note values), cantilena-like melody, rather quiet
dynamics, legato articulation, with the use of soft and warm instrumental
timbres such as English horn, con sordino strings, harp. The composer here
wrote expressive performance indications: amoroso, espressivo, dolce.

Fig. 1: Analysis of Tchaikovskys Romeo and Juliet

The exposition is preceded by a slow introduction with the theme of

Friar Laurence a chorale-like topic. The archaic sound quality here may
constitute the mythical seme, a term applied by Tarasti in his book Myth
and Music (1979: 69).
Both love and hatred are sorts of centrifugal movements, a flow of
high temperature. Ortega y Gasset notes that:
In love, we feel united with the object of our love. While hatred, even though it is
constantly heading towards the hated one it separates from the object, keeping
its distance, opening an abyss. (1989: 17)

While hatred in musical expression is always a struggle for separation, in

the expression of love we can observe here two modalities one of them
is connected with the lovers aiming at reunion, the other with the state of
unity or symbiosis. Those are the two most basic modalities distinguished
by Tarasti: musical doing and musical being. Tarasti explains it as
follows:
According to Greimas the basic situations of any narration are SvO and SO,
that is, a subject is disjuncted from or conjuncted with an object (). One can
say that in music the first-mentioned state would equal the musical doing. Thus
the state of disjunction, the lack of some object, is experienced as tensional, and
catalyzes the action. Correspondingly, the latter state, conjunction, means a
resolution of tension and thus musical being. (1995: 60)

Moreover, these terms can be placed in a semiotic square.

Fig. 2 Adaptation of Tarastis model of main modalities in music (semiotic square).

Semantics of love is my interpretation.

The semantics of love as it appears in Tchaikovskys work can be read in

the light of this structure. As Tarasti writes, upon doing and being there
can appear other surmodalizations; in the case of love these could be
respectively desire and have.
The first one - SvO, modality do, surmodality desire - is connected
with aspiring to ecstasy and reaching it but not forever. Musically it
manifests itself through the use of a full scope of means within a given
style, melos ascendens, ff dynamics, accelerando as well as such categories as
appasionato and espressivo. The other one SO, modality be, surmodality
have - is connected with the comfort of the lovers union, which is
shown by means of the symbiotic symbols of the unison type, but also by
creating a general atmosphere of intimacy: usually a slow tempo, pp
dynamics, the use of a soft, muted timbre of instruments con sordino
strings, woodwind instruments, harp. Among the expressive specifications
given by composers we find amoroso, misterioso, dolce, sensibile.
The indirect modalities (to be going to be conjuncted, to be about to
be disjuncted) appear in transition passages as junctions between these
modalities.
2. Discourse level7
The entire narrative of Tchaikovskys Romeo and Juliet is a process full of
transformations. It aims dynamically towards the inevitable finale. There is
a tendency to apply anticipations, as well as to apply stretto and to surprise
the listener with explosions of sound. It corresponds with Shakespeares
drama: Juliet often mentions that she has bad feelings. These anticipations
are connected with obsessive semes of death (e.g. played by gran cassa).
Clashes between contrasting sections are very emphatic in the whole
symphonic poem, but in the course of the narrative trajectory they
become stronger and change with increasing rapidity.
The themes return each time in new configurations. For instance the
theme of Laurence returns in a new context in the development and
recapitulation together with the topic of hatred, evoking an atmosphere
of terror, fighting with fate, and warning, as well as in the closing coda
with the reinforced dimension of the sphere of the sacrum, as if
transcendent. Not only does music, in a more direct and intensive way
than the literary medium, show all kinds of transformations in a narrative,
but it can also simultaneously evoke more than one phenomenon,
superposing one or more layers.
In the case of the topic of love we deal with organic narrativity (one of
three types of narrative distinguished by Tarasti.) Ildar Khannanov claims
(after Viktor Bobrovsky), that this theme is a compositional
7

See footnote 5.

modulation, changing in form in the course of its unfolding, growing in

size towards the end. According to him, the love theme represents the
idea of organic unity and dynamic development; it is unpredictable, yet
very persuasive in its logic (Khannanov 2003: 28).
Through an unusual relation of distant keys in which the main themes
of hatred and love appear in exposition and recapitulation (breaking the
schematic rules of sonata form), Tchaikovsky emphasizes the gap between
the two musical topics.
What is interesting is that there is no love theme in the development
section only those of hatred and of Laurence, as well as obsessive motifs
that might evoke the premonition of death; as if the entire struggle over
the lovers fate took place far away from them without them having any
influence over it. In the recapitulation the theme of love will appear
suddenly, in an even more direct clash than in the exposition. Here the
expression gets intensified the texture becomes denser, the
instrumentation becomes more massive and the dynamics rise. At the end
of the recapitulation we can hear the gran cassa that symbolizes fate. The
coda (after the recapitulation) seems to transcend this world entirely and
transport us to a different one. The expression here is more intimate,
contemplative. Chorale-like topics appear, along with the transformed
theme of love which is initially in a minor key as if the love has been
conquered. But in the course of the narrative in the coda the harmony
brightens up and we can hear the process of transformation of the love
theme into a surprisingly triumphant ending.
The analysis of the modalities of musical discourse distinguished by
Tarasti (1995) help us recognize the subcutaneous power of music in its
dimension as a process8. The table (fig. 1) shows a detailed graph of the
intensity (or type) of each modality in the course of the work.
3. Deep narrative level
In the deep narrative level of Shakespeares play and the whole legend of
Romeo and Juliet there are clearly present basic semic oppositions of love
and hate, peace and war. Tchaikovsky chose a musical form in which this
basic semic opposition could be best expressed and even accentuated. The
sonata is a type of form based on two contrasting musical themes. What is

Eero Tarasti adapted the Greimasian concept of modality to the analysis of musical
discourse in the interpretation of Frdric Chopins Ballade in G minor, Op. 23 (Tarasti
1995). The general translations of respective modalities into music are quoted after
Tarasti above in the section Narratological perspective in music analysis. The intensity of
each modality in the course of the work is indicated as follows: ++ means excessive, +
sufficient, 0 neutral, - insufficient, and -- deficient.

more, the sonata form consists of several main sections logically

unfolding. As Berger states:
Only some types of musical forms (the model form being the classical sonata
form) use fully the fact that music, happening in time, organizes the succession of
the works phases and the causal logic of mutual relations between the phases,
which is of great importance [for narrative: MP]. (1993: 56).

As shown in figure 1, in the succession of musical events of

Tchaikovskys composition we can find on a deep level the classic
narrative schema leading from an initial order to the final order through
its disturbance and the main intrigue (series of trials) (see Greimas 1966,
Todorov 1990:29, Braningan 1992:4, Grabocz 1999, Prince 2003: 63). In
Tchaikovskys poem the initial situation (introduction with chorale topic)
is disturbed by the clash of hate and love classemes (in exposition), after
which there appear a series of musical events (in development and
recapitulation), transforming the meanings presented in the first two
stages, and then a new order is reached (in the coda).
We could say that the archaic sound quality of the introductory choral
chords function here as it were as an unfoldment of the mythical world,
that which was called in Propps theory an initial situation, serving to
launch the story9 (Tarasti 1979: 67).
In the narrative of this work, we are undoubtedly dealing with
transvaluation10, stressed by Byron Almn with reference to musical
narrative, which becomes clear at the end. In the coda by means of
substantially developed musical material which we already know a
completely new type of expression is reached. After some dramatic
passages, there are reminiscences of the love theme which together with
the remote choral topic and accompanying harp can be interpreted as
a sign of transcendence. Especially since the harmony lightens up at the
end and the very ending is triumphant: played tutti, in a pure B major
chord. In his correspondence with Tchaikovsky, Balakirev unsuccessfully
tried to persuade him to change the ending; he felt that it was unaesthetic
and contradictory to the drama of Shakespeare11. Yet even in
9
10

11

These original words by Tarasti refer to the opening of Bedrich Smetanas Ma vlast.
Almn takes over the concept of transvaluation from James Jakb Liszkas The Semiotic of
Myth: A Critical Study of the Symbol, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Quoting
Liszka, Almn agrees that transvaluation is a rule-like semiosis which revaluates the
perceived, imagined, or conceived markedness and rank relations of a referent as delimited
by the rank and markedness relations of the system of its signs and the teology of the sign
user (Almn 2008).
A quoi bon ces accords assens dans les dernires mesures ? Cest contraire au sens du
drame, autant quinesthtique ; a letter from 22 January 1871, quoted after Sophie

Shakespeares play the ending can be considered ambivalent. The return

of the highly transformed themes in the coda creates the illusion of a large
distance in time. The discrepancy between the time of the piece and the
time of the story which is told becomes clear; as Christian Metz writes
(about Genettes theory), one of the functions of narrative is to invent
one time scheme within another time scheme (Micznik 2001: 194).
Friar Laurence in Tchaikovskys Romeo and Juliet appears to be a
key actant in the unfolding of the narrative. Tchaikovsky does not tell the
story of Romeo and Juliet by following the course of events from
Shakespeares play. Laurences presence, from the very beginning of the
symphonic poem through the whole narrative trajectory, emphasizes his
role in the narrative: we can say that he is an actant-helper who unwillingly
turns into an actant-opponent as a result of misfortune. He is thus a tragic
hero and a symbol of a tragedy from the very first chords.
Would all these meanings be clear to us if we did not know that the
work was Romeo and Juliet? If the piece was titled simply Symphony we
would probably understand general meanings, but would not associate
them with the characters of Shakespeares drama. We would still recognize
the struggle between two forces good and evil (and probably even more:
love and hate). We would recognize the evocation of the sacred sphere.
We would hear fate and tragedy. We would recognize the triumphant,
transcendent ending. We would feel the musical being and the musical
doing we would know in which moments the inner subject is pursuing
his goal and in which he reaches it.
Could this riddle be solved?
The mystery, the ambiguity and the semantic enigma of musical narratives
is extremely intriguing and they might provide even more possibilities of
expression than literary narratives. In Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet we
find the following words: Let the sweet music tongue unfold the
imagind happiness, in a situation in which words are insufficient to
express the excess of happiness. According to Lvi-Strauss:
Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of
mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a
meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of
being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being
comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of
Comet, Introduction au Romo et Juliette de Tchakovski. Un romantisme modr mais
efficace Heras Peacock no 3: Romo et Juliette. Ed. Laurence le Diagon-Jacquin, 137. Print.

man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds
the key to their progress (in Rieger 2009).

If we agree that narrative can be a sort of phenomenon preceding the

choice of medium, a certain human need, a competence, then authors can
create narratives by means of various material. From this point of view
which can seem paradoxical narrations are not adopted from literature
to music, but were simply discovered in literature first. What is adopted,
however, are the tools necessary if the interpreter wants to take a look at a
work of music from the narratological perspective. Could this riddle
and mystery of musical narrative be solved in the process of narratological
analysis? Probably not entirely, and most musicologists are aware of that.
They describe musical works in a technical way or by means of one of the
multiple methodological approaches for getting closer to the truth about
them, without ever wholly unraveling them. Their interpretations can be
enriching, but sometimes, faced with music, they fall silent.
Narrative and music: conclusion
Narrative, as a concept that comes before the means are defined, can be
realized in music as well. Being a gradable quality12, narrativity can occur
in music to a lower degree that in literature or film, for instance. (As I
wrote earlier, music lacks some of the elements that literature possesses,
like full, concrete semantics). Moreover, music itself can be more or less
narrative, or can be not narrative at all.
But musical pieces can introduce narrative constituents, such as:
- presenting a set of events or elements in a time-ordered structure
Even though music does not present concrete meanings in a literary sense,
it has its own musical meanings which, hence, qualify its materials
broadly speaking as events (Micznik 2001: 219). Music not only happens
in time, but is able to invent one time scheme within another time
scheme13. It is able to evoke for instance a mythical past (Tarasti 1979)
and to give an intersubjective perception of different time distances;
12

13

Gerald Prince writes about the degrees of narrativity: The degree of narrativity of a given
narrative depends partly on the extent to which that narrative fulfills a receivers desire by
representing oriented temporal wholeness (), involving a conflict, consisting of discrete,
specific, and positive situations and events, and meaningful in terms of a human(ized)
project and world () (2003: 65). Vera Micznik in her article (2001) claims that in music
we also deal with different degrees of narrativity; she compares the first movement of the
Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven with the first movement of the Ninth Symphony of
Mahler to draw the conclusion that Mahlers piece is more narrative than Beethovens.
Christian Metz on Genettes theory, quoted after: Micznik 2001: 194.

- presenting the relations between elements or events

Not only can music present time structured elements (events), but it can
also present relations between them. The specific kind of relations for
narrative are causal relations, which can be most easily observed in music
with a tonal syntax. However, when we speak about causal relations with
regards to music, there arises the tantalizing question of whether these
relations are in the music itself, or whether they are constructed by the
listener. Most probably, they are coded in music, but need the active
mind of a receiver to be extracted from it. Byron Almn claims that the
problem of causality in literature is also controversial, and states that:
There is no qualitative distinction () between the way narratives are
constructed in literature and the way they are constructed in music. In each case,
we must infer connections (2008: 31);

- presenting a change, transformation, transvaluation

Musical pieces can show the process of hierarchical transvaluation; as
Jakb Liszka writes,
narrative () unfolds a certain, somewhat ambivalent, resolution to the crisis,
depending on the pragmatics of the tale: the disrupted hierarchy is restorted ()
or, on the other hand, the hierarchy is destroyed (). (after Almn, 2008: 73).

The main thesis of Almns book A Theory of Musical Narrative is that

through musical narratives the listener perceives and tracks culturally
significant transvaluation;
- being a significant wholeness with at least a beginning, a middle
and an end
This Aristotelian concept is applied to music as well (and does not need
explanation);
- possessing a voice characterized by human expression
This voice is a subject of mental processes presented in a musical piece;
we can have one voice a kind of inner narrator (it is called persona
by Cone) or multiple voices in the pieces that are closer to the dramatic
than the epic (called agents and actants by, inter alia, Hatten and
Tarasti). Even if this voice is not always identified nor mentioned in
music analysis, the tracking of musical modalities (Tarasti) or calling
motives musical gestures (Hatten) presumes that there is a human factor
as a subject of these musical processes. The performer of music can
modalize the piece too and underline its narrativity.

List of references
Abbate, Carolyn
1991 Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century,
New York: Princeton University Press.
Agawu, Victor Kofi
1991 Playing with Signs: a Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music, New York:
Princeton University Press.
Almn, Byron
2003 Narrative Archetypes: a Critique, Theory, and Method of
Narrative Analysis, Journal of Music Theory 47(1), 1-39.
2008 A Theory of Musical Narrative, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press.
Berger, Karol
1993 Narracja i liryka. [Narrative and Lyric.], Jan Stszewski, Maciej
Jaboski (eds.), Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology, Poznan: Ars
Nova, 41-56.
Besseler, Heinrich
1959 Das musikalische Hren der Neuzeit, Berlin : Adademie.
Braningan, Edward
1992 Narrative Comprehension and Film, New York: Routledge.
Burzyska, Anna
2004 Kariera narracji. O zwrocie narratywistycznym w humanistyce
[The career of Narrative. On the narrative turn in the humanities
], in Wodzimierz Bolecki, Ryszard Nycz (eds.), Narracja i tosamo
(II). Antropologiczne problemy literatury, Warszawa: IBL.
Cone, Edward T.
1974 The Composer's Voice. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1982 Schuberts Promissory Note: an Exercise in Musical
Hermeneutics, 19th Century Music 55/3, 233-41.
1984-5
Beethoven's Orpheus or Jander's?, 19th Century Music
8, 2836.
Gasset, Jos Ortega
1989 Szkice o mioci [On Love: Aspects of a Single Theme], Warszawa:
Czytelnik, 1989.
Genette, Grard
1988 Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Gowinski, Micha, ed.
2004 Narratologia [Narratology], Gdansk: Sowo, obraz, terytoria.
Grabocz, Marta
1999 Paul Ricoeurs Theories of Narrative and Their Relevance for
Musical Narrativity, Indiana Theory Review 20/2, 1939.

2008 Classical Narratology and Narrative Analyses in Music, in

Robert S. Hatten, et al. (eds.), A Sounding of Signs: Modalities and
Moments in Music, Culture, and Philosophy. Essays in Honor of Eero
Tarasti on his 60s Anniversary. Acta Semiotica Fennica XXX.
Helsinki: International Semiotics Institute at Imatra & Semiotic
Society of Finland, 2008, 19-42.
2009 usique arrativite, signification. Paris: LHarmattan.
Greimas, Algirdas Julien
1966 Smantique structural, Paris: Larousse.
Hanslick, Eduard
1854 Vom Musikalisch-Schnen, Leipzig.
Hatten, Robert S.
1994 Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and
Interpretation, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
2004 Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven,
Schubert, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Herman, Luc, and Vervaeck, Bart
2008 Postclassical Narratology, in David Herman, Manfred John,
Marie-Laure Ryan (eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory.
New York: Routledge Ltd, 450-451.
Karl, Gregory
1997 Structuralism and Musical Plot, Music Theory Spectrum 19, 13-34.
Kerman, Joseph
1992 Representing a Relationship: Notes on a Beethoven Concerto,
Representations 39, 80-101.
Khannanov, Ildar
2003 Russian Methodology of Musical Form and Analysis. Diss. University of
California.
Lerdahl, Fred and Jackendoff, Ray
1983 A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
ebkowska, Anna
2006 Narracja [Narrative], in Micha Pawe Markowski, Ryszard
Nycz (eds.), Kulturowa teoria literatury. Gw e pojcia i problem,
Krakow: Universitas, 181-216.
Maus, Fred
1988 Music as Drama, Music Theory Spectrum 10, 5673.
1991 Music as Narrative, Indiana Theory Review 12, 1-34.
1997 Narrative, Drama, and Emotion in Instrumental Music, Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism lv, 293303.
2001 Narratology, narrativity, in Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, London/New York: Macmillan
Press.

2005 Classical Instrumental Music and Narrative, in James Phelan,

Peter J. Rabinowitz (eds.), A Companion to Narrative Theory,
Blackwell Publishing, 466-83.
Micznik, Vera
2001 Music and Narrative Revisited: Degrees of Narrativity in
Beethoven and Mahler, Journal of the Royal Music Association 126,
126-249. Nattiez, Jean-Jacques
1990 Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?, Journal of the Royal
Musicological Association 115/2, 24057.
Newcomb, Anthony
1983-4
Once More Between Absolute and Program Music:
Schumann's Second Symphony, 19-th Century Music 7, 23350.
1987-8
Schumann and Late Eighteenth-Century Narrative
Strategies, 19-th Century Music 16, 16474.
1994 The Polonaise-Fantasy and Issues of Musical Narrative, in John
Rink, Jim Samson (eds.), Chopin Studies II, Cambridge University
Press.
1997 Action and Agency in Mahler's Ninth Symphony, Second
Movement, in Jenefer Robinson (ed.), Music & Meaning, New
York: Ithaca.
Pater, Walter Horatio
1986 The Renaissance: Studies in Art in Poetry. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Pettit, Philip.
1977 The Concept of Structuralism: a critical analysis, Berkeley/Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
Polony, Leszek
2005 Mityczny czas muzyki [Mythical time of music.], in Lidia
Wisniewska [ed.], Mity, mitologie, mityzacje nie tylko w literaturze
[Myths, mythologies, mythizations not only in literature], Bydgoszcz:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, 279-288.
Prince, Gerald
2003 A Dictionary of Narratology, Lincoln&London: University of
Nebraska Press.
Ratner Leonard G.
1980 Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style, New York: Schirmer.
Rieger, Stefan
2009 Od Lvi-Straussa do Chopina [From Lvi-Strauss to Chopin]
rfi.fr. rti, Web.
<http://www.rfi.fr/actupl/articles/120/article_9320.asp/>.
Charles Rosen
1971 Art Has its Reasons, York Review of Books, 17 June

Rosner, Katarzyna
2006 Narracja tosamo i czas [Narrative, Identity and Time], Krakow:
Universitas.
Ryan, Marie-Laure, ed.
2004 Narrative across Media. The Languages of Storytelling, Lincoln/London:
University of Nebraska.
Shen, Dan
2008 Story-Discourse Distinction, in David Herman, Manfred John,
Marie-Laure Ryan (eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory,
New York: Routledge Ltd, 566-568.
Tarasti, Eero
1979 Myth and Music. A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music,
especially that of Wagner, Sibelius and Stravinsky. Haga: Mouton
Publishers.
1991 Beethovens Waldstein and the Generative Course, Indiana
Theory Review 12, 99-140.
1994 A Theory of Musical Semiotics, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press.
1995 A narrative grammar of Chopins G minor Ballade, Chopin
studies 5, Warsaw: F. Chopin Society, 38-62.
2008 Mozart, Or, The Idea of a Continuous Avantgarde, in Dario
Martinelli (ed.), Music, Senses, Body: Proceedings from the 9th
International Congress on Musical Signification, Rome: University of
Roma Tor Vergata, International Semiotics Institute, Umweb
Publications, Universit Popolare di MusicAr Terapia, 111-127.
2004 Music as Narrative Art, in Marie-Laure Ryan (ed.), Narrative
across Media. The Languages of Storytelling, Lincoln/London:
University of Nebraska, 283-304.
Todorov, Tzvetan
1990 Genres in Discourse, Cambridge University Press.
Wolf, Werner
2005 Metalepsis as a transgeneric and transmedial phenomenon: A
case study of the possibilities of 'exporting' narratological
concepts, in Jan Christoph Meister (ed.), Narratology Beyond
Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity. Narratologia 6, Berlin: De
Gruyter, 83-107.
2008 Narrative and Music, Intermediality, in David Herman,
Manfred John, Marie-Laure Ryan (eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia
of Narrative Theory, New York: Routledge Ltd, 324-329, 252256.