Undoubtedly, both music and poetry originated from cultural sources such as prayers and labor songs in primitive society. Although literature and music parted ways and developed into two different forms of human culture, their development process still interacted and influenced each other in many aspects. It is often observed that there is no conceptual difference between narrative poems or lyric poems in primitive oral literature and the tunes or accompaniment they are used to sing. In the concept of classical aesthetics, even several literary forms that we divide into music, poetry and dance today are collectively called "music". Throughout the classical era, instrumental music without lyrics has been developing and forming its own norms. However, only music works with words are suitable for meaning analysis. Rhythm is the characteristic of ancient lyrics and music. So in the practice of ancient art, rhythm has become a powerful link between lyrics and music. Modern readers can clearly see this from the ancient notation: at that time, the music score was only marked with high and low notes. As for the length and strength of notes, they generally followed the poetic law of lyrics writing and did not make any other marks. As long as the rhythm of poetry keeps the meaning of modern music, the concept of "music" can still be used to include poetry, music and dance. However, when poetry adopts its own independent literary format and replaces the musical meaning, it is impossible to incorporate poetry into the concept of "music". Strictly speaking, the principle governing the structure of poetry should be called "temperament", which is no longer completely subordinate to the acoustic category. Later, the poet transplanted the long syllables from Greek poetry into Latin poetry, which led to the gradual weakening of strong syllables based on word stress. In this way, the "melody" format of poetry has increasingly become a purely written arrangement and combination.
Of course, the above situation does not mean that with the decline of classical society, poetry and music will be completely separated into two independent art forms. In fact, the development of instrumental music is a long and gradual process. It was not until the end of16th century that instrumental music and vocal music gained some independence in practice. Only when music creation transcends the position of accompanying songs and dances in the past can pure instrumental music be regarded as abstract music in the modern sense. On the other hand, after the Renaissance, the development of lyric poetry was completely divorced from the track of singing only, and then the concept of "poetic music" was possible. The so-called "poetic music" describes the sound structures that belong only to language in poetry and the relationship between these sound structures and the tones of modern abstract music. Modern abstract music and poetic music generally infect the audience in a sub-rational way. Just as in a sense, the audience is "perception" rather than "cognition" of these two kinds of music.
The relationship between music and poetry can be roughly divided into several stages in the history of western art development. The first stage includes the pre-Athens period, the Germanic culture period before the 9th century, and the folk oral culture tradition since ancient times. During this period, music and poetry were integrated. Poets and composers are one. At this stage, only dance can be associated with music, not poetry. However, in most social ceremonies, song and dance are always combined.
The second stage was in the period of ancient Athenian culture, when both music and poetry began to flourish. On the one hand, science and philosophy pay attention to the characteristics of pure tone, on the other hand, literary criticism pays attention to the style of poetry, which gradually separates music from poetry in concept. It is conceivable that Plato (427-347 BC), Aristotle (384-322 BC) and other attacks on music without lyrics were definitely aimed at instrumental music at that time. More importantly, in the period of classical culture, with the separation of lyrics and songs, the poetic form of pure literature gradually appeared, and the distinction between "readers" and "listeners" appeared at the same time. However, the development of music and poetry in the whole second stage is not balanced. It is mainly the vigorous development of music that leads to its separation from poetry.
However, in the following centuries, the development of western music lagged behind its sister art poetry and could only follow its footsteps, but could not be completely independent. With the decline of the Roman Empire, music and poetry were mainly used in church worship and early folk narrative works. However, folk narrative poetry still shows the characteristics that music and poetry are completely indistinguishable in the previous stage. Anglo-Saxon folk artists, medieval bards and musicians are all poets and musicians. They are good at playing musical instruments and reciting poems. But in the later development, both music and poetry were subordinate to the church, because the church at that time controlled the spread of ancient literature and art, and only the church could establish and preserve the conventions and traditions in language and music. At the end of the 6th century, Pope Santigregori I formulated a musical program for church ceremonies, which marked the third stage of the history of music and poetry. Music can finally compete with poetry and gain its own place. Especially from 900 to 1400, music gradually became a completely different artistic creation from poetry through its own theoretical exploration and practice. It is worth noting that throughout the Middle Ages, it was believed that composers had to conceive the contents of lyrics before composing music. It can be seen that the lyrics and songs were still linked at that time. However, music and poetry have begun to go their separate ways in creative skills.
At first, the music creation activities in this period only inserted some "novel" music fragments into the original religious hymns with dull melody. These music works are always accompanied by some new Latin lyrics, interspersed between the paragraphs of the main hymn. The interlude in this religious hymn is the music creation at that time. /kloc-around the 0/0 century, multi-voice music began to appear, which promoted the development of typical and complex western music (including religious music and non-religious music). Out of pure musical needs, composers began to ignore or even completely abandon the lyrics elements in the musical structure. By the beginning of the13rd century, the multi-part music used by the church had been perfected and equipped with musical instruments, and the composer signed his work for the first time. From A.D. 1 100 to A.D. 1450, only in secular lyric poems of a non-religious nature did the early music poems merge. At that time, conductus of Latin nationality, canzo and vers of southern France and northern Italy, chanson, rondeau and vire-lai of northern Europe, bar and leich of Germany were all folk music-poetry genres, and the lyricists were also composers. It is worth noting that these pieces of music are mostly melodic music, and sometimes there are instrumental overtures played by the poet's entourage before singing. In this period of the integration of poetry and music, some changes have taken place, and multi-voice hymns have gradually become popular-each voice has its own lyrics. This tradition of multi-part music finally absorbed and integrated non-religious single-part lyric songs. The last great poet and composer in this period was Guillaume de Mashau. During this period, composers and music theorists have made remarkable progress in music expression skills, thus promoting the further separation of music and poetry and moving towards the road of independent development.
During the Renaissance, there was a contradiction in history: on the one hand, it was a trend of thought that required the re-integration of music and poetry, on the other hand, various components that helped to separate music from poetry were further expanded and improved in the practice of music creation. /kloc-in the 6th century, instrumental music, as an independent branch of music, has appeared, and the performances of famous musicians have begun. At the same time, harmony and acoustics in the modern sense have also been established. At the same time, however, the newly emerging neoclassical aesthetic schools, such as Camerata School in Florence and Seven Star Poetry Society in France, openly declared that they should devote themselves to the ideal combination of lyrics and tunes on the basis of understanding the ancient traditions. At that time, many writers and critics tried to establish classical rhythm analysis norms for poetry writing on the basis of modern languages in their respective countries. In response to this dynamic in the field of poetry, at the end of 16, some musicians devoted themselves to the purification of music, reiterated the importance of lyrics, and restored the vocal expression function lost in the development of modern multi-part music.
In the early baroque era, the relationship between music and poetry was regarded as a complementary relationship: music is to poetry as emotion is to knowledge. In Hobbes' words, the relationship between them is "like fantasy versus judgment". This view has been popular throughout the17th century and the early18th century. During this period, music and poetry, as two independent art types, are still developing. Of course, the development of opera provides an opportunity for the combination of the two. However, the general trend of baroque music development is to establish certain musical skill standards and emphasize the role of vocal music. The achievements of poetry in this period still remain in the field of knowledge.
/kloc-most aestheticians in the 0 th and 8 th centuries deliberately distinguish between the internal meaning and external decoration of poetry. The English poet Alexander Pope once wrote in his poem Criticism: "The voice of a poem should be like the echo of its meaning." But in the first few lines of the same poem, he accused some people of "going to church and not listening to the Oracle, but loving music." Generally speaking, neoclassical aesthetics advocates a clear distinction between "music" and "meaning", belittling music and attaching importance to meaning. However, the subsequent romantic aesthetics opposed the pretentious style that prevailed in the past century and a half, praised music and emotion, and belittled the difference between language and thought, but the result of their criticism objectively deepened the separation between the two.
/kloc-Since the 0/8th century, traditional Chinese operas and artistic songs have flourished. But on the whole, music and poetry, as a branch of literature, still maintain the former separation state to a great extent. In The Romantic Period, music and even pure instrumental music tend to show more obvious literariness and develop title music. At the same time, poetry strives to develop its own "music" in its own structure. Literature's pursuit of music is always an irrational (that is, perceptual) force; What music seeks from literature is the basis of emotional content. Paul Verland, a French poet, once strongly advocated that the beauty of sound should take precedence over ideological content in poetry creation, which required the poet to ignore knowledge in order to express his feelings. The unique concept of "poetic music" has been used to this day, which shows that there is still an important relationship between modern music and literature, that is, as long as the function of music is more mysterious than that of literature, the power of music infecting the audience will still be an important reference for the development of poetry.