Prosody

“ But if we stop at that point, and only concern ourselves with the marvels of the formation of a language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices, we do not reach the end - for grammar is not literature, prosody is not a poem. ”

“ It is sometimes held that this fact—which as a fact is undeniable—has had an undue influence on the way in which English prosody has been regarded; that it must have exercised an enormous influence on the way in which English poetry has been produced may be denied, but hardly by any one who really considers the fact itself, and who is capable of drawing an inference. ”

“ THE TIMES.—"To Professor Saintsbury English prosody is a living thing, and not an abstraction. He has read poetry for pleasure long before he began to read it with a scientific purpose, and so he has learnt what poetry is before making up his mind what it ought to be. It is a common fault of writers upon prosody that they set out to discover the laws of music without ever training their ears to apprehend music. They theorise very plausibly at large, but they betray their incapacity so soon as they proceed to scan a difficult line. ”

“ It is perhaps not surprising that some people almost deny the existence of English prosody itself, and decline at any rate to take it seriously; while others talk about it in ways which half justify the sceptics. ”

“ It holds, however, such an important place in English prosody from the early thirteenth to the late sixteenth century, and its resolution into the ballad couplet or "common measure" is of so much greater importance still, that it can hardly have too much attention. ”

“ It was inevitable that the "Romantic" movement—one of the principal causes and features of which was a demand for variety, while another was its disposition to return to older modes—should be largely concerned with prosody ”

“ Effect on prosody.In particular, the long maintenance of the mono-rhymed, or even the single-assonanced, tirade depends almost entirely upon its being delivered vivâ voce. Only then does [Pg 50] that wave-clash which has been spoken of produce its effect, while the unbroken uniformity of rhyme on the printed page, and the apparent absence of uniformity in the printed assonances, are almost equally annoying to the eye. ”

“ Physiological-mechanical systems are altogether insufficient, even if not wrong, because they only refer to the raw material of prosody; because, in their nature, they must be applicable to verse and prose alike, and to all kinds of verse; with the additional disadvantage that, as actually explained by their advocates, they usually make verse-arrangements of the most inharmonious and unpoetical character. ”

“ He maintained that English prosody depended on the number of “stresses” in a line, not on the number of syllables, and that poetry should follow the rules of natural speech. His poetry was privately printed in the first instance, and was slow in making its way beyond a comparatively small circle of his admirers. ”

“ It will be strange if he does not perceive that there is here something much more than a mere regularising of accentual verse with the addition of rhyme, something much more than a mere imitation of French and Latin models, like the frequent attempts at English hexameters, or those at English ballades and rondeaux which were revived some thirty years ago; above all, something not in the least adequately described by the phrases "adopting the French principles of prosody," [Pg 147] "following the rhythm of the foreigner," and so forth. ”

“ The object of the whole is not merely to inculcate what seems to the author to be the best if not the only adequate general system of English prosody, but to provide the student with ample materials for forming his own judgment on this difficult, long debated, often mistaken, but always, if duly handled, profitable and delectable matter. ”

“ An uncertain prosody agrees ill with regularity of measure; deaf and dumb syllables, hard articulations, sounds not sonorous, with little variation, and no suppleness, cannot but with great difficulty be consorted with melody; and a poetry cadenced solely by the number of syllables, whilst it gets but a very faint harmony in musical rhythm, is constantly opposed to the diversity of that rhythm's values and movements. ”

“ That English prosody—the prosody of Shakespeare and Coleridge, of Shelley and Keats—owes its origin to a similar admixture the present writer at least has no doubt at all, while even those who deny this can hardly deny the positive literary achievement of the best mediæval hymns. They stand by themselves. ”

“ PART IV. PROSODY. Prosody 103consists of two parts; wherefore, although it may be a topic, a head, or subject for discussion, it can never be a point; for a point is that which hath no parts. Besides, there are a great many lines to be considered in the second part of Prosody, which treats of Versification. The first division teaches the true Pro-nunciation of Words, including Accent, Quantity, Emphasis, Pause, and Tone.
Lord Chesterfield's book about manners, which is intended to teach us the proper tone to be adopted in Society, may be termed an Ethical Prosody. ”

“ The great difficulty attending the study of English prosody, and the cause of the fact that no book hitherto published can be said to possess actual authority on the subject, arises from the other fact that no general agreement exists, or ever has existed, on the root-principles of the matter. [3] Classical writers on metre, of whom we possess a tolerable stock, differed with each other on many minor points of opinion, and from each other in the ways in which they attacked the subject. ”

“ It does not matter to us who wrote certain pieces of English poetry, but what the characteristics of those and other pieces of English poetry are. The student of prosody may and should note that in some pieces of this period the rhyme of y and ye certainly does occur, that in others it apparently does not ”

“ Our second master, the son of the principal one, was a parson, and, as he thought, a poet, and wrote a thing called “The Tears of the British Muse,” which we were all obliged to purchase, and repeat once a month. In fact, of all matters, prosody was most assiduously whipped into us.
Love is the first theme of all the poets in the world. ”

“ He who in prosody called a metrical foot consisting of one long syllable followed by two short (-..) a 'dactyle' or a finger, with allusion to the long first joint of the finger, and the two shorter which follow, whoever he may have been, and some one was the first to do it, must be allowed to have brought a certain amount of imagination into a study so alien to it as prosody very well might appear. ”

“ Something much less weighty than the stress of English lines, a just perceptible difference between nearly equal syllables, marks the excellent from the intolerable in French prosody: and to feel this truth in the eighteen lines that follow it is necessary to read them virtually in the modern manner--for the "s" in "vesprée" or "vostre" were pedantries in the sixteenth century--but one must give the mute "e's" throughout as full a value as they have in singing. Indeed, reading this poem, one sees how it must have been composed to some good and simple air in the man's head. ”

“ Another point with which the student cannot familiarise himself too early, and one which he will find rarely or never insisted on in works dealing with English prosody, is that this apparent irregularity of foot arrangement brings out the existence, the importance, and, so to speak, the personality of the feet themselves, in a way impossible of achievement when a uniform number of syllables is insisted on in a line, and when "accent," "stress," or whatever the emphasising agent be called or considered, is restricted wholly or as much as possible to exactly corresponding places in that line. ”

“ But we must complete this group by what are perhaps its most important, though not its earliest members, the two great examples of the octosyllabic line itself in its simplest couplet form. It may almost be said that Genesis and Exodus (the M.E. not the A.S. paraphrase) and The Owl and the Nightingale are sufficient between them to teach all the main secrets of English prosody. They are certainly sufficient to show what it is and what it is not. ”

“ The effect of English poetry at all times, but especially for the last hundred years, has been largely dependent on Vowel-music. This is by no means limited to the practice of what used to be called "making the sound suit the sense," though the two sometimes coincide. Vowel-music, not without occasional assistance from consonants, establishes a sort of accompaniment to the intelligible poetry—a prosodic setting. ”

“ When we think of melody in speech, we immediately think of the lyric. In form and in spirit it approaches nearest towards music, for it is “emotion all compact.” When we have stimulated within us a noble emotion, we begin at once to respond in some rhythmic action, a beat of our foot, sway of the body, or humming in a tuneful way. There is melody in prose as well as in poetry, only it is not so pronounced. Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” is a splendid example of prose-poetry. ”

“ The elocution of singing depends upon a knowledge and control of all the principles considered up to this point of study,—a knowledge and control of physical, mental, and emotional power, of freedom of form and action, of artistic vowel form and automatic articulation, of the removal of all restraint, in fact, of all true conditions of tone. To interpret well, the singer must have mastered the elocution of singing, must be able to bring out every vowel and consonantal element of the words, must know how to use and apply tone color and tone character, the impressive, persuasive, fervent voice. ”

“ You turned to the studies in pause, change of pitch, and inflection to meet that need. Returning to the main study, you tested your vocal skill on the essay to find the essay so read might persuade an auditor to some readjustment of his ideas, values, discriminations, or strengthen him in convictions already held.
Study Two revealed that in lyric poetry the primary appeal is to emotion; that its vocal demand upon the interpreter is for a mastery of tone-color, a sense of rhythm, and the power to suggest a background of musical sound. ”

“ Of the tongue, soft palate, and lips, which are the principal modifiers of the shape of the mouth cavity, the tongue has by far the most influence. When the tongue lies flat in the mouth, it may be considered to be in its primary position, and it is important that in singing and speaking the student learn to begin his voice-production with this organ in that position, or a slight modification of it, for it is only when it is thus placed that a tone at once round, full, and pure can be produced. ”

“ This result invariably follows the attempt to cultivate the voice on vowels only, or on one single vowel. He who watches tone while cultivating his voice reaches this result. We express our thought while singing in words. Words are made by the organs of speech, the chief of which are the tongue and lips. The tone receives its expression from the pharyngeal cavity. If tone and words agree, the tongue, lips and pharynx will work harmoniously in accord. It is when one or the other does not work correctly that one belies the other. ”

“ CHAPTER I TONE-PRODUCTION AND VOICE CULTURE
In no other form of expression do art and nature seem so closely identified as in the art of singing. A perfect voice speaks so directly to the soul of the hearer that all appearance of artfully prepared effect is absent. Every tone sung by a consummate vocal artist seems to be poured forth freely and spontaneously. There is no evidence of calculation, of carefully directed effort, of attention to the workings of the voice, in the tones of a perfect singer. ”

“ A woman usually began the singing, in a high-pitched, nasal, or throaty voice, which she modulated in an extraordinary way. Immediately other women joined in, then several men whose voices were of tenor quality, followed by other men in basses and barytones, chanting in two or three tones which, for rhythm and tone, quality, were like the beating of kettledrums. ”

“ When he has reached the point where he can sing every vowel and consonant perfectly, and with as little effort as when speaking, on every tone of his singing voice, and then have that voice loud enough to be well heard in any hall, the voice is completely and well cultivated. ”

“ The variations of tone, the modulations natural to the human voice, grow refined as the nervous organization becomes more delicate. Musical melody following the variations of human accents is capable of taking on as many shades as there are feelings in the heart. ”

“ The highest result which can be exhibited of literary culture and a corresponding vocal culture, is an organic melody, in the reading of a great poem, the outcome of the poem's organic life. By melody, in reading, is meant that organic variety in the use of all the vocal functions and affections, that arabesqueness of expression, which does not allow the ear of the hearer to detect a regular recurrence of any of these functions and affections. There is melody of pause, of inflection, of rhyme, of rhythm, of time, of force, of emphasis, and of every vocal affection. ”

“ And while effusive utterance is always the prevalent mode, it will give place to the expulsive mode or to the explosive, when energy of thought or force of passion requires it so.
Thus, as the diction rises from plain discourse to the language of feeling, the appropriate vocal expression gathers intensity and becomes more varied, assumes, as may be said, brighter colors and displays greater contrasts; and so, in the third class of diction, the diction of passion, it displays its intensest and most vivid modes—its brightest colors, its deepest contrasts. ”