Title: Early music and the aesthetics of Ezra Pound : hush of older song /
Authors: Merritt, Robert, 1951-
Publisher: E. Mellen Press,
Year: 1993
Subjects: Pound, Ezra, Knowledge Music.; Pound, Ezra, Aesthetics.; Music England History and criticism; Music England History and criticism; Aesthetics, Modern; Music and literature.; Renaissance England; Poetics
Abstract: Ezra Pound's assimilation of some of the aesthetic values of the music of the 16th and 17th centuries is thought to have formed one of the important bases for his more general critical convictions. Some of the qualities important to Pound's overall aesthetic philosophy also characterize the old music, including: the effect of medium on overall meaning; "impersonality"; concision and small-scale; tension between "fundamental irregularity" and "classicism of surface"; and the moral and intellectual value of sharp distinct form. Pound's studies of the technical foundations of music affected much of his poetic and theoretical work.
Contents: An interrupted interpretative tradition --- English attitudes towards early music --- A critical vocabulary for all of the arts --- Metaphor as critical method --- Importance of medium --- Davaluing the personal --- Vers libre, concentration, and the moral significance of clean line --- Sounding the bass.