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Friday, October 14. 2016

Songs are not literature?

Of course they are. They might be bad literature, but lyrics are lyrics, and lyrics are poetry. Probably music lyrics came first, though, like chants with drumming or something. The Iliad was music lyrics, or at least a story set to music. The Psalms are songs for which the music has been lost. "Psalm" = Song.
Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 16:03 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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More than a song. It's a musical composition specifically played on the instrument: a psalter (or a psaltery).
#1 Deborah HH on 2016-10-14 20:41 (Reply)
I once saw Sammy Cahn interviewed on the Merv Griffin show where he was asked "Which comes first, the melody or the lyrics?" Without missing a beat he said "First comes the phone call!"
#2 Len Faria on 2016-10-15 05:24 (Reply)
Uh, no - the connection between the word psalm and psalter only exists in English.

The Hebrew word translated as "Psalm" is "tehilla" - which literally means "praise" - distinguishing it as devotional, rather than secular.

Many of the psalms start with an attribution that uses the more common word for "song" - "mizmor" - as in "a song of David."

Interestingly, the word mizmor comes from a root that means both "to prune branches" and "branches". Perhaps this is a reference to the structure of most songs, with words in short lines, as opposed to the longer, freer flow of prose.
#3 Ben David on 2016-10-15 13:57 (Reply)
Grant: They're just lyrics.

Drew: "Just lyrics"?

Grant: Lyrics are important. They're just not as important as melody.

Drew: I really don't think you get it.

Grant: Oh, you look angry. Click your pen.

Drew: A melody is like seeing someone for the first time. The physical attraction. Sex.

Grant: I so get that.

Drew: But then, as you get to know the person, that's the lyrics. Their story. Who they are underneath. It's the combination of the two that makes it magic..

- Music and Lyrics (2007, Hugh Grant Drew Barrymore)
#4 rhhardin (Link) on 2016-10-15 13:58 (Reply)
I don't know. Literature is meant to be read. A song is meant to be heard. Lyrics written down is literature, but that isn't how they were intended to be conveyed.
#5 B Moe on 2016-10-16 17:38 (Reply)
I don't know. Literature is meant to be read. A song is meant to be heard.

Before mass literacy, literature was meant to be heard. Which includes epic poems, the Bible, etc.

I memorized some lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner in 8th grade. I much enjoyed hearing that poem. Hearing or speaking a poem gives greater appreciation to the rhyme and rhythm of a poem.

I developed a hatred of poetry from being subjected to the Junior Literary Critic model in high school and college English classes. Over the years, that hatred of poetry has abated, helped by reading poetry out loud.

Many more people know Bob Dylan's songs than know TS Eliot's poems.
#5.1 Gringo on 2016-10-16 23:38 (Reply)

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