Leaves of Music, Part Two

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Welcome to Celebrate Poe - This is episode 398 - Leaves of Music, Part Two

Well heIlo, Walt

Greetings, George.

Now In the previous episode, I began a conversation with Mr. Walter Whitman specifically about opera.

Well Mr. - I mean Walt - What would you say was the role of music in general in your works?

Music in general was a central metaphor in my life and work, both as a metaphysical mindset and as a practical reality. I was blessed with an extraordinary ear for inner rhythms which I then In articulated in radically free, rolling, thrusting verses which revitalized the entire world of poetic language. That same ear led me to to a strong appreciation of classical music. My musical journey was a largely self-taught quest in which I relied on both my innate musicality and my experience as a music journalist to formulate aesthetic principles that would carry over into my poet

Well. ultimately, what would you say about the importance of exposure to differing forms of music to the United States?

“George,I say no land or people or circumstances ever existed so needing a race of singers and poems differing from all others,” I wrote in “A Backward Glance o’er Travel’d Roads.” Yet, it was only by exposure to European opera and art song that I began to really discover and appreciate tI universality of classical music’s language. That exposure came during the 1840′s and 1850′s when I served as a member of New York City’s working press, reviewing musical performances at Casthee Garden, Palmo’s Opera House,  the Astor Place Theater, and the Academy of Music. After enjoying a year of press seats for the Brooklyn Eagle, I admitted that foreign music was exercising an elevating influence on American taste. From the late 1840′s onward My critical posture gradually shifted from a stance of tolerance to one of sophisticated pleasure and finally to one of total passion for classical music, especially for opera.

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